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The AFC Wild Card game has seen the confrontation between the Miami Dolphins that hosted the Baltimore Ravens at Dolphin Stadium.
This game showed one thing, defense wins championships!

This was a demonstration of the Ravens' defense and especially Ed Reed who picked off Pennington twice.
But that's not all, Chad Pennington (photo right #10) was intercepted 4 times in the entire game. Miami had 5 turnovers in this ball game, then you can easily estimate how impressive was the birds' defense because in the regular season, the Dolphins commited only 13 turnovers!
Pennington completes 25 of 38 for 252 yds,1 touchdown but 4 interceptions was hurried very often.
My point is Batimore's defense did the job by containing the Dolphins to only 9 points.
Ed Reed (photo below #20) reads pass routes like nobody else. He smells quarterbacks, he's just great.
He returned one of his 2 interceptions on a 64-yard distance to score Baltimore's first touchdown. He picked off 6 passes in the last 3 games.
Are you kidding me?!

Miami's players couldn't do anything, even with their "wildcat offense".
No Dolphins' running back gained more than 20 yards, Ronnie Brown 19, Ricky Williams 17 and Lousaka Polite 15.

Miami's passing game did not work really better due to the intense pressure the Ravens' D brought to Chad Pennington.
With this huge defense, Joe Flacco didn't need to overthrow. He completed 9 of his 23 pass attempts for a total gain of 135 yards, that's him who ran to score the second touchdown because he did not find any wide open target to throw to in the endzone.
And that's why his teammates like him, he doesn't force any throw.
Le'Ron McClain carried the ball 19 times for a gain of 75 yards, he also scored 1 touchdown.
Willis McGahee who was the primary halfback is now the second option of the Ravens' ground attack.
He carried the ball only 7 times but for a really decent gain of 62 yards. He was the one who was supposed to replace Jamal Lewis, gone to the Cleveland Browns, but he didn't have the success everybody expected.

Finally Baltimore won this AFC Wild Card game over the Dolphins on a 27-9 score. And all NFL teams have to watch out because the Ravens are maybe not very dangerous during the regular season, but on one game everything can happen so...

27-9

Jan.5,2009

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