Days before John Harbaugh described the Ravens as making “smithereens” of a challenging stretch of three games in 11 days, Lamar Jackson pushed back on the idea of a team getting hot at the right time.
No matter how dominant they looked in the 31-2 road blowout of playoff-bound Houston on Christmas Day, Jackson and the Ravens have been here before.
“We got hot last year, and we went on a win streak and then we lost in the AFC Championship,” Jackson said Monday. “So, that went out the window after that for me.”
Last Christmas, the red-hot Ravens were the best team in football and on their way to securing the No. 1 seed with an emphatic road victory over NFC-leading San Francisco, a game many expected to be a Super Bowl preview. Meanwhile, defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City looked all but dead earlier in the day when sub-.500 Las Vegas came into Arrowhead Stadium and handed the reeling Chiefs their third loss in four games.
Seven weeks later, the Chiefs and 49ers met in the Super Bowl with Kansas City winning its third NFL title in five years. Baltimore sat at home, still wondering what had happened a couple weeks earlier.
Yes, the Ravens have a long way to go. They’ll have no luxury of home-field advantage this time around with 15-1 Kansas City having clinched the No. 1 seed with its most decisive win of the season at Pittsburgh, a development that should make the rest of the league take some pause. And Buffalo needs only one more victory over its final two games to clinch the No. 2 spot in the AFC.
Still, winning three straight to be in position to secure another division championship and at least a first-round home playoff game with a Week 18 win over last-place Cleveland was exactly what Baltimore needed to do to become a serious Super Bowl contender.
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If this is the year the Jackson-era Ravens finally break through after years of January disappointment, they’ll certainly have to earn it being on a likely collision course — on the road — with the Bills and Chiefs. In a similar manner to how Joe Flacco took down Peyton Manning and Tom Brady on the road 12 years ago, there’d be something fitting about Jackson besting fellow MVP candidate Josh Allen and the present-day gold standard, Patrick Mahomes, to get to his first Super Bowl. Of course, those quarterbacks and teams are contemplating the challenge of getting past Baltimore’s two-time MVP having the finest season of his career.
Based on the way the Ravens are rounding into form collectively since the bye week, there’s little reason to doubt their upside and potential to make a Super Bowl run. Look no further than the last five days as they demolished the Steelers and Texans — two playoff teams, albeit ones going in the wrong direction — by a combined 65-19 margin.
Jackson, star running back Derrick Henry, and the best offense in franchise history have done the heaviest lifting all season, but the group was particularly explosive and efficient against a Houston defense that’s ranked among the league’s best this season.
Headlined by a dominant first quarter that included 86 yards on 10 carries, Henry finished with 147 rushing yards and a touchdown while Next Gen Stats tracked a 74.1% success rate, the highest anyone with 25-plus carries in a game has recorded since at least 2016. For the second straight game, most of Henry’s success came between the tackles, illustrating the offensive line’s increasing control of the line of scrimmage after most of Henry’s early-season rushing success came on outside runs.
With the entire world watching, Jackson accounted for a total of 255 yards and three touchdowns despite only 19 combined pass and rushing attempts. That marked a career low for a start if throwing out two games Jackson exited very early due to season-ending injuries in 2021 and 2022.
Even top 10 defenses are looking as helpless as ever stopping this Baltimore offense as the calendar flips to January.
On the other side of the ball, only Henry being tackled in the end zone in the second quarter prevented the Ravens from registering their first shutout since 2018. Zach Orr’s defense overwhelmed Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud, whose inaccuracy aided in the effort even when Houston had some opportunities to make plays.
8The signature sequence for the defense came after a very suspect pass interference call against Marlon Humphrey on a fourth down that gifted the Texans a first-and-goal midway through the second quarter. Humphrey and safety Ar’Darius Washington proceeded to make the critical plays on third and fourth down for a goal-line stand, and the Baltimore offense parlayed the turnover on downs into a 99-yard touchdown drive before halftime that turned the rest of the game into a laugher.
This defense won’t be confused with the 2000 Ravens or some of the very best in team history, but it has been elite against the run all season and has become one of the league’s best pass defenses since Week 11. Of course, that’s when Kyle Hamilton began playing more deep safety, the underrated and undersized Washington moved into the starting lineup, and the high-priced Marcus Williams was benched for good. The defense has continued to evolve since the Week 14 bye with second-year inside linebacker Trenton Simpson being benched in favor of a more dependable veteran timeshare between Malik Harrison and Chris Board.
Yes, it’s been a collaborative effort getting this group to play more like a “Ravens” defense, but credit Harbaugh, Orr and the entire organization for making adjustments, whether it was bringing in Dean Pees as a senior advisor in October or not insisting on continuing to play Williams despite him sporting the third-highest salary cap figure on the team. Some pride definitely had to be swallowed by an array of individuals.
And speaking of improvement, Justin Tucker hasn’t missed a kick since the bye either.
And this team remains as healthy as anyone could reasonably imagine so late in the season.
Yes, everything appears to be coming together for the Ravens at the right time.
It’s isn’t about Jackson winning another MVP or how many Baltimore players receive a Pro Bowl nod next week. The Ravens have been football analytics darlings and regular-season royalty for years now.
8Been there, done that.
All that matters is this team getting the job done next month, and beating two playoff teams in convincing fashion over the last five days speaks for itself.
“We’re just getting started,” Harbaugh said after the blowout win in Houston. “We said, ‘Alright, it’s the January season now. The December season is behind us.’
“It’s the January season now.”
