Ben­gals quar­ter­back Joe Bur­row, wear­ing a San­ta hat and a Sponge­bob sweater, was all smiles after dis­man­tling the Ravens sec­ondary in a his­toric per­for­mance on Sun­day after­noon in Cincinnati.

With a sec­ondary built most­ly on prac­tice squad call-ups, the Ravens wilt­ed against Burrow’s Ben­gals, allow­ing 575 total yards, the most allowed in a game in fran­chise his­to­ry, accord­ing to Pro Foot­ball Ref­er­ence. They gave up 548 yards to quar­ter­back John Elway and the Den­ver Bron­cos in 1996, their first year as a franchise.

“At the end of the day, we are in the NFL, we got to get it right,” said Ravens safe­ty Tony Jef­fer­son II, who was called up as a COVID-19 replace­ment two weeks ago. “No excus­es. Obvi­ous­ly, it’s not ide­al when you don’t have, every­body that’s been gelled togeth­er and have that com­mu­ni­ca­tion. When we go out there, not none of that real­ly mat­ters. We have to go out there and exe­cute the game plan.”

The Ravens were dealt a sig­nif­i­cant blow ear­ly in the game when cor­ner­back Antho­ny Averett, who has start­ed 14 games this sea­son, was cart­ed off the field with 4:41 left in the first quar­ter with a rib injury and did not return. Cor­ner­back Daryl Wor­ley, who was signed to the prac­tice squad Tues­day, replaced him and strug­gled along­side cor­ner­back Kevon Seymour.

As a result, Bur­row, the sec­ond-year sig­nal-caller who has shown no ill effects of the major knee surgery he under­went last year, rarely missed Sun­day and com­plet­ed 37 of 46 pass­es for a fran­chise-record 525 yards and four touch­downs. It’s the fourth most pass­ing yards in a sin­gle game in NFL his­to­ry, trail­ing only the Rams’ Norm Van Brock­lin (554 in 1951), the Tex­ans’ Matt Schaub (527 in 2012) and the Oil­ers’ War­ren Moon (527 in 1990).

The first over­all pick in the 2020 NFL draft, Bur­row became the first quar­ter­back with mul­ti­ple 400-yard pass­ing games in a sea­son against the same team. He’s also the third quar­ter­back in league his­to­ry to throw for 525-plus yards and four-plus touch­downs in a game, and it comes after Bur­row threw for 416 yards and three touch­downs against Bal­ti­more in Week 7.

Most of his dam­age was done throw­ing to wide receivers Tee Hig­gins, Ja’Marr Chase and Tyler Boyd, who com­bined for 404 yards and three touch­downs on 22 receptions.

Hig­gins was his top tar­get, catch­ing 12 pass­es for 194 yards and two touch­downs. Chase, recent­ly a Pro Bowl selec­tion as a rook­ie, had 125 yards on sev­en catch­es. Each have more than 1,000 receiv­ing yards, mak­ing the Ben­gals the first team in league his­to­ry with mul­ti­ple play­ers younger than 23 years old with 1,000 in a season.

Bur­row and Hig­gins test­ed the Ravens’ sec­ondary dur­ing the final min­utes of the first half. With the Ben­gals fac­ing a third-and-16, Bur­row threw up a deep ball to Hig­gins, who was dou­ble-cov­ered but nonethe­less hauled it in for a 52-yard catch at the Ravens’ 3‑yard line.

With the game already decid­ed late in the fourth quar­ter and the Ben­gals ahead by 20, Burrow’s final throw went for 52 yards to run­ning back Joe Mixon. Ravens coach John Har­baugh didn’t appear to have a prob­lem with the play call, say­ing, “They call their plays, we call our plays.”

With two games left in the reg­u­lar sea­son and the Ravens’ play­off hopes hov­er­ing around 35%, accord­ing to FiveThirtyEight’s pro­jec­tions, they are approach­ing the final stretch with a sense of urgency and not wor­ry­ing about the injuries they have endured.

“I think it’s just a lit­tle bit of adver­si­ty,” safe­ty Chuck Clark said. “You’ve got to deal with it some­times. Not everything’s going to go how you want it to, but you’ve just got to keep mov­ing for­ward per­son­al­ly and as a team.”

Extra points

• Ravens rook­ie receiv­er Rashod Bate­man caught his first career touch­down in the first quar­ter. The No. 27 over­all pick in the NFL draft caught a 4‑yard pass from quar­ter­back Josh John­son to give the Ravens a 7–3 lead with six min­utes left in the first quar­ter. Bate­man said the foot­ball is going to his mom, call­ing it “a good Christ­mas gift.”
• Ravens tight end Mark Andrews fin­ished with eight catch­es for 125 yards, becom­ing the first tight end this sea­son with three straight 100-yard games. Andrews is 15 yards away from set­ting the Ravens’ sin­gle-sea­son receiv­ing yards record, which was set by for­mer wide receiv­er Michael Jack­son (1,201) in 1996. Andrews cur­rent­ly has 1,187 yards.