BALTIMORE — Ray Lewis walked out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist and a broad smile planted on his face.
He spotted Ed Reed across the Baltimore Ravens locker room, gave his longtime teammate a thumbs up and shouted, “Hey, boy, welcome back!”
Reed forced three turnovers in his injury-delayed season debut, Billy Cundiff kicked a 38-yard field goal in overtime after Lewis stripped the ball from tight end Shawn Nelson, and the Ravens squeezed past the winless Buffalo Bills 37-34 on Sunday.
Baltimore yielded 505 yards and four touchdowns to the 30th-ranked offense in the NFL. But the Ravens (5-2) escaped with a win before their bye week because Lewis yanked the ball from Nelson’s hands at the Buffalo 29 in overtime.
Four plays later, Cundiff connected on the game-winner with 10:54 left.
“There’s an old saying: Keep playing until you hear the whistle,” Lewis said. “When we hit him, everybody just rallied to the ball. I was up under him and just saw the ball there and sort of reached up and just snatched it out of his hand.”
The Ravens (5-2) trailed 24-10 late in the first half before scoring 24 straight points to take a 34-24 lead into the fourth quarter.
Buffalo’s Ryan Fitzpatrick then threw a 17-yard touchdown pass to Lee Evans with 5:46 left, and the Bills (0-6) forced OT on a 50-yard field goal by Rian Lindell with four seconds to go in regulation.
Fitzpatrick went 29-for-43 for 373 yards and four touchdowns — three to Evans and another to Steve Johnson. The four TD passes were the most against the Ravens since Peyton Manning did it for Indianapolis in December 2007.
But it all went for naught.
“It’s hard to win when you turn it over four times,” Bills coach Chan Gailey said. “I think we took a step forward in some respects. But we didn’t play smart in some areas.”
Reed, who spent the previous six weeks recovering from offseason hip surgery, forced a fumble on Buffalo’s first possession and had two second-half interceptions.
