The Ravens started sluggishly on offense but did enough right on defense and special teams that they put a brutal opening loss behind them with a 41-17 win over the Cleveland Browns on Sunday. Here are five things we learned from the game.

A disjointed win beats the heck out of 0-2

It did not feel like a 41-17 blowout.

If you were inclined to believe the Ravens would blow another game in spooky fashion, there were signs in the third quarter.

They thought they’d scored six on their first drive of the second half, but replay officials determined DeAndre Hopkins’ brilliant contested catch left him a smidge short of the goal line. On first-and-goal, tight end Zaire Mitchell-Paden jumped early to back the Ravens up 5 yards. On second down, tight end Mark Andrews could not maintain his grip on a touchdown catch. On third-and-goal, super end Myles Garrett sacked Lamar Jackson, forcing the Ravens to accept the cold comfort of a field goal.

Later in the quarter, Marlon Humphrey bobbled a potential interception (that he should have knocked to the ground, given it was fourth down), and the ball somehow tumbled into the hands of Browns receiver Cedric Tillman for a look-what-I-found touchdown. Down 20-10, the Browns had seemingly dug themselves out of an early grave.

If the Ravens were as tactically and emotionally fragile as their harshest critics claimed, this would have been the time for them to unravel.

Instead, they smoothed out their offensive execution, created the takeaways that had eluded them a week earlier and pulled away from an opponent ill equipped to match them touchdown for touchdown.

Did this make up for their Sunday night loss to the Bills? Not exactly. It won’t be the Browns the Ravens face with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line in four months. They won’t have this margin for error against Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes, the quarterbacks who’ve sent them home the last two years.

But, with their best punches not working at the start against a formidable Cleveland defense, they needed to be resourceful. They passed that assignment.

“It’s a sign of maturing as a football team to win games like that,” coach John Harbaugh said. “This was a grind of a football game.”

So it was.

Fans who didn’t watch will see the final score, not to mention Jackson’s statistical line, and assume the Ravens doubled down on their offensive brilliance from the previous week. A closer look, however, reveals they averaged a paltry 4.9 yards per play, gained fewer first downs than Cleveland and were outrushed more than 2 to 1.

They needed the field position created by a blocked punt, a 23-yard punt return and a 61-yard interception return to build their lead. With leading playmakers such as Andrews, Derrick Henry and Rashod Bateman bottled up, they needed their No. 4 and No. 5 wide receivers, Tylan Wallace and Devontez Walker, to come through in the red zone.

It wasn’t elegant, but the Ravens made it work. The win took uncomfortable scrutiny off them as they prepare for more difficult assignments next Monday night against the Detroit Lions and six days after that in Kansas City.

They’ll take the result over an aesthetic marvel.

The Ravens’ defensive leaders wouldn’t allow another disaster

Kyle Hamilton wanted to throw up when he looked at the Bills’ passing statistics. Humphrey derided the Ravens’ immaturity in failing to maintain their attention to detail with a 15-point lead.

Shame and self-recrimination abounded last week as the team’s defensive stars processed a shocking letdown after a summer spent believing they’d evolved past their 2024 struggles.

The Ravens faced an easier assignment this time, trading the league’s reigning Most Valuable Player, Allen, for 40-year-old Browns quarterback Joe Flacco. They did what they were supposed to do under the circumstances, harassing Flacco into a rough performance in his first start at M&T Bank Stadium since he played for the home team in 2018.

Hamilton, Humphrey and especially linebacker Roquan Smith came out sharp. On Cleveland’s first drive, Smith dropped rookie running back Quinshon Judkins in the backfield for a 2-yard loss. Next, Hamilton blew up a screen to make it third-and-15.

Flacco wasn’t recovering from that, and the Ravens continued to put him in vulnerable positions the rest of the afternoon, taking advantage of Cleveland’s subpar tackles, Cornelis Lucas and Dawand Jones, to hit the venerable quarterback nine times.

Smith headlined with 15 tackles, three for loss, a pair of hits on Flacco and a 63-yard fumble return for a touchdown to blow the game open in the fourth quarter.

He had watched the Bills’ loss four times by Tuesday. After reckoning with failure, he turned his attention to Browns film, determined not to “let last week beat you twice.” He felt his study allowed him to know where the Browns were going early and “pull the trigger.”

The Ravens had spent the entire offseason lamenting the negative turnover differential that cost them dearly against the Bills in the AFC divisional round. They vowed 2025 would be different and began to make good on their promise with Nate Wiggins’ interception and Tavius Robinson’s forced fumble, both of which led directly to points.

Again, taking the ball away from a middle-aged Flacco in September isn’t the same as taking it from Allen and Mahomes in January. But it was enough to cleanse some of the foul taste from Buffalo.

“I wanted to see the defense that I believe we can be, a defense that we’ve been working to be,” Harbaugh said. “We saw that, a lot, and we can [still] get better.”

