NEW YORK — No lead is safe in the NFL this year, especially if a bad team is holding it against a good team. Sunday’s rally by the Ravens (the good team) to beat the Cardinals (the bad team) is proof.
It also was the fifth time this season someone has come back from 20 or more points down to win. That’s already a league record with nine weeks remaining on the schedule.
The Ravens were well aware that big comebacks have been almost routine in 2011, so even while trailing 24-3 they never lost faith.
Nor should they have considering the Cardinals have one of the worst pass defenses in football and are one of the leaders in turning over the ball.
“You’re going to keep fighting,” coach John Harbaugh said of the Ravens’ attitude at halftime. “If you watch around this league, you can come back and win.”
Just as the Lions did against the Cowboys and the 49ers did at Philadelphia on Oct. 2. Detroit trailed by 24 points in the third quarter and San Francisco was behind by 20 in the second half against the Eagles.
And just as the Bills stormed back from 21-0 behind at home to beat New England the previous Sunday, the same day the Lions staged their first humongous rally, overcoming a 20-0 halftime hole at Minnesota.
In nearly every case, the team overcoming the lead was playing an opponent with a weak or struggling defense. Plus, the rallying side was comfortable with a no-huddle offense.
That was especially noticeable in Baltimore on Sunday.
“I had seen a couple of teams come back from pretty big deficits this year, and it was our day to do that,” quarterback Joe Flacco said.
Added Anquan Boldin, who victimized a porous secondary for seven catches and 145 yards against his former team:
“We felt like they had young corners, and that’s one of the things we felt like we could take advantage of, and we did that today. We know we played poor as an offense in the first half, and we felt like this team wasn’t better than us, point-blank. Even though they were up 24-3, we felt like we were able to go out and put drives together and put points on the board.”
The penchant for coming back from big deficits has much to do with the rules favoring offenses nowadays. Teams are unafraid to throw — even those with untested quarterbacks — because of how the game has opened up. There are so many restrictions on defensive backs and linebackers in pass coverage that the old Woody Hayes standby that when you throw, three things can happen and two of them are bad no longer applies.
Yes, there can be incompletions and interceptions, but there also can be defensive holdings and interferences and illegal hits, all of them being enforced more heavily than ever.
There’s also the mindset on the leading team’s side. Instead of continuing to do what helped build the big lead, those teams tend to back off a bit, get conservative to protect the lead.
Bang! The lead is gone.
“At halftime, we all talked about it,” Cardinals quarterback Kevin Kolb said. “We knew what was coming in the second half. You can’t let down in this league, especially against a team like this. It wasn’t a lack of focus, it was a lack of execution.
“This league is all about trying to find a way to win. I give them credit for the great comeback they had. In the second half they brought a little bit more pressure.”
Exactly. The trailing team gets extra aggressive and, too often, the team in front gets a tad comfortable.
Oddly, the level of experience doesn’t seem to matter in this year’s comeback scenarios. None of the club’s that lost, not even the Cardinals, is callow. New England, Minnesota, Philadelphia and Dallas all are filled with veterans, many of them solid players.
Yet they succumbed.
“When you’re playing this game, you have to play loose, no matter what,” Boldin said. “No matter how you look, you still have to play loose. Whenever you are tight, guys just try to make things happen and end up making mistakes, and that’s not how you play football.”
At least not winning football.
NFL NOTEBOOK: Bill Polian plans to keep Peyton Manning on the active roster all season — even if it means he’ll only be back to practice. While the Colts’ vice chairman isn’t completely ruling out a late cameo appearance by the four-time MVP this season, he’s hoping Manning will be able to throw at the team’s complex before the season ends. “I think it’s important for him to feel like, ‘Hey I’m back, I can do the things that are necessary to say I can play like I want to,’” Polian said Monday night on his weekly radio show. “The bottom line is he needs to feel good about being back and doing the things he wants to do.” Manning has not practiced with his teammates much since January’s playoff loss to the New York Jets. He worked out with some Colts players during the lockout before scaling things back after having May neck surgery to repair a damaged nerve that caused weakness in his throwing arm. Just about everyone, including Manning, thought he’d be ready by training camp. When the recovery didn’t go as planned, Manning opened the season on the physically unable to perform list, missed all four preseason games and wound up having another procedure, an anterior spinal fusion to clear up the problem just three days before the season opener at Houston. The fusion normally involves making an incision in the front of the neck, removing soft disk tissue between the vertebrae and fusing the bones together with a graft. It was Manning’s third neck surgery in 19 months, and doctors who were not involved in the procedure said Manning wouldn’t be cleared to practice for at least two months.