The Ravens locked up the No. 1 seed in the AFC with a 31-15 win in Cleveland Dec. 22, while the New England Patriots (No. 2) and Kansas City Chiefs (No. 3) can sew up their playoff positioning with Week 17 wins against the Miami Dolphins and Los Angeles Chargers, respectively.
The AFC playoff field is rounded out by the Houston Texans (No. 4), Buffalo Bills (No. 5) and Tennessee Titans (No. 6). The Texans and Bills have clinched playoff spots, while the Titans will earn a spot with a win at Houston Dec. 29. The Texans may rest key players in preparation for a first-round playoff game since they’ve already clinched the AFC South.
Jim Nantz, Brian Baldinger and Je’Rod Cherry joined Glenn Clark Radio recently to discuss the AFC playoff picture and which teams represent the biggest threat to the Ravens.
Nantz, a longtime play-by-play man in multiple sports for CBS, called his first Ravens game of the season Dec. 22, though he did see plenty of the Lamar Jackson-led Ravens late last season. CBS’s top crew did three Ravens regular-season games down the stretch and the wild-card loss to the Chargers.
Nantz believes the Ravens are the NFL team most likely to reach the Super Bowl, though he cautioned that the Chiefs, now 11-4 and on a five-game winning streak, are dangerous, as are the Patriots, who have won six titles behind head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady.
Should the Ravens host the Patriots in the AFC championship game, Nantz is confident the Ravens won’t be affected by the mystique of the Patriots like other teams have, in part because the Ravens have stared the Patriots down in past playoff matchups. Baltimore beat New England during the 2009 and 2012 seasons, nearly beat them in 2011 and had two 14-point leads in 2014.
Nantz, who broadcast all four of those games, likened the Patriots’ reign in the AFC to Tiger Woods’ run of major championships in the 2000s.
“When Tiger was in his prime, there were just a couple of guys you felt like could stand up to him,” Nantz said Dec. 20. “You felt like [Phil] Mickelson could stand up to him, and Vijay Singh stood up to him a few times and took three majors during the real height of Tiger’s prime. But most of the time you thought, ‘Well, you know, he’s unbeatable when he gets to these final rounds of a major and he’s in position to win.’ In football, the only franchise that I’ve ever felt like in a meaningful game could stand up to the Patriots [is] the Baltimore Ravens.”
For the Patriots to reach the AFC title game, though, they may have to beat the Chiefs in the divisional round first. Kansas City is 5-1 since quarterback Patrick Mahomes returned from a dislocated knee, including a 23-16 win in New England Dec. 8. During that six-game span, the Chiefs have outscored opponents, 168-83.
Since returning, Mahomes has thrown for 1,677 yards and 10 touchdowns. If there’s an AFC team that can get up by multiple scores early against the Ravens and force Baltimore to play from behind, something the Ravens have not often had to do this year, it may well be the Chiefs. Kansas City did just that Sept. 29, scoring 23 second-quarter points en route to a 33-28 win against the Ravens.
Baldinger, an analyst for NFL Network, Fox Sports and Compass Media Networks, thinks the Chiefs are the team most likely to play from ahead against the Ravens.
“I do believe that Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs are capable of doing that,” Baldinger said Dec. 18. “Now, since the day that Marcus Peters showed up, this is a much better [Ravens] defense and I think it’s the best secondary in football. … I think that Wink Martindale will have a great scheme to be able to handle Tyreek Hill and [Travis] Kelce and the whole group of receivers.
“That would be a great matchup should they meet. They’ve played twice now in back-to-back seasons and they’ve been really good games, but that is a team that can score with the Ravens. I do agree that you’re going to have to light it up from that side of the field and possibly play a lot of keep-away from Lamar Jackson and this offense.”
But for the Chiefs, winning in Foxborough, Mass., in January would be a different, more difficult task than winning in December was. The Patriots put together one of their best offensive performances of the season against the Bills Dec. 21, indicating the Patriots may be turning a corner on that side of the ball after struggling for much of the year. New England piled up 414 yards of offense, and Brady threw for 271 yards on 26-of-33 passing.
Cherry, a defensive back for New England from 2001-2004 and now a Browns pre- and postgame radio host in Cleveland, knows about the challenges the Chiefs and Ravens would face if they see the Patriots in the playoffs after having played them in regular season. (Baltimore beat New England, 37-20, Nov. 3.) It makes the Patriots the toughest possible AFC opponent for the Ravens, according to Cherry.
“One of the things with the Patriots is, to their credit, when they play you that second time around, especially when the playoffs are at stake, it seems as if they figure you out,” Cherry said Dec. 18. “Because I can think back when I was playing, the Pittsburgh Steelers beat us in a similar fashion [in 2004] to what the Ravens did to the Patriots this year, and we played them in the AFC championship game and it was a totally different football game in which we completely dominated them.
“But looking at that game in the regular season, you would have never thought that. So you always have to be conscientious of the Patriots and their ability to adjust and not make the same mistakes that that they made in the previous game in which you might have had success against them.”
For more from Nantz, listen to the full interview here:
For more from Baldinger, listen to the full interview here:
For more from Cherry, listen to the full interview here:
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