Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh arrived for work in a good mood Tuesday morning following the San Francisco 49ers’ pivotal victory Monday night over the Pittsburgh Steelers.

And with good reason: The Ravens moved back into first place with the Steelers’ loss.

“He was coming in: ‘Did you see that game? Who won?’” quarterback Joe Flacco said of Harbaugh. “OK, we all know who won the game. We know you’re way more excited now than you were two days ago. You could definitely tell he was excited, and we should be. We’re obviously in a better position because of what happened.”

The 49ers’ win over the Ravens’ AFC North rival puts the Ravens (10-4) back in first place in the AFC North and seeded second in the playoff standings.

The Ravens’ embarrassing 34-14 loss to the San Diego Chargers on Sunday night knocked them out of first place in the division for a day, and they fell from the top-seeded team in the AFC to fifth. Now, they’re ranked second in the playoff seeding behind the New England Patriots.

The Ravens own the tiebreaker edge over the Steelers (10-4) after sweeping their annual series earlier this season. They are now in position to earn a first-round bye and a home playoff game provided they win their final two regular-season games against the Cleveland Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals.

“Man, it was a fun to watch,” Harbaugh said. “It was pretty cool. The fact that if we win both games now, we will win the division, that means a lot. That’s really meaningful. It’s a tough league, and we have to win every week.”

However, the Ravens would have preferred to not require assistance.

“It’s a gift, but we wish we didn’t have to get it that way,” outside linebacker Terrell Suggs said.

The Ravens are 7-0 at home heading into Saturday’s game at M&T Bank Stadium against the Browns.

And they’re undefeated in their previous games against Cleveland and Cincinnati this season.

“We’ve just got to take care of business,” Suggs said. “We’re playing two teams that know us very well, two division foes, so it’s going to be interesting. We’ve got to get back to doing what we do best, and that’s playing Ravens football.”

The Baltimore Ravens are in a huge battle for playoff positioning. The Ravens are currently 10-3 and have the same record as three other teams in the AFC. Baltimore is in position to earn home field advantage throughout the playoffs if they can finish the season strong. Baltimore should be able to do that based on their remaining schedule. To make things easier, it looks like they will be getting one of their top players back. Ray Lewis is slated to return in Week 15 against the San Diego Chargers.

Lewis has missed four straight games with a toe injury. The injury wasn’t originally supposed to keep Lewis out this long. In fact, he was holding out hope to play soon after the injury. But it turned out to be more serious than originally thought. Now, Lewis is ready to return to practice and the Ravens expect him to be in the lineup. He should be fully healed and there shouldn’t be any lingering effects. With the four weeks of rest, Lewis should be healed and ready to play in this game. He doesn’t have much injury history either and that should work to this advantage in terms of playing his normal style of football.

The Ravens played well without Lewis. They won all four games he missed and that has put the team in the position they are in right now. But this is still a better football team with Lewis in the lineup. He gives them a truly elite presence in the middle on defense. There is a reason he is regarded as one of the greatest middle linebackers in NFL history. The Ravens were fortunate to win without him. Now, they will be much better for the final three games.

After the game against the Chargers, the Ravens close with games against the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals. None of those games are overly easy, but Baltimore is better than all three opponents. With a healthy lineup, the Ravens should have no problem winning out and securing the best record in the AFC. That would be a huge step forward for a team that has been forced to play on the road over the last few years in the playoffs. The return of Lewis gives them the boost they need.

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OWINGS MILLS – The weather is cold, the ground is hard and unforgiving and harsh elements tend to fall from the sky.

It’s December, the time of year when football teams with brute strength, unrelenting will and a capacity to run the football and play stingy defense tend to thrive.

The Baltimore Ravens are one of those teams as they demonstrated again during a 24-10 road victory Sunday where they stomped all over the last-place Cleveland Browns as running back Ray Rice rushed for a career-high 204 yards and the defense sacked quarterback Colt McCoy three times.

“That’s December football,” center Matt Birk said. “You have to run the ball well in order to win and we were able to do that. It was that kind of game.”

Since coach John Harbaugh’s arrival in 2008, the Ravens have won 9 of 13 December games.

And the Ravens have been the kings of the later portion of the season with a 24-9 combined mark in November, December and January for a .727 winning percentage that ranks above the New England Patriots (.719) and the Atlanta Falcons and Indianapolis Colts, who both own a .697 mark.

With a physical running game, the third-ranked defense overall and the second-best run defense in the NFL, the Ravens are well-suited for this time of year.

“I think we have always just had good teams,” Harbaugh said. “We play good defense. We have been able to run the ball. We’d believe that everything we do is built for December. We are trying to be our best in December and January.

“The whole program is organized that way. I think our players understand that, and they begin to think that way. So, we try to improve throughout the course of the season in every area and be at our best this time of year.”

By design on a sloppy field on a cold, rainy day, the Ravens set a franchise record with 55 rushing attempts against the Browns.

As the Ravens (9-3) compete with the Patriots, Pittsburgh Steelers and the Houston Texans for the top seed in the AFC, their late-season push has them on track for home-field playoff advantage provided they win their remaining four games.

“We’ve always played good December football,” Rice said. “We’re a December, January team. It would be great to play a playoff game in Baltimore. We just got to win football games from here on out. It’s clear-cut.”

While the Ravens dominated on offense with the running game, they shut down Browns star running back Peyton Hillis.

He rushed for only 45 yards on a dozen carries with a long run of nine yards.

