Despite a ragged performance by their league-best offense, the Ravens clinched a repeat AFC North crown with a 35-10 win against the overmatched Cleveland Browns.

Here are five things we learned from the game:

It was no aesthetic treasure, but the Ravens accomplished what was necessary: How else for this ugly duckling of a game to end than with the Ravens sideline swarming 355-pound nose tackle Michael Pierce after the first interception — yes, interception — of his career? Pierce’s knees-first slide at the end of his rumble to glory looked like it came straight from the imagination of a confused, delighted 10-year-old.

It was a moment of supreme levity to punctuate the Ravens capturing their second consecutive AFC North title and home-field advantage to start the playoffs.

An odor of cigar smoke lingered in the postgame locker room, a reminder of the difficulties they had pushed behind them to rally from two games back in the division with four to play. The Ravens outscored their closing quartet of opponents 135-43.

“We’ve gone through so much,” veteran pass rusher Kyle Van Noy said, alluding to the team’s 0-2 start, the deaths of offensive line coach Joe D’Alessandris and 2012 postseason hero Jacoby Jones, the sobering memories of falling short a year ago.

The Ravens earned their celebration — a “hat and T-shirt game” they called it — even if it came as a result of their wobbliest performance in more than a month.

This team has played gorgeous, fast, fluid offense for much of the regular season. Not so on Saturday against a miserable Cleveland team with as much of its first string on the sideline as in the game.

“We weren’t clean in this game,” coach John Harbaugh said.

The Ravens goofed around a bit at the start, with Lamar Jackson overthrowing Mark Andrews by a half-stride on a potential touchdown and Zay Flowers dropping a pass on third down. They failed to come away with points on a red-zone possession later in the first quarter when the Browns stuffed Andrews on third-and-short and Jackson couldn’t find Derrick Henry on an improvised fourth-down dump-off. They failed again on fourth down late in the second quarter when Browns cornerback Cameron Mitchell knocked the ball from Andrews’ grip at the Cleveland 23-yard line.

The Baltimore offensive line, with Ben Cleveland and Andrew Vorhees filling in for a “really sick” Patrick Mekari, got knocked around much of the evening by a Browns front seven that came to play.

That the Ravens still covered the widest point spread of this NFL season spoke to their explosiveness and to the Browns’ toothlessness.

It takes quite an offense to play sloppily and still roll up 437 yards, but that’s the Ravens’ advantage going into the postseason. With Jackson and Derrick Henry (138 rushing yards against Cleveland to push his season total to 1,921), even their C+ game is formidable.

Pair this yardage machine with a defense that’s now creating turnovers and points and you have a team that can beat any opponent in any setting.

Can they muster something close to their best for another four games and hoist the Lombardi Trophy in New Orleans in February? That’s the standard by which this team will be judged and the issue to which the Ravens had already turned their attention a half hour after dispatching the Browns.

“I’m cool with what’s going on today,” Jackson said. “But my mind is on something else.”

The Ravens’ worst fears were realized when Zay Flowers limped off the field: It was the one sight the Ravens could not bear in a game like this, with the result not in doubt and the playoffs a week away.

They had been remarkably healthy all year. Just one more game, and they’d be set to chase a Super Bowl with their whole team.

Flowers did what he always does on the play in question, juking and fighting for every bit of ground. The problem was that after everyone else got up, he remained on the ground, writhing as he gripped his right knee and shin.

Three days after he made his first Pro Bowl, with his status as Jackson’s most dynamic target secure, Flowers struggled to walk off the field on his own. He went to the blue medical tent and then the locker room, a significant portion of the Ravens’ offensive potency going with him.

Harbaugh said he couldn’t offer much update after the game other than to say the injury is “something he has a chance to be OK with.”

The turnarounds come so quickly at this time of year that even a two-week injury, no big deal in September, could force the Ravens to recalibrate their offense for do-or-die games. Flowers is that important, not just as a downfield target but as the guy who can take a 5-yard flick and turn it into a clutch first down or touchdown.

Rashod Bateman stepped up after his teammate left the game, making defenders miss with quicksilver moves after the catch. Tight end Isaiah Likely, a yards-after-catch monster in his own right, would also be asked to do more if Flowers, the first Pro Bowl wide receiver in franchise history, cannot go.

The Ravens have dubbed themselves a “pick your poison” offense for a reason, but they’d be less deadly without potion No. 4 at Jackson’s disposal. An MRI on Sunday will reveal more, and nervous days await as the team finally confronts the specter of a costly injury.

Take a moment to savor what Lamar Jackson did this season: Think back 30 years, when different rules and different types of quarterbacks governed the NFL. Think how wonderful and absurd this statistical line — 4,172 passing yards, 41 touchdown passes, four interceptions, 915 rushing yards — would have looked on the back of a football card.

Jackson and a few others have bent the game in recent years, creating highlights that would have felt like the work of aliens in 1994 or even 2004.

“I mean, that’s pretty unbelievable,” Harbaugh said after running through his quarterback’s accomplishments. “What else needs to be said? There’s nobody like Lamar Jackson.”

Josh Allen might deny Jackson a third NFL Most Valuable Player Award despite Jackson’s statistical superiority in most categories. That’s irrelevant to the awe other great players feel watching No. 8 on a daily and weekly basis.

