Mark Andrews had the kind of night that lingers - the drops, the fumble, the missed chances in a 30-23 overtime win over the Atlanta Falcons. But one rough Sunday night doesn’t erase what the Ravens still have in him.
The early damage came fast. Andrews let a potential touchdown slip away in the first quarter, then put the ball on the ground a few minutes later, and the Falcons turned that into a scoop-and-score.
Later, he couldn’t finish a 2-point conversion try in the third quarter, and a fourth-quarter third-down target was knocked away at the catch point. Sports Info Solutions said his six targets carried minus-5.7 expected points added overall, one of the lowest figures of his career, not even counting the lost value of the 2-point attempt.
Andrews didn’t dodge it afterward.
“I have to be better,” he said.
“Obviously, not the type of product that I would like to put out there,” he added. “You’ve got to be able to make plays in certain situations.
It’s all about details. And for me, I have to be better in those types of situations.”
That kind of performance naturally sharpened the focus around Andrews, a tight end who is being paid like one of the best at his position and came dangerously close to turning a road win into a mess. Isaiah Likely’s strong start under former coach John Harbaugh, and at a comparable cost, only added to the conversation.
Still, the bad night came wrapped around a season that has been mostly encouraging for Andrews in his first year in coordinator Declan Doyle’s offense. His role has changed since his All-Pro peak, but he’s still producing.
Through Week 6, Andrews has 22 catches for 177 yards and one touchdown. That puts him on pace for 75 receptions, 601 yards and three scores, a line that could even look modest given that he has played nearly a third of the season without Lamar Jackson.
Per Pro Football Focus, Andrews is averaging 1.55 yards per route run, which ranks 15th among the 30 tight ends with at least 15 targets. For comparison, his least productive season came in 2025, when he had 48 catches for 422 yards and five touchdowns and averaged 1.23 yards per route run.
The passing game around him has shifted, too. With Zay Flowers rising and Rashod Bateman back in form, Andrews has been used less as a downfield weapon.
In 2024, when he finished with 673 receiving yards and 11 touchdowns, 23.8% of his receiving snaps featured conventional vertical routes - corners, posts, fades, flies and deep crosses - according to SIS. He caught 13 of 19 such targets for 203 yards and five touchdowns.
This year, that number has dropped to 14.2%, and he has been targeted on just one of those routes. Jackson also missed him badly on a deep cross early in the Ravens’ Week 5 win over the Tennessee Titans, when Andrews was wide open in the back of the end zone.
There’s no denying that Andrews has lost some of the athletic juice that once made him a real outside-receiver threat. That happens.
But at 31, he still wins routes in plenty of ways. Against man coverage, his size and physicality can overwhelm most safeties, and he can run by linebackers.
Against zone, he still sees openings quickly. One of his two first-down catches in overtime against Atlanta came when he spotted a blitz, adjusted his route on third-and-3 and gave Tyler Huntley a clean outlet for a 10-yard gain.
His career-low 8 yards per catch is mostly a product of where he’s being used. More than half of his 106 routes this season - 60.4% - have been curls, drags, flats and outs, the kind of routes that usually don’t create explosives. Two years ago, those routes made up 47.8% of his route mix.
The ball security and finishing issues have been real. According to PFF, his 12% drop rate is third-worst among the 30 qualifying tight ends.
But there’s been hidden value in the season, too. Andrews has four catches in five contested-catch chances, as PFF defines them, and his work as a run blocker has helped keep the Ravens’ multiple-tight-end looks functional in Doyle’s offense.
ESPN’s tracking-based receiver metric has also kept him in the mix at the top of the position. Andrews enters Sunday’s game against the Cleveland Browns tied with Likely for the NFL lead among tight ends in “receiver score.” Brock Bowers of the Las Vegas Raiders is third, and Arizona Cardinals tight end Trey McBride is sixth.
Back in February, Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta said Andrews “expect[s] him to get back to himself and be the player that he can be.” A fourth Pro Bowl nod, and his first since 2022, feels like a long shot this early. But with Durham Smythe out for the year with an Achilles tendon injury and rookies Matt Hibner and Josh Cuevas still settling in, the Ravens are going to need more of the version of Andrews that showed up late Sunday.
Coach Jesse Minter put it plainly Monday.
“I think Mark would be the first to tell you that he did not start off the game the way that he wanted to,” Minter said. “I know he would like to have a couple of those back.
Obviously, he would like to have the fumble back. But to Mark’s credit - and this is just like the type of team that we are trying to be - he made a couple really huge plays for us late in the game.”
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