Baltimore Beatdown
The first-round cornerback battled another top pick while the fourth-round wideout made the most of his first catch.
The Baltimore Ravens returned from their bye refreshed and notched a dominant bounce-back over the New York Giants 35-14 on Sunday and got significant contributions from several members of their 2024 rookie class. Their first two selections continued to stand out while two of their Day 3 picks recorded career milestones impressively.
Of the team’s rookies, only three—outside linebacker Adisa Isaac, center Nick Samac and safety Sanoussi Kane—were inactive. Here is how the rest of Baltimore’s first-year players fared in their latest taste of regular-season NFL action.
For the fifth game in a row, Wiggins played over 60% of the team’s total defensive snaps with a career-high 90 % in his first official start since Week 6. Wiggins logged 60-plus snaps for the third time this season and on some of those occasions, he lined up across from fellow standout first-round rookie and Giants leading receiver, Malik Nabers. In what was billed as one of his toughest tests coming into the game, Wiggins passed with flying colors, holding Nabers without a catch on two targets, both of which came on back-to-back plays in the red zone near the goal line. On the first didn’t even give him a chance to catch the ball going out of bounds and on the second, he dislodged the ball on a back-shoulder fade before Nabers could establish control and get both feet down inbounds.
According to Next Gen Stats, Wiggins’ catch rate allowed of just 43.6% is the lowest in the league among cornerbacks who have been targeted a minimum of 50 times this season, an incredible mark for a player still learning the tricks of the trade at the professional level and is just scratching the surface of his talent. While he put the clamps on Nabers, his outing on Sunday wasn’t without blemish. Wiggins was called for a 24-yard defensive pass interference in the fourth quarter that aided the Giants’ second penalty-fueled scoring drive of the game.
“There’s a lot of detail to the position,” head coach John Harbaugh said Monday. “He’s making progress across the board with that, and yet he knows he has a whole career’s worth of improvement in front of him still, but he’s doing a good job. He’s made a lot of progress, [and] he’s doing well.”
The second-rounder continued his upward trajectory coming off the bye with another very impressive outing in which he was one of just five rookie offensive linemen who didn’t allow a single pressure in Week 15. Rosengarten was excellent in pass protection, showing variation in his pass sets and playing with more confidence and power in the run game as the Ravens racked 445 yards of total offense which included 170 yards on the ground with him helping pave the way.
Rosengarten was one of just two offensive linemen on the team to play...
