The Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens will square off for the fifth time in the playoffs on Saturday. The Steelers won the first three games, but the Ravens won the most recent. And yet, this will be the first time the Ravens are on hosting duties for the Steelers. While that means something to them, Baltimore is just looking to get to the next stage.
The Steelers, said Ravens DL Nnamdi Madubuike, are “just another person in our way – the team in our way to get to where we want to get to”, via the team’s website. “And that’s why we’re out there practicing and working hard and doing everything we can to be our best self on Saturday”.
Chalk it up to the Ravens’ version of the Steelers’ “nameless, gray faces”, as that’s all this is. Of course Steelers-Ravens games mean something, but what really matters is the Super Bowl. The spoils of victory over your rival have higher stakes in the postseason. Which is why the Ravens are happy to have any advantage they can get.
“Each and every day, we go out on the field [in hopes to] hoist the Lombardi [Trophy], but at the end of the day, it starts one game at a time, and it starts at ‘The Bank,’ Saturday versus Pittsburgh, Ravens ILB Roquan Smith said.
For Smith, this is his third postseason in three years with the Ravens, but he only has one win. He knows from that perspective alone how big a Ravens win over the Steelers would be this weekend. It brings them another step closer to their goal—one of many steps.
“You just have to take it one game at a time, knowing that last year didn’t end the way we wanted, so just using that as fuel”, he said, referring to the Ravens’ loss in the AFC Championship last season. “But you can’t jump right back to the AFC Championship Game, because it’s a damn good Pittsburgh team that’s coming in here, and we have to take care of business at the end of the day”.
While the Steelers only have three playoffs wins since 2011, the Ravens are no better. Since winning the Super Bowl in 2012, the Ravens are 3-6. And they are 2-6 since their loss in the 2014 Divisional Round, preceded by a win over the Steelers in Pittsburgh.
Despite being two of the most admired franchises, neither the Steelers nor Ravens have much in the way of tangible achievements to show for themselves for the better part of a decade or more. Both have exactly three playoff wins and one conference finals appearance in the past decade. The Ravens have won twice since the Steelers’ last win. They are likely to win on Saturday, if prevailing wisdom is worth anything.
But the Steelers and Ravens still have to play the game. As Pittsburgh has found out all too often, anything can happen in the playoffs. Baltimore, for that matter, has lost games in which it was favored. Only one of these underperformers, however, can advance this weekend, and at the expense of the other. So who will be the nameless, gray face watching from the coach the weekend after next?
