Baltimore Ravens: No pressure could be difference in playoffs

There’s no pressure on the Baltimore Ravens and that makes them very scary.

The past two seasons have seen a lot of people riding high expectations when it comes to what the Baltimore Ravens should do in the playoffs. In 2018, rookie Lamar Jackson took over at quarterback after an injury to Joe Flacco and proceeded to go 6-1 and never relinquish the job back to Flacco.

Jackson did not play well in the postseason at all, however, and it made people doubt if he was going to be the right guy for the job in Baltimore. He proved to people that he was an electric football player in 2019 by leading his team to a 14-2 record, grabbing the No. 1 seed in the playoffs and winning NFL MVP.

Once again, however, the playoffs were not kind to Jackson. He and the Ravens floundered against the Wild Card Titans and were knocked out in the Divisional Round despite having home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.

By this point, the storylines write themselves as far as Jackson and the Ravens are concerned. They’re a great regular season team, but when it comes to the stress and high-pressure situations that the playoffs bring, they’re not built for it.

The 2020 season has been a different kind of year for the Ravens though. They’re not going to win the AFC North and up until a week ago, they weren’t even in the playoff picture. They sat at 6-5 at one point and really looked defeated after suffering their third straight loss.

Ever since then, however, the Ravens have rattled off four straight wins and have vaulted themselves back into the playoffs as of now. They still have to beat the Bengals in Week 17 but Baltimore is getting red hot at the right time and that could be problematic for the rest of the league.

The Baltimore Ravens don’t have high expectations surrounding them this time around.

No one expects the Ravens to make it to the Super Bowl as a Wild Card team and that means there’s little to no pressure on this group. They’ve been playing good football lately, but a lot of people will point out that three of those four wins have come against bad teams. Their win against the Browns was a shootout that honestly could have gone either way.

Despite that, the Ravens have persevered and shown that they belong in the playoffs. Jackson is playing like his MVP self again and that could spell trouble for the rest of the AFC in the playoffs.

If the season ended today, the Ravens would face AFC North rival Pittsburgh in the Wild Card round and it’s REALLY tough for a team to win three times against the same team in a single season. Plus, the Steelers have been trending downward while the Ravens are trending upward and we all know how important momentum is in sports.

The Ravens might not seem as daunting as they have the past two years, but perhaps that’s exactly what they want you to think.