This is the moment all you loyal readers have been waiting for; this is where we analyze and break down factors and statistics to gauge the probable winner of Sunday night's matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and the New England Patriots. These two teams have developed one of the most competitive rivalries in the NFL in recent years. It may not be filled with as much hatred and physical animosity as the Ravens-Steelers rivalry, but somehow specatcularly memorable plays always seem to find their way onto the field when Brady finds himself staring down Ray Lewis and Ed Reed. Probably the biggest reason this rivalry has become so big in recent years is that these teams keep meeting in the playoffs. This Sunday, in fact, will mark the 3rd playoff matchup between the Ravens and Patriots in 4 years. The Patriots have historically beaten the Ravens many more times than the Ravens have beaten the Patriots, but these teams are each 2-2 in the last 4 games they've faced one another. This game is a rematch of last season's AFC Championship where the Patriots edged the Ravens 23-20 as the Ravens failed to score on their final drive...we all know how that went.
This season, however, the Ravens got a bit of redemption as they edged the Patriots with a game-winning field goal that just barely went between the uprights as time expired. That redemption was sweet, but it means little at this moment as it has no bearing on Sunday's game. The Ravens were a different team when they last faced the Pats, and the Patriots were a different team when they last traveled to Baltimore. The rosters are mostly the same, but seemingly small differences in personnel have meant big differences in recent performance. Homefield advantage won't likely mean much as the Ravens and Patriots have each won one home and one away game in this rivalry over the course of the last 4 seasons. Games between these two teams are seldom decided by more than 6 points, so get ready for a gridiron war of epic proportions!
RAVENS AT PATRIOTS
MOMENTUM AND PERSONNEL
NFL fans and commentators often speak of how it's important to get hot going into the playoffs. They discuss how regular season records mean little compared to the health and strength of a team going into the post-season. Three of the last five Super Bowl champions won no more than 10 games in the regular season, and last year's Super Bowl winning team only went 9-7! That's not to say that teams with great regular season records don't win Super Bowls--they often do, but it's not the regular season record that gets them to the Super Bowl, it's the condition and strength of their team down the stretch.
The Patriots have, once again, put together an impressive list of wins this season. Brady and company got off to a rocky start as they lost 3 out of their first 6 games but finished the regular season winning 9 of their last 10 to secure a #2 seed in the playoffs. The Ravens regular season proved far more tumultuous. Ray and his boys got off to a hot 5-1 start, but certain aspects of the team had fans worried about their chances to make a deep playoff run despite a good record. The Ravens displayed an inability to stop the run for the first time in a LONG time, and that inability extended to weak teams as well as strong. The Ravens appeared to be a totally different team on the road, and that became abundantly apparent as the Ravens got flattened by the Texans 43-13 in week 6. To add to the Ravens' defensive issues, Lardarius Webb tore his ACL and Ray Lewis tore his triceps.
As Lewis and Webb went down, however, Suggs returned and a young talented linebacker named Dannell Ellerbe took the field to fill in for Ray as he rehabilitated his right arm. After the Houston game, the Ravens saw a return to defensive dominance as they went on a month long stretch in which they had the top defense in the league. That defensive dominance was short lived as Ellerbe and then Suggs became injured. The Ravens lost the next 3 games as Suggs and Ellerbe worked to become healthy. Most commentators regarded the Ravens' season as basically doomed, but the Purple Nightmare staff (I) was well aware of what was to come as soon as both Suggs and Ellerbe returned to the field.
Suggs and Ellerbe both saw the field once again against the New York Giants in week 16. The Ravens absolutely punished last year's Super Bowl winners and held them to a pedestrian 14 points in what quickly became a rout. The Ravens then rested their starters the following week against the Cincinatti Bengals, but they brought Bryant McKinney back out to get some reps with the second string. McKinney looked shakey at first in his first game back at left tackle, but presence in the playoffs would prove absolutely critical to the success of the team.
The Ravens manhandled the Colts in the playoffs 24-9 and kept a high scoring offense out of the endzone entirely and held two of the NFL's best pass rushers without a sack on Flacco. The Ravens then traveled to Mile High Stadium to face a Broncos team that no one said they could beat...no one, that is, except myself, Mike Golic, and a host of optimistic Ravens fans. ESPN's Ashley Fox went so far as to write a cocky, poorly thought out article stating that there was virtually no way the Ravens could beat Peyton Manning....yeah...how'd that one work out, Ash?
Equally important to the outcome of that game is the set of factors that led to the win as those factors will be crucial in our analysis of the upcoming AFC Championship game. The Ravens, once again, protected Flacco effectively against one of the best pass rushing tandems in the NFL. Elvis Dumervil and Vonn Miller managed only one sack on Flacco all game, and that sack was the result of Flacco holding on to the ball for roughly 6 seconds because of tight coverage on the Ravens wide receivers rather than poor protection. Ravens offensive tackles Bryant McKinney and Michael Oher gave Flacco enough time to connect on long passes downfield so the Ravens could score quickly and ultimately win. The Ravens successfully went on the road and beat a team that had beaten them handedly in the not so distant past, and they did so in spectacular fashion without experiencing any major injuries to their starters.
