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Lamar Jackson threw four touchdown passes in his return from injury, and the Ravens took the ball away three times in a comfortable 28-6 win over the Miami Dolphins on Thursday night. Here are five things we learned.

A stress-free game was just what the Ravens needed

Four days earlier they had pulled their season back from the brink, but if the Ravens exhaled, it was only in the waning seconds of a closer-than-it-looked win over the Chicago Bears.

A quick-turnaround trip to Miami offered two potential paths: Build on the upbeat vibes against the hapless Dolphins or flirt with the dispiriting messiness that had characterized their 1-5 start.

The Ravens flirted more than they would have liked in the first half, losing at the line of scrimmage and allowing Miami to own the ball. Only the Dolphins’ aforementioned haplessness kept them from being in hot water after 30 minutes.

Then, they did what a superior team is supposed to do and put the game out of reach with a pair of third-quarter touchdown drives. Jackson, back from a hamstring injury that cost him three games, went from tentative to surgical. Their running game wore on the increasingly despondent Dolphins. Their defense nearly matched its takeaway total from the first seven games.

It wasn’t an artistic triumph, but the Ravens took the next necessary step in their resurrection. Several players said they felt as if the team was 1-0 after the Bears game, in effect burying the 1-5 pre-bye outfit that was easily the NFL’s most glaring disappointment. Now that they’ve won two in a row by multiple touchdowns, with Jackson again fronting a healthy roster, their dreadful opening feels even further in the rearview.

We saw how quickly oddsmakers reinstalled them as the favorite in a thoroughly mediocre AFC North. If that felt more theoretical than grounded in present reality, consider this: If the Pittsburgh Steelers lose to the surging Indianapolis Colts on Sunday afternoon, the Ravens will be one game back in the division with nine to play.

Thanks in part to forgiving context, they don’t have to be starry-eyed optimists to believe they will become the fifth team in league history to make the playoffs after starting 1-5.

They’re going to play nothing but teams they’re supposed to beat over the next month. By easily defeating such an opponent Thursday, they reinforced their self-image as an aspiring powerhouse capable of bullying the NFL’s dregs. They had forfeited bully status, but they’re starting to feel themselves again.

Jackson shook off the rust but not before we saw familiar offensive flaws

You wouldn’t know it from his 143.2 passer rating, but Jackson acknowledged he wasn’t quite himself when he took the field for the first time since a Sept. 28 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.

He short-armed a third-down throw to Rashod Bateman on the Ravens’ first drive, showing the rust he’d taken on over a month away.

“I wanted it back,” he said on Amazon Prime’s postgame show.

Jackon’s tentative start fed into an uneven first half that saw the Ravens manage just four first downs and punt on four of six drives. This was the same frustrating offense we saw before Jackson’s injury, producing explosive plays and capitalizing on scoring chances but failing to grind out lengthier drives. Again, the offensive line failed to move bodies in short-yardage situations, with running back Derrick Henry being stopped on two third-and-1 carries and gaining just 30 yards on nine attempts in the first half.

The hope was that Jackson would supercharge the ground game by drawing defensive attention away from Henry. Instead, his legs weren’t much of a factor early. The Ravens ran less efficiently than they had in their previous two games with Cooper Rush and Tyler Huntley at quarterback.

Jackson quickly flipped the script on one of the league’s worst defenses with an 11-play, 68-yard touchdown march to start the second half. His 13-yard scramble gave that drive life, and he completed all six of his throws as the Ravens moved relentlessly toward the end zone. He was perfect again on their next scoring drive, lofting a 39-yard beauty to Zay Flowers and zipping a decisive 9-yard bullet to Bateman to put the Ravens up three scores.

As well as Huntley played against the Bears, Jackson’s ease converting in the red zone reminded us how much he raises the ceiling for coordinator Todd Monken’s offense. The Ravens are going to score a ton of points, probably enough to overwhelm the mediocrities on their near-term schedule, as long as the two-time Most Valuable Player is at the wheel.

The final numbers for the ground game, 150 yards on 31 carries, with Henry breaking loose for 89 in the second half, looked fine. And Jackson will presumably become more of a factor there as he’s needed and as he regains full confidence in his hamstring. But the Ravens’ offense won’t click fully until it gets Henry more successful carries throughout the game. Is the line up to the task? The jury remains out.

Sometimes, the opponent does your work for you

We’re accustomed to lamenting the Ravens’ penchant for self-sabotage. But they can’t touch the depths of star-crossedness to which Miami has sunk.

It was so bad that, at halftime, coach Mike McDaniel said his Dolphins needed to stop playing two opponents (meaning the Ravens and themselves).

Miami treated its booing home crowd to an opera of self-defeat, losing a fumble deep in its own territory to set up the Ravens’ first touchdown and squandering a fourth-and-1 chance in the red zone with a false start (exacerbated when Riley Patterson missed a 35-yard field goal). The litany of errors continued with a (sketchy at best) tripping penalty on running back Ollie Gordon that created a 51-yard swing in field position. Miami blew one more chance on fourth-and-2 in the red zone when De’Von Achane did not run the fade route Tua Tagovailoa anticipated.