DeAndre Hopkins has demonstrated his enormous value to Lamar Jackson

If we had polled defensive coordinators in the offseason, roughly none of them would have said Jackson needed more help in an offense that led the league in yards per attempt last season.

But, if there was an element missing from Jackson’s toy chest, it was a wide receiver who could shrug off tight coverage and snatch the ball for a first down or touchdown.

That was Hopkins’ forte when he ranked among the finest wide receivers in the world from 2015 to 2020. It was fair to wonder if at age 33, coming off an unmemorable stint with the Chiefs, he could muster such brilliance in Baltimore.

After two weeks, the answer is an emphatic yes.

Jackson has thrown Hopkins the ball four times. Three of those targets have produced memorable results. There was the stupendous one-handed touchdown grab in Buffalo. There was the 41-yard almost-touchdown against the Browns on which he kept his eyes glued to the ball despite cornerback Greg Newsome II’s contesting arm. And finally the 23-yard touchdown grab on which he seemed to dive both under and around Browns cornerback Cameron Mitchell to pick Jackson’s pass off the ground.

What a gift for a quarterback to know that a receiver does not need to be open to catch a touchdown pass. Jackson didn’t have targets like that early in his career, and despite the greater talent around him in recent years, he’s never had a contested-catch genius like Hopkins.

The well-traveled superstar isn’t going to be the volume threat he was at his apex. But Jackson doesn’t need him to be. Incredible red-zone efficiency will hit the spot.

“The guy has huge hands to catch the ball,” Jackson said. “One hand, two fingers, it doesn’t really matter.”

Or ask another elite pass catcher to sum up how impressive Hopkins remains in his 13th NFL season. “He’s crazy,” Zay Flowers said. “People talk about, ‘He’s washed.’ That man looks like he’s just getting started.”

The Ravens were simply thinking big picture in benching Jaire Alexander

There were indications coming off Alexander’s messy performance in Buffalo that the Ravens might reassess before throwing the former Pro Bowl coverage ace back into the breach.

Harbaugh talked Wednesday about getting him right, an acknowledgment that Alexander was not fully ready to play in the opener after he’d practiced just three times in the previous month.

“It’s a practice sport,” Harbaugh said. “Practice is important, especially at that position. So he and I have had that conversation. I recognize it, and the main thing right now is just to get him right. He’s healthy enough, but we have to get him right so [he] can go out there and play like Jaire Alexander, which I fully expect him to do.”

Harbaugh reiterated his explanation after Alexander was inactive against the Browns, leaving room for younger corners T.J. Tampa and Keyon Martin to play: “I kind of made the decision — he was pushing me hard — but I made the decision [and told him], ‘Let’s get completely right [and] in football shape.’”

Alexander worked out extensively before the Ravens announced inactives Sunday, another indication he wasn’t going to get his reps in once the game started.

Disappointing given the excitement when the Ravens signed Alexander to round out their secondary? Yes.

A sign that this one-year marriage will bear no fruit? No.

The Ravens knew Alexander’s dicey injury history — just 14 games for the Packers over the previous two seasons — when they added him. It’s why he cost as little as he did. The fact that his knee acted up after he started training camp with great gusto could not have been a shock to Harbaugh or general manager Eric DeCosta.

The Ravens will have to walk a tricky line, feeding Alexander enough reps so he can find his form while guarding against aggravating his knee.

Confronted with Alexander’s absence for most of camp and his error-filled debut against the Bills, the team is taking a prudent path in hopes of maximizing his value come January.

The Ravens found salvation in special teams during an ugly first half

With offensive futility the rule of the day, field position mattered a great deal against the Browns, who forced Jackson to start inside his own 20-yard line three times in the first half.

Had the Ravens not rebounded from their shoddy special teams effort in Buffalo, they might not have led going into the locker room.

A 23-yard punt return from rookie LaJohntay Wester started them on the Cleveland 49-yard line, leading to a Tyler Loop field goal to make it 3-0.

Then a blocked punt by linebacker Jake Hummel, signed specifically for his special teams acumen, set them up for a tidy 24-yard touchdown drive in the second quarter.

Meanwhile, Jordan Stout repeatedly pushed the Cleveland offense back with a quintet of unreturnable punts that averaged 51.8 yards.

It wasn’t a flawless performance for coordinator Chris Horton’s group. Loop remains perfect on field goals, but he’s struggling to put all his kickoffs in the new landing zone designed to force more returnable kicks.

That’s a quibble stacked against the yeoman’s work Stout, Wester and Hummel did to help the team survive Sunday’s early grind.

“Special teams is big, because you get in that kind of a game where the defense is going to really make it tough on you and you don’t have field position,” Harbaugh said. “You need to play defense, and you need to play special teams. You need to give your offense a chance to get rolling. As soon as our offense got [some] breathing room, then we made plays.”