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The Ravens have all the pieces to reach the Super Bowl.
Lamar Jackson has led the Baltimore Ravens to the NFL Playoffs five times in the six seasons since the franchise drafted him with the No. 32 pick in the 2018 NFL Draft. Jackson was named NFL MVP in 2019, and he’s poised to win the award for the second time this year.
At this point, no one denies that Jackson is an elite QB, and with two more wins, he has the chance to go down as an all-time great.
Jackson finally has some better pass catching weapons this year, and he also has arguably the NFL’s best defense to fall back on. There’s only one problem: standing on the other side of the AFC Championship Game is Patrick Mahomes and the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs. If this is the year Jackson and the Ravens finally breakthrough, they need to go through the NFL’s best to do it.
Here’s three reasons why the Ravens can make the Super Bowl.
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Lamar Jackson
Did you see what Josh Allen did last week? As amazing as the Chiefs defense is this season, they don’t really have an answer for a mobile quarterback — giving up 72 yards rushing and two touchdowns. Take that problem and multiple it exponentially, because Jackson’s ability to run outside the has marks takes away Kansas City’s best defensive weapon in its defensive line.
The ever-present threat of Jackson’s legs will force the Chiefs to account for him with safety help or a dedicated linebacker spy, which opens up the deep pass — something Baltimore has been feasting with all season long.
As it stands it’s unclear if the Chiefs have the ability to deal with an improvisational threat like Jackson, and if they don’t he’ll have a mammoth game.
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Mike Macdonald
Mike Macdonald has done a masterful job with the Baltimore defense this season, parlaying that success into potential head coaching opportunities for next season. But on Sunday he will face what is likely his toughest test yet, as he matches wits with Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes.
However, what Macdonald has built this year puts him, and this Ravens defense, in a very good position to come out on top. Baltimore lead the regular season with 60 sacks as a team, while blitzing at just a 21.9% clip, the eighth-lowest percentage in the regular season. The Ravens’ use of simulated pressures and different packages up front gives them a chance to confuse both the offensive line, and the quarterback, while maintaining a numbers advantage in the secondary.
That gives the Ravens a chance to pressure Mahomes on Sunday, while not sacrificing numbers in the secondary. That could be huge for Baltimore in the AFC Championship Game.
The crowd at M&T Bank Stadium
A perhaps underrated factor in last week’s Divisional Round game between the Ravens and the Houston Texans?
The crowd at M&T Bank Stadium.
Ravens fans were in full voice from the first snap of the game, and it had an impact. The Texans racked up 11 penalties in their loss, with the majority of those coming before the snap. Houston committed six false start penalties alone, a fact head coach John Harbaugh noted in his post-game comments:
Now that same fanbase will get to do something they have never done before: Cheer on the Ravens at home in an AFC Championship Game. It might be even louder this Sunday than it was last Saturday, which could make things that much tougher for Mahomes and the Chiefs offense.
In fact, Mahomes is probably expecting this. On an appearance on the Manningcast earlier this season, the Kansas City quarterback pointed to M&T Bank as one of the two loudest stadiums he’s ever played at in the NFL. “I’m mostly verbal,” Mahomes said to Peyton and Eli Manning. “The only time I’ve been silent is in Baltimore and in Seattle. … It was so loud in those stadiums that [the] tackles couldn’t hear me.”
