The NFL playoffs are officially upon us. Throw out all the regular-season records and what teams have done up until this point, everyone now starts at 0-0 and has an equal shot of heading to Super Bowl LIV.
But in reality, some teams are better suited for it. And while any team can win any week, there are some really good reasons why the Baltimore Ravens will be the team representing the AFC this season.
Let’s take a look at the six reasons the Ravens will make a Super Bowl LIV run.
Lamar Jackson
This feels like such a cop-out answer but it’s still a valid one.
Jackson has been the most electric player in the league this season and has effectively been unstoppable along the way, becoming a record-setting machine in 2019. Whether it’s on the ground or through the air, Jackson has destroyed opposing defenses en route to massive victories.
For all the talk about defenses being able to figure him out in his second season or in a second matchup, Jackson has actually gotten better over the course of the year. And as we’ve seen all season long, Jackson opens up the entire Ravens offense, forcing opponents to spend resources on him only to see other players create big plays because of it.
Through 16 games, Jackson has been nothing short of amazing. There’s no reason to believe that’ll end in the playoffs.
Health:
I’ve already talked at length about Baltimore’s health related to the rest of the AFC playoff teams. But it truly is an asset to have at this stage of the season. Most teams struggle to replace starters that go down and all it takes is one injury to a key player and an entire season can be doomed.
For the Ravens, not only have they dealt with players heading to injured reserve with backups stepping up, they’re as healthy as it can get right now thanks to resting key players in Week 17 and taking their bye week easy. Baltimore should go into the divisional round of the playoffs with all of their starters healthy and well rested. And when going up against guys that are dealing with various injuries and are exhausted after a full season of play without rest, it should make those matchups easier to win.
They’ve already played these teams
As noted in the very first section, there’s been a lot of talk about how opponents will better be able to gameplan against Jackson if they see him again. But naturally, the same goes for Baltimore.
Well, in the playoffs the Ravens are going to see a lot of familiar faces. Of the five other teams in the AFC playoff picture, Baltimore has played four of them this season and gone 3-1 in the process.
If we take out the Ravens’ Week 3 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs that was before all their defensive additions, Baltimore has gone a perfect 3-0 against the New England Patriots, Houston Texans and Buffalo Bills. In total, Baltimore beat those three playoff teams by a combined score of 102-44 and won each game by at least a touchdown.
It’s not like any of those playoff teams really improved either. With the exception of the Texans, who will get J.J. Watt back, all four previously played teams are more injured than when the Ravens last saw them. If Baltimore was able to demolish them the first time and they’ve gotten weaker since, it stands to reason the Ravens should beat them again.
Baltimore’s improved defense:
The Ravens have won 12 consecutive games this season and while much of the praise for that has gone to Jackson and Baltimore’s offense, don’t think the defense is a liability. In fact, in several of those wins, it was the Ravens’ defense that really got the job done and secured victory.
At the beginning of the season, Baltimore’s defense had issues all over the place. They weren’t able to consistently get to the quarterback, they had coverage lapses and their linebacker play was awful. But general manager Eric DeCosta got to work to begin patching up some of those holes.
DeCosta ultimately added several key contributors like L.J. Fort, Josh Bynes, Jihad Ward, Domata Peko and Marcus Peters to solidify the defensive roster after Week 4’s loss to the Cleveland Browns. Combined with defensive coordinator Don Martindale working his magic, the Ravens went from one of the worst units in the league to No. 3 in points allowed and fourth in yards allowed.
As I expected from the beginning of the season, Baltimore’s defense continued to gel throughout the year. With so much turnover from last season, it was going to take some time for all the new starters to get used to the scheme and each other before we saw what the defense really was. And true to expectations, they’ve done exactly that, improving each and every week. Since Week 5, they’ve notched 21 takeaways, getting at least one in every single game.
Now with the playoffs coming up, the Ravens’ defense is in a sweet spot. They still have some issues that can be exploited but they adjust better on the fly and put themselves in spots to create big plays.
Ravens’ rushing attack
Baltimore officially has the best rushing attack in NFL history, shattering the previous record which stood for 41 years. And now in the playoffs, we get to really see it pay off.
At this point in the season, teams are beat up and players are tired. Each and every extra game wears on them and their bodies. Now imagine a defender who’s exhausted and not able to fully recover from all the injuries they’ve gotten throughout the season try to tackle Mark Ingram. As we’ve seen repeatedly this season, that’s a tough task for a fresh defender in Week 1, much less now.
Add to it the fervor of the crowd in M&T Bank Stadium, the bitter cold of January in Baltimore and running backs who are fresh from weeks of rest . . . You can probably already envision the Ravens literally running over teams with all this in their favor.
Teams with great rushing attacks typically do well in the playoffs for this exact reason. And you don’t get any better than Baltimore in 2019 when it comes to running the football.
Coaching
In the six-team AFC playoff class, only three coaches have won more than one playoff game. And only two of them have won a Super Bowl: New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and Ravens coach John Harbaugh.
While Belichick is the unquestioned leader when it comes to playoff wins and championships, Harbaugh is no slouch in the postseason either. Harbaugh has a 10-6 record in the playoffs, including a 1-0 record in Super Bowls. His .625 win rate is actually an improvement over his regular-season win rate (.615), meaning that Harbaugh knows how to maximize his roster and get better when the games really begin to matter.
That experience in the playoffs is vitally important and something that can’t easily be replicated by coaches who haven’t been there yet. Things like knowing when and how hard to practice, how to prepare for louder crowds, how to handle the entire team when something goes wrong in a game and how to rally everyone for a unified goal . . . that only comes by doing it and doing it well before.
That’s not to say new coaches can’t figure it out but it’s something else they have to think about and gameplan for. It’s an added stressor on top of everything else going on. And for plenty of coaches, it’s something they never really figure out how to do well.
In Harbaugh, Baltimore knows they have a guy who can get the job done and lead his team to the promised land.
