pisilinuxworld.org

The Baltimore Ravens are on a mission in 2024, with only one acceptable destination: lifting a third Vince Lombardi Trophy in Las Vegas at Super Bowl LVIII on February 11.

The Ravens have been victorious on their two previous trips to the Super Bowl – to cap the 2000 season and, most recently, the 2012 campaign under current head coach John Harbaugh – but further success has eluded them in the decade plus since, and that’s despite six trips to the postseason and three AFC North titles in that time.

Five of those playoff visits (and all three division wins) have come with this year’s likely-league-MVP Lamar Jackson at quarterback, but until beating the Houston Texans 34-10 last weekend, their star quarterback’s playoff return was a paltry 1-4 record.

Since Jackson was drafted in 2018, Baltimore’s 66 regular season wins are second only to the Kansas City Chiefs’ 75, but where Patrick Mahomes and their AFC Championship opponents this Sunday have differed is success in the postseason – with Mahomes already having been to three Super Bowls, winning two of them, equivalent to Jackson’s playoff win total.

Prior to this season, the Ravens were averaging just 13 points per game through Jackson’s playoff career, the second-lowest mark by any quarterback with at least four playoff starts in the past 30 seasons, ahead of only Andy Dalton’s 0-4 playoff record containing only one touchdown pass and six interceptions.

Jackson, by comparison, had four total touchdowns, seven turnovers and a 68.3 passer rating in the postseason prior to the Texans game – a passer rating drop off nearly 30 points from his regular-season career.

Baltimore’s playoff struggles of course can’t all be laid at Jackson’s door. It’s a team sport after all, and it hasn’t been all bad for the dual-threat QB, with him running for 136 yards, including a stunning 48-yard TD, in his first career playoff win versus the Tennessee Titans in the 2020 wild card round.

He followed that up with another 100-yard rushing effort in his latest postseason success story against Houston in last week’s divisional round, willing his team over the line with three second-half scores (four for the match) after the game was all tied up at 10-10 at half-time.

The team’s turnaround and dominance in the second half was supposedly triggered by a passionate, expletive laden half-time team talk from Jackson.

“It would be inappropriate if I said it,” he said of his speech when addressing reporters after the game. “A lot of cursing,” he added.

“We wasn’t really doing anything to that defense… they was playing great. And their offense was playing great as well.

“But we wasn’t doing our job with our unit until the second half. We went to put up points on the board, started moving the ball, moving the chains, and started looking like ourselves.”

That is indeed how the Ravens began to look after the break against Houston, the offense which ranked fourth in scoring during the regular season putting up 24 points.

It was a performance more reminiscent of that which we’d grown to expect from the Ravens as they secured an NFL-best record of 13-4 in 2023, with Jackson returning career-best marks in completion percentage (67.2), passing yards (3,678) and yards per attempt (8.0) that seems certain to secure him a second league MVP award.

Ahead of winning the award for the first time in 2019, though, Jackson said: “It’s okay, but I’m trying to win the Super Bowl… that’s a team award and that’s what I want. I’m not worried about MVP.”

And that’s still very much the case for Jackson. But, to even make the Super Bowl, let alone win it, first he and the Ravens have to find a way past Mahomes and the Chiefs, who are making their sixth-straight AFC Championship Game appearance.

“I don’t like competing with him at all,” Jackson said ahead of his latest clash with Mahomes.

And you can see why: the pair have squared off four times previously, with the Chiefs going 3-1 in those contests – prompting Jackson to call the team “his kryptonite” after losing their first three meetings, prior to a wild, 36-35 win in Week Two of the 2021 season.

The defending champions overcame the harsh conditions of Buffalo last weekend – Mahomes victorious in his first career road playoff game – and they certainly won’t be fazed by going into Baltimore as they look to end their Super Bowl dreams this Sunday too.

“If you’re down to the (Philadelphia) Eagles in the Super Bowl, down to the (San Francisco) 49ers too by 10 points with six minutes left to go, and you come back to win those types of games, there’s no more pressure with anything anymore,” former NFL quarterback Chris Simms said on Pro Football Talk this week. “That’s as pressure packed as it gets.

“The Chiefs show up in these moments, while the Ravens are still knocking down barriers to show that they don’t collapse in the situations – last week (against Houston) went a long way to dispelling that.

“The Ravens are probably the best team in football when you look at the whole year… but it’s the Chiefs and Mahomes.”

Jackson may not ‘like’ competing against Mahomes, but he knows that seeing the back of him and the Chiefs is essential for him to reach his ultimate goal.

“To be a champion, you’ve got to go through a champion,” he said. Vegas and the Vince Lombardi awaits.

Watch the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game this Sunday, with kickoff at 8pm live on Sky Sports NFL; the San Francisco 49ers then host the Detroit Lions in the NFC Championship Game from 11.30pm; watch Super Bowl LVIII live on Sunday, February 11