The past year has held more tribulations than triumphs for Kenyan Drake’s football career.

The former Alabama running back suffered a broken ankle on a carrying the football for the Las Vegas Raiders on Dec. 5 and missed the remainder of the 2021 season.

On Aug. 22, the Raiders released Drake with a year left on his contract.

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The next week, Drake signed with the Baltimore Ravens. But in the Ravens’ first five games of the season, he was designated as a game-day inactive twice and had 65 yards on 21 carries.

Then came Sunday, when Drake ran for 119 yards and one touchdown on 10 carries and caught an 8-yard pass while playing a season-high 34 offensive snaps against the New York Giants.

“KD did a good job; he did a really good job,” Baltimore coach John Harbaugh said. “He hit some runs, made some plays where he had to bounce one way or the other, front side or back side, hit some downhill runs. Yes, he played really well.”

The 100-yard game was the eighth of Drake’s NFL career and his first since Nov. 15, 2020, when he had 100 yards on 16 carries in the Arizona Cardinals’ 32-30 victory over the Buffalo Bills.

“It’s a team game, so any individual accolade is kind of on the backburner when it comes to the ultimate goal, which is winning the game,” Drake said. “So I was running through holes, and I wasn’t getting touched until the second level, so you have to give your hats off to the boys up front and the scheme that we kind of had for these boys this week. So I just kind of did my job to the best of my ability, and we kind of made a lot of progress in that department in terms of how I was at the beginning of the season.

“I’m just ready to continue to go on.”

Drake could get that opportunity on Sunday, when the Ravens play the Cleveland Browns, whose defense had yielded an NFL-worst 11 rushing touchdowns in 2022.

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J.K. Dobbins started the previous four games at running back for Baltimore, but he had only seven carries for 15 yards on Sunday. Dobbins did not practice this week and won’t play against Cleveland. After he missed the 2021 season because of a torn anterior cruciate ligament, Dobbins is headed for arthroscopic knee surgery, ESPN reported.

But Baltimore also could have running backs return this week.

Justice Hill ran for 125 yards on 19 carries in the first four games of 2022, then he missed the past two games with a hamstring injury. Hill practiced fully this week

Gus Edwards ran for 2,152 yards for the Ravens from 2018 through 2020. But he missed the 2021 season because of a torn ACL and started the 2022 season on reserve/physically unable to perform. But Edwards has returned to practice, and if he’s going to play this season, he needs to be restored to the active roster by Wednesday.

“Gus is looking really good, and I think he’s on track,” Baltimore offensive coordinator Greg Roman said on Thursday. “We’re really excited about having him back. I think he’s getting better every day, and it’s visual. I can visually see it, so really excited about that.”

On Monday, Ravens coach John Harbaugh had been looking forward to the team’s sudden depth at running back with Drake, Dobbins, Edwards, Hill and veteran Mike Davis.

“That’s a really good problem to have,” Harbaugh said. “It’s better than the other problem that we’ve been looking at for a while. So I feel like our offensive line is doing a really good job of blocking the run, and our guys are running the ball. J.K.’s knee tightened up yesterday on him. He just didn’t feel like he had that explosiveness in the second half. I think he might’ve landed on it at some point.

“But Kenyan stepped up and did a great job. Mike didn’t get the ball, but he did a really good job on the plays he was in in terms of he had some blocking responsibilities. The opportunity that Kenyan started was there, and once you get him started and heading downhill, he’s really effective. He has some speed and some explosiveness. It’s positive.

“We’re looking at Gus. Gus is in the mix. We’ll see about this week possibly, maybe next week, maybe Thursday (when the Ravens play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers), somewhere in there. And J.K., get his knee loosened up again, and he’ll be there, and Justice coming back soon. It’s a good thing.”

For all the good vibes, though, Baltimore lost to the Giants 24-20.

“It’s unfortunate because we ran the ball very effectively,” Drake said. “We had timely passes, and we were able to kind of get in the red zone a few times where we would’ve wanted to come out with a touchdown instead of a field goal. Obviously, you have to give your hats off to the Giants for doing certain things that prevented us from getting into the end zone ultimately, but I like the way the offense and the running game specifically are continuing to really mature as the season has gone on.

“From the first game (against the New York Jets) the first time we played here versus now — we’re playing against the Giants in the same stadium — it was night and day for the run game. I just wish, like I said, we could continue to finish in the fourth quarter, hopefully get into four-minute situations where we run the ball in those situations, and then also when we’re in two-minute situations, we don’t put ourselves behind the eight ball. We’re trying to go uphill with shooting ourselves in the foot with penalties or little things that we can control at that moment.”

The loss to the Giants was a familiar feeling for the Ravens. Baltimore led 20-10 in the fourth quarter before losing. The Ravens have led by at least 10 points in each of their games, but their record is 3-3.

“Of course, we want to learn from our mistakes,” Drake said, “but you can’t allow something that we have no control over – which is the past – to affect what we’re going to do moving forward, so we’re going to continue to be who we are, play Ravens football and keep pushing forward. On to Cleveland now.”

The Browns and Ravens will square off at noon CDT Sunday at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore.

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.