Chris Johnson rolled his way to a big play, Joe Flacco couldn’t quite respond with one of his own.
And the Arizona Cardinals escaped with a 26-18 victory over the luckless Baltimore Ravens on Monday night in Glendale, Arizona.
Johnson rushed for 122 yards, 62 on a play where he rolled over the belly of a big defender and kept on running to set up a field goal.
Baltimore (1-6) drove to the 4 in the final seconds before Tony Jefferson’s interception deep in the end zone clinched the victory for NFC West-leading Arizona (5-2).
“A lot of things happened during the game,” Cardinals coach Bruce Arians said. “Good, bad and one ugly one, but we finished and made a great play at the end.”
Arizona led 26-10 before Asa Jackson’s blocked a punt to set up Flacco’s 1-yard touchdown pass to Kyle Juszczyk. The 2-point conversion pass to Nick Boyle made it an eight-point game with 4:26 to play.
Baltimore got the ball back, and Flacco quickly moved the team downfield before the final ill-fated throw.
“The punt block and all of a sudden you let them in,” Arizona’s Carson Palmer said, “but that’s what you want on ‘Monday Night Football.’ We made it a game at the end.”
The eight-point loss was the most one-sided of the season for the Ravens.
Johnson also ran 26 yards for a touchdown. He topped 100 yards for the third time this season and didn’t even play in the fourth quarter.
Texans: Running back Arian Foster is out for the season with an Achilles tendon injury, a significant blow for a team that was just blown out for the second time this season.
Coach Bill O’Brien said he expects Foster to miss the rest of the season but didn’t elaborate on the injury to Foster’s right leg.
Foster was injured without being hit late in the Texans 44-26 loss to Miami on Sunday. He was in motion when he fell to the ground at the beginning of a play.
Lions: Detroit fired offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi and line coaches Jeremiah Washburn and Terry Heffernan, a day after the team dropped another game in a listless performance against the Minnesota Vikings. The Lions announced the moves shortly before they were supposed to depart for London, where they’ll play next weekend against the Kansas City Chiefs.
“It’s not a good day. It’s a tough day,” coach Jim Caldwell said.
Quarterbacks coach Jim Bob Cooter is taking over as offensive coordinator, and tight ends coach Ron Prince will now coach the offensive line. Assistant special teams coach Devin Fitzsimmons will work with tight ends.
Steelers: All signs point to quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s return to Pittsburgh’s lineup for an AFC North home game Sunday against unbeaten Cincinnati. Nothing has been made official, but Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said the two-time Super Bowl winner, who missed four games with a sprained knee and bruised leg, was ”close” to starting the team’s 23-13 loss at Kansas City.
Browns: Quarterback Josh McCown, who injured his right shoulder during the fourth quarter of Sunday’s 24-6 loss to St. Louis, will start over Johnny Manziel if the 36-year-old is healthy enough to play, coach Mike Pettine said.
“If our starting quarterback is physically able to play, will we play him?” Pettine said sarcastically when asked of his plans against Arizona. “Yes.”
Deflategate: NFL lawyers told a federal appeals court in Manhattan that it was “unfathomable” that a judge could decide to lift New England quarterback Tom Brady’s four-game suspension in the “Deflategate” controversy. The league asked the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the lower-court judge and reinstate the penalty that would have kept Brady out of the first four games of this season.
Bills-Jaguars streaming: The NFL says more than 460 million total minutes of video were consumed for Sunday’s game between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars. The league experimented with distributing coverage primarily through streaming for the first time for the matchup from London through a partnership with Yahoo. More than 15.2 million unique viewers watched for any length of time, the NFL said Monday.