“We believe in running the football, absolutely,” Harbaugh said. “We think you have to run the ball and stop the run to be the kind of physical football team we want to be.”

The Ravens only had quarterback Joe Flacco attempt 23 passes against the Seahawks.

After getting pass-happy and abandoning the run in losses to the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Seattle Seahawks, the Ravens are tilted more toward running the football now.

For the season, the Ravens have thrown 435 passes for 2,762 yards and 339 runs for 1,378 yards.

The Ravens aren’t necessarily done throwing the ball, though.

“The teams that are scoring the most points are the teams that are throwing the ball the most,” Harbaugh said. “But our objective here is not to score the most points, per se. It’s to score more points than our opponent on any given Sunday. That’s why we’re really not willing to sit here and say that we are a run-first outfit.”

The Ravens have never earned the top seed before in franchise history.

Due to their sweep of the Steelers, a win over the Texans an edge in common opponents over the Patriots, the Ravens are primed for a first-round bye and home playoff games throughout the postseason should they beat the winless Colts, the San Diego Chargers, Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals.

“In the month of December, it’s all about positioning ourselves for a playoff run,” fullback Vonta Leach said. “That’s all we talked about. We didn’t talk about letdowns. Obviously, we have had letdowns in the past after we came off big wins. We just know that it’s December and we wanted to come in here and establish ourselves and continue our winning streak.”

NOTE: Rice has been nominated for FedExGround NFL Player of the Week.

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Aaron Wilson is Ravens beat reporter for the Carroll County Times: sports@carrollcountytimes.com.

Matt Vensel of The Baltimore Sun wonders if the Ravens should fear the Cleveland Browns on Sunday.

His reason?

The Ravens have a habit of losing to lesser opponents following emotional wins.

Vensel writes how the Browns have a chance to pull off the upset because the defense is the biggest reason why they have been able to hang around in tight games against teams like the Oakland Raiders, Cincinnati Bengals and San Francisco 49ers.

One bright spot for the Browns, who have lost four of their past five games, was the return of “Madden” cover boy Peyton Hillis on Sunday. Hillis had been sidelined for a month and a half with a hamstring injury. In his first game back, he rushed for 65 yards on 19 carries in a 23-20 loss to the Bengals.

Vensel writes how Hillis’ running style could present a challenge for the Ravens defense if linebackers Ray Lewis and Dannell Ellerbe remain on the sidelines this weekend.

 

More Baltimore Ravens

The Ravens hope to improve offensive line play (Baltimore Sun).

Lee Evans will see more action for the Ravens (Baltimore Sun).

The Ravens need to be patient with Ray Lewis (Baltimore Sun).

Baltimore’s three losses this season followed significant victories and occurred on the road against sub-.500 teams. The Ravens are determined to break the trend on Sunday at Cleveland (4-7).

“It doesn’t matter how many wins and losses they have,” linebacker Jarret Johnson said Monday. “They always play good against us. It’s going to be a dogfight, so we better bring it.”

Coach John Harbaugh believes the problem in Baltimore’s three defeats wasn’t so much mental as it was physical.

“What we didn’t do is, we didn’t play very well,” he said. “We certainly acknowledge that those three losses coming off big wins were not good performances. They’re there. They’re on the record. Now we face a similar challenge this week, but a tougher challenge, because now we’ve got to go play a team in our division.”

The AFC North is jammed at the top. The Ravens are tied with Pittsburgh for the lead and the Bengals are one game back.

“We expect it to be a tight race. We just want to uphold our end of the bargain,” Harbaugh said. “What you have to concern yourself with is winning. That’s the bottom line for us. We can’t be concerned what the others teams do. We have to be concerned with what we do.”

The Ravens couldn’t have asked for a better scenario entering the final five weeks of the season. Before facing Cleveland twice, winless Indianapolis and struggling San Diego, they received a lengthy break following a rugged 16-6 conquest of the 49ers.

“That was big to have,” defensive tackle Terrence Cody said. “We have a lot of guys banged up — nicks and bruises — and it was big to have (time off) at this point in the season.”

It’s been more than two weeks since middle linebacker Ray Lewis (sore right toe) has played a game, and no one on the team needed the break more than Baltimore’s 36-year-old defensive leader.

“The rest part is big,” Harbaugh said. “I’m hopeful. I think he’s got a real good chance” to play Sunday. “We’ll just have to see how it goes.”

Fortunately for the Ravens, they have flourished without Lewis. The defense had its ups and downs in a 31-24 win over the Bengals, but Baltimore had nine sacks and yielded only two field goals in turning back San Francisco.

“They were two huge wins in five days. You can’t say enough about it,” Johnson said. “It’s a tough thing to do. We played a really good game against the Niners, but we’re moving on. We need to get win No.9 and we’re going to try and get it this week.”

Much will be written and said in the next few days about Baltimore’s tendency to stumble against sub-par teams. As far as defensive tackle Cory Redding is concerned, the toughest team the Ravens will face down the stretch will be … the Ravens.

“It’s not the Indianapolis Colts, it’s not the Cincinnati Bengals or anybody else that’s left on our schedule. It’s us,” Redding said. “As long as we continue to beat the negatives, beat the things that can hinder us from getting a win and overcome the mistakes we make on Sunday, we’ll get those victories. But we’ve got to beat the things that can hurt us, and that’s us. As long as we make our plays and not make any careless mistakes, then we’ll be great.”

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