Joe Mahoney/Associated Press
Baltimore's Jacoby Jones scored a 70-yard touchdown in the last minute of regulation.
DENVER — In Peyton Manning's 15-year career, there has been a lone dent in his legacy. For all of his regular-season brilliance, Manning has, in all but one season, been unable to propel his team to the championship. Manning's teams have gone to the postseason 12 times, but in 7 of the previous 11 trips, Manning's team has lost in its first playoff game.
On Saturday, with a new team and what he said felt like a different body, Manning met that fate again, this time in a stunning double-overtime 38-35 loss that sent the Baltimore Ravens to the A.F.C. Championship game for the second year in a row and the third time in five years. They will go on the road again next Sunday to play the winner of the Patriots-Texans game.
"That football game did the game of football proud," Ravens Coach John Harbaugh said.
The Broncos may struggle to agree, but the game was a thriller of big plays and wild swings from the opening moments, with three touchdowns scored in little more than the first five minutes. But the pivotal turn of fortune came near the end of the first overtime.
Manning rolled to his right to avoid pressure, then tried to throw across his body to the left. Much has been made of his arm strength since he had four neck operations in 2010 and 2011, but this mistake was as much mental as it was physical. The pass wobbled, and the Ravens' Corey Graham stepped in front of its intended target, Brandon Stokley. It was Graham's second interception of the day — he returned the first for a touchdown — and this one set up the winning 47-yard field goal by Justin Tucker, the Ravens' rookie kicker.
"I wouldn't say I'm shocked," said Manning, who completed 28 of 43 passes for 290 yards, 3 touchdowns and 2 interceptions. "That's not the right word. I'm disappointed."
The Ravens, who have overcome a late-season swoon in which they lost four of their last five regular-season games, stormed the field, and the Broncos, the top seed in the A.F.C., trudged into their tunnel. Manning will take the brunt of the blame for the loss because of that interception, and almost immediately after the game, it was widely noted that Tim Tebow had won one playoff game for the Broncos last year before he was dumped in favor of Manning. Peter Tebow, Tim's brother, even joined in.
"Am I the only one in Denver who's happy right now?" he wrote on his Twitter feed soon after the game.
But when the Broncos review this game, they may wonder why one of the top-ranked defenses in the league could not hold a lead with 41 seconds to play, and why the coaches grew so conservative they did not seem to trust Manning to throw to get a final first down in regulation that would have closed out the game.
That decision allowed the Ravens to have the ball one final time in regulation, and the Broncos' secondary, vulnerable to the deep pass all day, allowed Jacoby Jones to get behind it. He ran down the right sideline and Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco, shifting in the pocket to avoid pressure on third down, launched a 70-yard pass for a touchdown that tied the score.
Manning's résumé is lengthy, including his 9-11 record in the postseason. But Flacco's is still forming, and he is often underappreciated because of the Ravens' long-standing reputation for winning with defense. But this season, as the defense faltered, the Ravens relied more on Flacco. He finished the game completing 18 of 34 passes for 331 yards, 3 touchdowns and no interceptions, and that throw to Jones will now be the one for which he is known. Until, of course, he wins a Super Bowl title of his own, perhaps in a few weeks.
"He grew up today," the retiring linebacker Ray Lewis said of Flacco.
In the locker room after the game, Broncos safety Rahim Moore, who was playing deep on the Jones catch and saw the ball float inches over his outstretched right hand, was near tears.
"It's my fault," he said.
Some of the blame will surely go to the coaches, too, who had Manning take a knee with 30 seconds left in regulation and two timeouts remaining, instead of trying to get into field-goal position.
A Patriots victory over the Texans in their divisional game would result in a rematch of last year's A.F.C. Championship game, which the Patriots won when the Ravens dropped a pass in the end zone that would have won the game and then missed a field goal with 11 seconds left that would have sent the game to overtime.
As suspenseful as that game was, it was nothing compared with Saturday's. It included two special-teams returns for touchdowns by the Broncos' Trindon Holliday, including a 90-yarder on a punt return after the opening drive of the game and a 104-yarder on the opening kickoff of the second half.
The Ravens overcame those and three Manning touchdown passes with a plan to attack the Broncos deep, particularly targeting cornerback Champ Bailey by exploiting the speed of receiver Torrey Smith. The Ravens scored their first two offensive touchdowns on passes of 59 yards and 32 yards to Smith.
The second touchdown was set up when Broncos Coach John Fox chose to try a 52-yard field goal with 1 minute 21 seconds left in the first half. Matt Prater's foot dragged in the dirt near the hash mark, and the ball fell well short, giving Flacco and Smith a short field to work with. They hardly needed the help.
The Ravens were beaten soundly by the Broncos in Week 15 of the regular season, when Bailey contained Smith with little trouble. But Saturday's catches by Smith served notice that the Ravens, perhaps bolstered by the return to health of several of their defensive players, including Lewis, would keep pace with the Broncos' high-scoring offense.
It seemed fitting that in a season in which the Ravens' focus unmistakably shifted to offense, including the decision to fire the offensive coordinator Cam Cameron late in the season, it was Flacco who outdueled the legend on the other sideline. The Ravens moved on, hoping to reach the Super Bowl for the first time since they won it after the 2000 season on the back of their defense. And Manning went home again, still seeking his second championship, in a new place but with the same result.
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