It's getting late early for the Ravens.
With a 17-3 loss to the Rams in Week 6 on Sunday, Baltimore—which entered the year as one of the teams expected to contend for a Super Bowl—dropped to 1-5 on the season. There's still plenty of football to be played (11 games, to be exact), but the Ravens are already three games back of the AFC's final playoff spot.
The playoffs seem like a long shot at this point, even with quarterback Lamar Jackson likely to return from injury after the Ravens' Week 7 bye.
But the good news in Baltimore? It's been done before. In fact, four teams in NFL history have started the season 1–5 and went on to make the playoffs. Let's meet them:
NFL teams to make playoffs after 1–5 start
The Washington Football Team won just one of its first six games in 2020 before getting hot with Alex Smith taking over the reins at quarterback. Washington won five of the six games that Smith started, including four straight late in the season, to finish an underwhelming 7-9. But it was enough to win the NFC East. Smith was hurt for the Football Team's 31-23 loss in the playoffs to Tom Brady and the Buccaneers—a night fondly remembered as the game Taylor Heinicke proved he belonged in the NFL.
The Colts' 2018 campaign, which ended up being the final season of Andrew Luck's career, was a roller coaster. They started 1–5—with three losses by one possession—before going 9-1 the rest of the way to secure a wild-card playoff berth.
In 2015, Alex Smith (yes, that same Alex Smith from two paragraphs up) and the Chiefs won the season opener but lost their next five straight games. Kansas City beat the Steelers 23-13 in Week 7 and didn't lose another game until January—a 27-20 loss to the Patriots in the divisional round. The 2015 Chiefs still hold the record for the most games won by a team that lost five straight games.
The 1970 Bengals, in the third year of the franchise's existence, dropped six straight games to fall to 1-6 by early November. Led by quarterback Virgil Carter, Cincinnati rattled off seven consecutive wins to finish the year 8–6. The Bengals' magical run fell short in the postseason, however, falling 17-0 in the divisional round to the Baltimore Colts.
Can the Ravens (1-5) pull it off and make the playoffs?
It won't be easy, but it's certainly possible.
The Ravens played three Super Bowl contenders in the first four weeks of the season and lost all three games. But they blew a 15-point fourth-quarter lead to the Bills, lost a heartbreaker to the Lions and were still within reach of the Chiefs before Jackson suffered a hamstring injury in the third quarter.
The rest of the season, the Ravens actually have the fifth-easiest strength of schedule remaining in the NFL. Their toughest remaining games are against the Steelers (4-1), Packers (3-1-1) and Patriots (4-2), while the lowly Jets (0-6), Dolphins (1-5), Browns (1-5) and Joe Burrow-less Bengals (2-4) also await on their schedule and are looking more and more like wins and the weeks go on.
With all those beatable teams on the horizon, if Jackson remains healthy, it's not difficult to see a path where the Ravens get hot and climb back into the AFC North division race. Baltimore just can't afford to stumble out of the bye week.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Full List of NFL Teams to Make Playoffs After 1-5 Start As Ravens' Slump Continues.
