You can call the Baltimore Ravens offensive line Sarah Connor or Kyle Reese because they just handled the Terminator. In case you missed it, Cleveland Browns franchise defensive end Myles Garrett showed up to the game on Sunday dressed as The Terminator in honor of the coming Halloween holiday.
Garrett typically wins Halloween and set the bar for costumes even higher this year. According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Garrett’s Terminator mask collaborated with Mike Castro of Madness FX, a former Hollywood costume design team.
But Garrett wasn’t precisely a nightmarishly fearsome machine on the field today, as he recorded only one tackle and just one QB hit. To his credit, his team won, and they pulled off a major upset, but Garrett was anything but dominant on Sunday.
While he did sporadically generate some pressure on Lamar Jackson, the reigning MVP was pretty much consistently able to elude him, and thus, Garrett didn’t make much of an impact on the stat sheet.
This is the polar opposite of what happened the last time the Ravens faced one of the league’s top pass rushers in their week two loss to Maxx Crosby and the Las Vegas Raiders.
On that day, Crosby stuffed the stat sheet, registering two sacks, four tackles for a loss, five solo tackles, one pass breakup, and two QB hits.
Crosby is having a better season than Garrett so far, and he may be surpassing him as the league’s top pass-rushing threat.
In a recent exclusive interview, the Raiders DE explained the secret to his success.
“Consistency is everything,” Crosby said in a one-on-one with RG. “It’s consistency at work. A lot of people can do it for a couple weeks, a couple months, but the ones that do it every day – no matter what part of the year it is – when you know most guys are on vacation, having drinks at the beach, doing their thing.
“It’s the guys that are putting in the work 24/7 and that’s who I am. That’s what I feel separates myself.”
It’s only natural to compare Garrett, who has led the league in sacks the past three seasons, to Crosby, who is third in this category, over that span. (Nick Bosa is second). And when you look at how the Ravens OL performed against Garrett today versus what happened earlier this season against Crosby, it’s a great litmus test.
It’s pretty apparent that some progress has been achieved in a position group with new starters at three of the five positions.
If you flash back to just after the season opener, when the O-line came under heavy criticism for what many Ravens fans felt was an underwhelming performance at Kansas City, Ravens head coach John Harbaugh preached patience with this retooled unit.
He said back on Sept. 9: “I think by the end of the season, you’re going to feel real good about our offensive line.”
Maybe his words are indeed proving prophetic now.