After just one week, it was clear — the Ravens needed a reboot.

Back to the Stone Age. Back to a core principle. Only the strongest survive.

Or in this case: Only the strongest get to play.

As soft as the secondary got against Josh Allen and the Bills in last Sunday night’s epic meltdown, it wasn’t that the Ravens needed to up their competitive level only with the opponent. They needed to push each other. Real stakes needed to be on the line.

In the NFL, there are no higher stakes than playing time. To get players’ attention, the coaches had to be willing to pull those strings.

The Cleveland Browns are no Buffalo Bills on offense, but give Zach Orr credit. The upbeat former linebacker and current defensive coordinator always seems so chipper, but after last week’s disaster, Orr proved he’s got a hard edge, too. It worked.

A defense that had its own leaders agreeing it was not mature enough in letting the Bills score 41 points all of a sudden looked like the best phase of the team. The Ravens smothered Browns quarterback Joe Flacco in his Baltimore return, hitting him nine times and sacking him twice.

Nate Wiggins’ interception return and Roquan Smith’s fumble return showcased the defense’s ability to swing momentum with turnovers. Technically the Browns outgained the Ravens, but 110 of Cleveland’s 322 offensive yards came with the game out of reach.

None of it probably happens without a reckoning last week that involved big personnel adjustments.

After Jaire Alexander spent many of his snaps looking lost last week (as you might expect from someone who missed three weeks of camp with injury), he was a scratch in Week 2. After struggling in coverage in the middle of the field, inside linebacker Trenton Simpson lost his starting role.

John Harbaugh presented it as a positive for the players who practiced well. Chidobe Awuzie and T.J. Tampa played bigger roles in place of Alexander, while rookie Teddye Buchanan got a starting nod and played alongside Smith for the first three series. These guys played well, Harbaugh emphasized — and for the most part, that was true.

But cornerback Marlon Humphrey coughed up the deeper truth, when he talked about how the defense would not be “repeat offenders” after the secondary was a sieve last season.

“We’re not going to get into a situation similar to last year where we kind of mask over this and try to do this and protect this guy or protect that guy,” Humphrey said. “The guys that do it right are going to play.”

Everyone now knows that last season the Ravens covered for safeties Marcus Williams and Eddie Jackson, whom the team rotated through for two months before benching the former and cutting the latter.

Playing the hard-ass is a tough job for a (then) first-year coordinator, especially because he’s just two years older than Jackson. But the 2024 film showed a disconnect in the unit that got exposed week after week, until Ar’Darius Washington was plugged in at safety and the whole defense looked a lot more functional.

In this season’s go-around, Alexander got a significantly shorter leash. The Ravens protected him somewhat, with Harbaugh saying he hadn’t had adequate time to reach football-playing shape, but they didn’t wait for him to suddenly turn things around as they did with Williams and Jackson.

Harbaugh said he made the call on scratching Alexander but left room for one of the Ravens’ big-name offseason pickups to make a comeback.

“We want to give guys opportunities. … That’s no slam on anybody else,” Harbaugh said. “Jaire Alexander is gonna play great football for us this year.”

If the quote sounds familiar, it should. It’s exactly what Harbaugh said after benching Williams, who played just two snaps after Week 11. Currently a free agent, Williams may never play great football for anyone again.

That’s not to say Alexander’s trajectory will follow Williams’ — it is, in all honesty, too early to know. But it wasn’t too early to make a decision to limit the damage Alexander could do by not being ready to play at a high level.

The Ravens made a similar decision on Simpson, even though he played a few series and theoretically seems in better position to win his job back (though he played just 15 snaps to Buchanan’s 60, according to Pro Football Focus).

Again on the Super Bowl contending short list, the Ravens know they don’t have time to futz around hoping veterans make sudden bounce-backs. The defense is running on the merit system — the guys who play right will play.

“You just gotta know every day you gotta come working,” Tampa said. “Because, if not, there’s another person beside you, behind you, in front of you, that’s working just as hard as you.”

For a defense looking to change its results from last season, a bit of motivation from within the locker room itself might be just the thing the Ravens need.