John Harbaugh says fourth decision was easy for the Ravens, using Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes as a benchmark

John Harbaugh already knew the answer to his question when the Baltimore Ravens had the opportunity to oust the Kansas City Chiefs. Fourth and 1 at their 43, up 36-35 with 1:05 to go and the Chiefs excluding timeouts, with Lamar Jackson at quarterback.

No fuss, is it?

“I bet they’re going too, with Patrick Mahomes. How about this?” Harbaugh said with a laugh after the Ravens’ thrilling victory over the Chiefs. “There was (no doubt). But I think I wanted to be sure of myself, you know? I knew he was going to say yes, but we were going then.”

If the Ravens had failed to convert the fourth and the 1, the Chiefs would have had plenty of time to throw the winning basket with Patrick Mahomes at quarterback. Kansas City only needed one completion to get into Harrison Butker’s lineup and could have cut the clock down to seconds for the kicker to hit the winner of the game.

Harbaugh and Jackson did not leave this to chance. Neither of them wanted Patrick Mahomes to get the ball back.

“In my mind, I was like, ‘Damn, we should go, because we’re close,'” Jackson said. “But then, when I was on the sidelines, the coach [Harbaugh] was like, ‘Do you want to go?’ I was like, ‘Hell yeah! Without a doubt.’ And we did [go for it, and] we got out successfully. ”

The fourth down conversion capped a great performance for Jackson, who finished 18 of 26 for 239 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions, while rushing 16 times for 107 yards and two scores. Jackson recorded his ninth 100-yard running game, one behind Michael Vick for the most by a quarterback in NFL history. The Ravens improved to 9-0 as Jackson rushed for 100 yards.

Jackson enjoyed his second career game with a 100-yard rush and two touchdowns, joining Billy Kilmer (1961) as the only quarterback to have multiple such games (since 1950). The Ravens quarterback also ticked another box, beating the Chiefs.

“I’ll tell you, I’m just happy. I’m happy for him,” Harbaugh said. “We love each other. We all support each other. We want to win every game. So whatever that means, it means. It means something different to all of us. It means something.

“I can tell you what that means to me. It means a lot to me. But you know what? We have Lions in seven days, and we’ll be thinking about it real soon.”