“Every game, his will, his fight, he’s after perfection,” Andrews said. “His will to win games and be on point, to be him, to be Lamar, and even elevate that from week to week is truly unbelievable.”

What happens next will play an outsized role in determining how we remember Jackson’s season. But it’s worth setting our playoff obsession aside for a moment to take in his majesty. How often in a lifetime spent rooting for one city’s teams do you get to watch an all-time great in his absolute prime?

Look at it from the perspective of an 80-year-old Baltimorean. You saw Johnny Unitas’ unruffled command in the waning moments of the “Greatest Game Ever Played.” You watched Frank Robinson breathe fire into the Orioles’ first World Series winner and Brooks Robinson wave his magic glove in 1970. You glimpsed Earl “The Pearl” Monroe spinning at the Civic Center, Cal Ripken Jr. catching the final out in 1983. Ray Lewis showed a middle linebacker could still become the NFL’s central figure in a new century. Ed Reed turned interceptions into art. Michael Phelps made winning gold medals seem almost routine.

We’ve had a good run in this town, but you can count the ones we’ll never forget on your fingers and toes. Jackson is on the list, and it’s possible we’ll never see him string together 17 better regular-season games than the ones he just played.

Whatever he does in the playoffs will fuel another year of discourse, but don’t let it obscure that we’re watching something beautiful.

It was fitting that Nate Wiggins’ pick-six jumpstarted the Ravens: For more than half the season, they were the Achilles heel that might undermine a Super Bowl contender. The Ravens’ secondary could not figure out how to prevent explosive gains or avoid killer penalties. Opponents’ passing yards piled up at humiliating rates. No lead felt safe.

Wiggins, the team’s 2024 first-round draft pick, wasn’t the chief culprit, but he played his part, dropping interceptions and drawing yellow flags. He was a typically erratic rookie — brilliant against mighty Buffalo one week, amateurish against Cincinnati the next.

Safeties Kyle Hamilton and Ar’Darius Washington have deservedly received much of the credit for the team’s defensive turnaround over its final seven games. Marlon Humphrey made momentous plays to flip a pair of divisional games, earning his fourth Pro Bowl trip.

None of it would work as well if the Ravens could not trust Wiggins alone on the perimeter against the deadliest pass catchers in football. Gone are the wild week-to-week performance swings. His soundness helps Humphrey to be a star in the slot.

For all his good work, Wiggins had not made a ton of splashy plays before he read Cleveland quarterback Bailey Zappe’s eyes and snared his pass with nothing but empty field ahead. Wiggins glided 26 yards to pay dirt, flinging his arms out wide to celebrate his first career interception.

“He had a couple other ones in his hands that he was frustrated with earlier in the season, so we’ve been on him a little bit,” Harbaugh said. “He’s established himself as a starter. I think he’s playing great ball.”

Wiggins missed the Ravens’ Oct. 27 loss to the Browns, one of many dispiriting performances by a pass defense that couldn’t get its act together. This time, he struck a blow from which Cleveland never truly recovered. So much growth in so little time with so much on the line.

Now, the real season begins: We heard it before this team was even assembled, when the wounds from the Ravens’ AFC championship loss to the Chiefs were still raw.

Nothing they — Harbaugh, Jackson, any of the organization’s core figures — could do in the regular season would quiet those who believe the Ravens don’t show their best in the legacy-defining games of January.

That wasn’t strictly true. The past 17 games told us that Henry could elevate an offense from very good to best in Ravens history, that Jackson could reach the pantheon as a pure passer. We saw Zach Orr and his top players pull together a quality defense after 10 weeks of “crushing” failures.

But the big story has not changed since that final, bitter whistle blew on 2023. The Ravens need to win over the next five weeks or we’ll look back on them with disappointment in 20 years. Jackson needs to play as well in the postseason as he has in the regular season, or his glowing statistics and MVP trophies will feel more hollow than he’d want.

Arrayed against the Ravens are familiar enemies. The Steelers drag them into tense, ugly games more consistently than any opponent. The Bills eliminated them in 2020 and feature a quarterback, Josh Allen, every bit as miraculous as Jackson. The Chiefs are simply the standard, the foe even Baltimore veterans acknowledge they have not solved.

Any or all of them could stand in the way.

The Ravens’ last Super Bowl win was so satisfying in part because that veteran team finally knocked off Peyton Manning and Tom Brady’s Patriots on the way to the biggest stage.

Twelve years later, they have the talent and the playoff scar tissue to write a similar ending. The chance they all wanted is here.

Van Noy didn’t leave his house for a week after the loss to Kansas City last January. As much as he knows the Ravens’ focus has to be on next week, on hosting a hungry wild-card opponent, recent history is unavoidable.

“We would all be lying if we said we haven’t been thinking about it,” Van Noy said. “In my career, you’re getting closer to the end, and those chances, you don’t want them to slip. I’ve thought about it all offseason, training. We as a group during training camp, it’s been on everybody’s mind. We haven’t forgot about that, and we hope we can correct that mistake.”

Have a news tip? Contact Childs Walker at daviwalker@baltsun.com, 410-332-6893 and x.com/ChildsWalker.