Mark Andrews had a bad night. That doesn’t mean he’s having a bad season.

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The optics were, admittedly, not great. Seven hours after tight end Isaiah Likely had the best game of his budding New York Giants career, Mark Andrews had one of the worst in his nine years with the Ravens.

In a 30-23 overtime win Sunday over the Atlanta Falcons, Andrews dropped a would-be touchdown catch in the first quarter. He fumbled a few minutes later, leading to a Falcons scoop-and-score. He had would-be catches on a 2-point conversion in the third quarter and on a third-down throw in the fourth quarter broken up at the catch point. According to Sports Info Solutions, Andrews’ six targets were worth minus-5.7 expected points added overall, one of the lowest marks of his career — and that doesn’t even account for the lost value of the 2-point attempt, which isn’t tabulated as an offensive play.

Andrews, who finished with four catches for 28 yards, acknowledged after the game: “I have to be better.”

“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.”

The primetime blunders became the latest flashpoint in Andrews’ career: Here was a tight end being paid like a top-10 player at the position, yet nearly costing the Ravens an important road win. Likely’s impressive start under former coach John Harbaugh, and at a comparable cost, only added to the scrutiny.

But Andrews’ “Sunday Night Football” performance obscured what has otherwise been a promising start to his first season in coordinator Declan Doyle’s offense. Andrews’ role in the Ravens’ passing game has changed since his All-Pro heights. That doesn’t mean he can’t be a meaningful contributor.

Entering Week 6, Andrews has 22 catches for 177 yards and one touchdown, putting him on track for a 75-catch, 601-yard, three-touchdown season — and that’s perhaps a conservative trajectory, considering he’s played nearly a third of this year without star quarterback Lamar Jackson. He’s averaging 1.55 yards per route run, according to Pro Football Focus, 15th among the 30 tight ends with at least 15 targets. In 2025, the least productive season of Andrews’ career, he had just 48 catches for 422 yards and five touchdowns and averaged 1.23 yards per route run.

With the ascendance of Pro Bowl wide receiver Zay Flowers and the return to form of Rashod Bateman, Andrews has been featured less often in the Ravens’ downfield passing game. In 2024, when he had 673 receiving yards and 11 touchdowns, 23.8% of Andrews’ receiving snaps featured conventional vertical routes (corners, posts, fades, flies and deep crosses), according to SIS. He had 13 catches on 19 such targets for 203 yards and five touchdowns.

This year, that rate has fallen to just 14.2%, and he’s been targeted just once. Jackson missed badly on a throw to Andrews, running wide open on a deep cross, in the back of the end zone early in the Ravens’ Week 5 win against the Tennessee Titans.

Andrews has lost some of the athletic ability that made him a credible outside-receiver threat early in his career. Injuries tend to have that effect on players in their 30s. But Andrews, 31, still has obvious route-winning chops.

Against man coverage, Andrews can overwhelm most safeties with his size and physicality, and he can run by most linebackers.

And against zone coverage, Andrews hasn’t lost his keen awareness for a defense’s soft spots. His first of two first-down catches in overtime Sunday came when he recognized a blitz and tweaked his route on third-and-3 to present a quick target for quarterback Tyler Huntley, who found him for a 10-yard gain.

Andrews’ career-low 8 yards per catch is mostly a reflection of his route distribution. Well over half (60.4%) of his 106 routes this season have been curls, drags, flats and outs, none of which typically lead to explosive plays. Two years ago, those four routes made up 47.8% of his pass game diet.

Andrews has not always made the most of his opportunities this year — his 12% drop rate is the third-worst among the 30 qualifying tight ends, according to PFF — but some of his production has gone under the radar. Notably, he has four receptions in five contested-catch opportunities, which PFF defines as plays in which the defender challenges the receiver at the catch point. And his competence as a run blocker has helped make the Ravens’ multiple-tight-end sets viable in Doyle’s offense.

According to ESPN, which uses player-tracking data to evaluate the ability of receivers to separate, catch a pass and produce after the catch, Andrews enters Sunday’s game against the Cleveland Browns tied with Likely for the NFL’s No. 1 “receiver score” at the position. (Las Vegas Raiders star Brock Bowers and Arizona Cardinals star Trey McBride rank third and sixth, respectively.)

In February, Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta acknowledged Andrews’ quiet 2025, saying he “expect[s] him to get back to himself and be the player that he can be.” A fourth Pro Bowl appearance, and his first since 2022, seems unlikely in the early going.

But with the versatile Durham Smythe (Achilles tendon) lost for the year and rookies Matt Hibner and Josh Cuevas still acclimating to NFL life, the Ravens will need more of the Andrews who re-emerged in overtime Sunday. He said after the win that his belief in the team, and himself, never wavered.

“I think Mark would be the first to tell you that he did not start off the game the way that he wanted to,” coach Jesse Minter said Monday. “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.”