The Dolphins somehow trailed at the end of a half in which they gained 117 more yards and ran 16 more offensive plays than Baltimore.

The Ravens turned it into more of an honest beatdown with their offensive efficiency to start the second half. But they might have been playing from behind had Miami not done them so many early favors.

It’s no coincidence that their easiest victory since Week 2 coincided with a plus-3 turnover margin, easily their best of the season.

This is what we were talking about when we said the Ravens’ attempted turnaround would be aided greatly by the drastic shift in their strength of schedule. They needed to get healthy and get their own house in order, but they have much more leeway against the Dolphins, Vikings, Browns and Jets than they did against the Lions, Chiefs, Texans and Rams.

Players and fans talk as if the shape of a season is entirely controllable, but the schedule really matters. The Ravens’ faults looked faultier against top-10 teams. Now they’ll gladly take any gifts these lousy opponents bestow.

Warts and all, we’re getting a feel for what this Ravens defense is

Safety Kyle Hamilton said it after the Ravens beat the Bears; they’ve gone from bending and breaking to bending but not breaking.

That might not stir proud memories of the 2000 defense or even the 2023 version that led the league in sacks, takeaways and fewest points allowed. But the fact is that, after they couldn’t stop a nosebleed for three weeks, the Ravens have allowed just 39 points over their last three games. They’re doing it not by stopping opponents from moving but by stiffening when it matters.

On three trips to the red zone, the Dolphins came away with zero points. They converted just two of 12 third downs. That’s excellent situational defense (aided by putrid situational offense) from coordinator Zach Orr’s group, which ranked 28th in third-down efficiency and 26th in red-zone efficiency coming into the game.

“Red-zone defense is where you really show who you are as a defense,” linebacker Roquan Smith said. “And I think what we showed is that, obviously, people can get down there, but being able to prevent them from actually scoring, that’s a lot.“

Besides those numbers, what have we learned about this defense as the Ravens reach the midpoint of their schedule?

The acquisition of safety Alohi Gilman has paid off, not just because he forced and recovered a vital fumble Thursday but because he has freed Hamilton to play as a third inside linebacker or edge rusher, roles the Ravens badly need their best defender to fill. Hamilton was the best player on the field Thursday, and he’ll have to continue being the queen on Orr’s chessboard for this thing to work.

Smith has played markedly better, not just as a run defender but as a coverage anchor, in two games since he returned from a hamstring injury.

The Ravens continue to leave alarmingly soft cushions in zone coverage, but their defensive backs have begun to make good on preseason promises to hunt takeaways. Marlon Humphrey has raised his level significantly over the last two games.

The interior defensive line, with Brent Urban, C.J. Okoye and John Jenkins supplementing Travis Jones, isn’t going to make many flashy plays but is sturdier than we might have predicted.

The inability to generate pressure with four rushers remains a significant Achilles heel, forcing Orr to send Hamilton and other blitzers to create discomfort. Nnamdi Madubuike has turned out to be as irreplaceable as we imagined, and the Ravens don’t have an edge rusher who alters (much less wrecks) opponents’ game plans. When they start facing better quarterbacks again, they’ll be punished for this imbalance.

Without a miraculous upgrade to its pass rush, this defense doesn’t have a path to greatness. It’s also not the injury-ravaged disaster it was a month ago.

The Ravens’ tight ends made a powerful argument against a trade-deadline reset

We talked a few weeks ago about how the Ravens had two games to prove this roster was worth investing in at Tuesday’s trade deadline. The speculative columns that proliferate ahead of the deadline have mostly treated them as sellers rather than buyers, with tight end Mark Andrews and running back Keaton Mitchell listed as potential targets for contenders.

At 1-5, that was understandable. With the Ravens now winning and favored to take their division, not so much. Given general manager Eric DeCosta’s track record, it seems more likely they’ll trade for a mid-tier pass rusher than send a key player packing.

Some fans wanted them to move Andrews in the offseason coming off his fumble and drop against the Bills in the playoffs. He hasn’t played his best football this season (he hadn’t caught a touchdown pass in six of the Ravens’ first seven games), but he reminded us with two scores Thursday that he remains an essential red-zone option for Jackson. Flip him for a fifth- or sixth-round pick? That would make sense only if the Ravens were waving the white flag, which they’re clearly not.

The Ravens also got their other standout tight end, Isaiah Likely, going with three catches for 60 yards. He had been a ghost since returning from a foot fracture, but his breakout game, combined with Andrews’ standout performance, reminded us that the Ravens were supposed to have the best tight end room in the league. It’s hard to imagine Andrews and Likely, two of Jackson’s favorite targets, won’t be more central to the Ravens’ offense in the second half of the season than they have been in the first.