The Steelers controlled the AFC North for 15 weeks with the Ravens, Browns, and Bengals all losing off the bat. From Week 2 through Week 16, they dictated the fate of the division. And they squandered it, doing so in spectacular fashion. They lost their final four games, and the Ravens won their final four.
That is what needed to happen for the Ravens to pass the Steelers for the AFC North title. Or close enough, anyway—the Steelers could have won last week and still lost the division. But the point is, they had the Ravens where they wanted them all along and let them go. And now they have to play them again.
Now the Ravens are dreaming about picking up where they left off last year. Many players admitted after clinching the AFC North on Saturday that they were thinking about losing in the AFC Championship Game all year. They know they have to play the Steelers first, but their drive is beyond that.
“We’d be lying if we said we hadn’t been thinking about it”, Ravens OLB Kyle Van Noy admitted. “Me and Coach [John] Harbaugh had a conversation earlier, and I had told him I hadn’t left my house for a week after” the AFC Championship Game.
The Ravens won the Super Bowl in 2012, but since then had not made it back to even the conference finals until last season. They have made the playoffs in six of the past seven seasons but have only two playoff wins. The Steelers, of course, have none in that same time frame.
And the Ravens are focused on making sure they continue the Steelers’ losing streak on Saturday. The two teams have played in the postseason four times. The Steelers won the first three, but the Ravens won the last one in 2014. And they’re not about to let a one-and-done-looking team slow them down.
“It’s all I’ve thought about all offseason, training camp, we as a group during training camp”, Van Noy said of the Ravens’ AFC title game loss last season. “It’s been on everybody’s mind, ‘LJ’s’ [Lamar Jackson] included, and we haven’t forgotten about that, and we hope we can correct that mistake”.
He added that it doesn’t matter right now, though. “We can talk about the AFC Championship all we want, but we have to get through the Wild Card game”. The Ravens didn’t know at the time that it would be against the Steelers, as the Steelers hadn’t lost yet. But they knew it was one of the two possibilities. “That’s our main focus. That’s all we’re focused on as a team, is just take these next seven days – eight days or wherever we’re at – and take it one day at a time”.
The Ravens have had legitimate Super Bowl aspirations for the better part of a decade now. For them to have just two playoff wins in that time and one conference finals appearance is obviously an immense underperformance. The Steelers in the same period haven’t had nearly the same outside expectations placed on them. They are decided underdogs in this one—can they make the Ravens miserable for another 12 months?
