The guy who made the biggest play on Monday night was a 35-year-old pass rusher who many probably thought was done a few years ago.
The Baltimore Ravens are lucky Terrell Suggs, in his 15th season, has aged extremely well. With the Ravens offense struggling again and the team clinging to a 20-16 lead in the final few minutes, Suggs exploded off the edge and strip-sacked Houston Texans quarterback Tom Savage, in what seemed like the blink of an eye. The Ravens recovered with 4:44 left, and that was the most important play in an important Baltimore 23-16 win. Savage threw an interception later to seal it. The Ravens are 6-5 and right in the AFC wild-card mix.
Suggs missed almost all of the 2015 season with a torn Achilles. That’s a tough injury for any pass rusher to come back from, much less one who is 33 years old. He indicated at the end of that season that he’d come back for 2016 because he didn’t want his career to end on an injury like that.
Suggs’ strip-sack was his fourth this season. He had two sacks in the game, bringing his season total to nine-and-a-half. It was his 26th career multi-sack game. He has 124 sacks in his career, is a six-time Pro Bowler and a former NFL defensive player of the year. While former teammates Ray Lewis and Ed Reed sometimes overshadowed Suggs on those great Ravens defenses, Suggs is in the same class. Each of those players deserves to be in the Hall of Fame someday.
The Ravens are getting by thanks mainly to their defense this season, and Suggs is one of the key parts of it. The offense has been average at best, but on Monday they were a little bit above average against a Texans’ defense led by Jadeveon Clowney.
Suggs has 17.5 sacks the past two seasons, at age 34 and 35 after what could have been a career-ending Achilles injury. It’s incredible that Suggs has been able to bounce back from the Achilles injury a few years back, and he’s now a leader on another top defense in Baltimore.