The Patriots also faced a Houston Texans team that they played and demolished not much earlier in the regular season. In this meeting, however, the Texans actually put up a bit of a fight. Unlike their regular season matchup, the Patriots had only a 4 point lead at halftime and a 10 point lead for a time in the 4th quarter. Although I never doubted that the Texans would lose, they certainly demonstrated that the Patriots are still vulnerable in their pass defense at times, and that they aren't quite the same team without Rob Gronkowski.
Rob Gronkowski broke his arm last weekend as he dove for a catch on the sidelines. Gronkowski had missed 5 games during the regular season after breaking that very same arm a couple of months ago. The Patriots' divisional round win over the Texans gave many Patriots fans comfort that Tom Brady could still spread the ball around to enough targets to beat another playoff team by a comfortable margin, but that margin became much smaller without their enormous and talented star tight end to help help continue drives late in the game and keep the ball out of the hands of opponents. On that note, we will begin our statistical analysis.
KEY STATISTICS
I heard commentators on ESPN talking about how the Patriots still maganged to score a high average of points per game without Rob Gronkowski this season. The Patriots scored an average of 35.09 points per game with Gronkowski, and 34.2 points per game without him. At first glance, there appears to be little difference in offensive production with Gronk in the game or out of it. That idea, however, is false. The average points per game stat is skewed by a couple of major outliers. Two of the five games the Patriots played during Gronkowski's 5 game absence were utter blowouts of teams falling apart at the seams. The Patriots beat the Jets on Thanksgiving in a game filled with embarrassment and calamity for Gang Green. The Jets appeared to almost literally give the ball to the Patriots at one point as running back Shonne Greene held the ball out to try to stretch for a first down and a Patriots player simply took the ball out of his hands. The second of two blowouts was against a Texans team that had only just barely beaten two of the worst teams in the NFL. Those two worst teams each scored well over 30 points on the Texans, so it's no surprise that the Patriots were able to do the same in Foxborough.
What the average points per game statistic during that Gronkless five game stretch doesn't tell you is that the Patriots only beat both the Miami Dolphins and bottom-feeding Jacksonville Jaguars 23-16. The Patriots also lost to the 49ers 41-34. Without Gronkowski, therefore, the Patriots barely slipped by two teams with a combined 8 wins. Upon Gronkowski's return, however, the Patriots promptly trounced that same Dolphins team 28-0.
We, at this point, must ask ourselves why it is that Rob Gronkowski makes such an trememdous difference for the Patriots. Gronkowski is a huge, sure-handed target at 6'6" with what appear to be some of the biggest hands in the league. Gronkowski had 11 touchdowns in the 11 regular season games he played this year. Gronkowski is nearly impossible to cover as he's simply taller and larger than just about any linebacker and defensive back. At 265 lean, solid pounds, Gronkowski is tough to tackle and often times makes fools out of defenders as he shakes them off on his way to extra yardage after contact. Gronkowski is also a strong blocking tight end who gave Terrell Suggs serious problems in last season's AFC Championship game. Gronkowski also makes the Patriots more of a passing threat in the redzone as he can win jump ball situations in the endzone when it becomes impossible to spread out opposing defenses.
Without Rob Gronkowski, the Patriots have no major star weapons to provide physical mismatches with the Ravens linebackers and defensive backs. The rest of the Patriots' major offensive weapons are in the average heigh range or below. Wes Welker is one of the greatest receivers in the last 10 years of the NFL, but he's only 5'9". Aaron Hernandez is decently sized at 245 pounds, but he's a manageable 6'1" and not at all a mismatch for the likes of Bernard Pollard or Dannell Ellerbe. The Patriots' only downfield threat, Brandon Lloyd, is 6'0" and 200 pounds. Lloyd also presents little height mismatch for any one of the Ravens corners, and hasn't performed nearly to the level that many people expected of the 2010 NFL receiving yards leader.
With all of that said, the Patriots have an added dimension to their offense this season. Their leading rusher, Steven Ridley, piled up 1263 rushing yards and 12 rushing touchdowns in the regular season. Ridley was complimented by speedy, athletic backups Danny Woodhead and Shane Vereen. Their ability to run the football helped the Patriots put together an incredibly balanced and explosive offensive attack that put up a mild-boggling 557 points in the regular season and then another 41 points in their first playoff game. Think about that for a moment...the Patriots have scored almost 600 points this season.
It is this offensive firepower and the ability to run the football that makes this Patriots team more difficult to guard than the team the Ravens faced in last year's post-season. I've written many times this season about Brady's lightning quick release and the intricacy of the Patriots' offensive system. The Ravens, after all, didn't exactly shut down the Patriots offense in the first meeting between these two teams this season. The Ravens simply did what it took to make key stops towards the end of the game and the Ravens offense put up enough points to ultimately outscore the Patriots.
This Ravens team, however, is not the same one that the Patriots faced in week 3. Terrell Suggs did not play in that game, and the offensive line had not yet been reshuffled to its current dominant form. Lardarius Webb will not be there this week to cover Wes Welker, but the increased power of the Ravens pass rush and the addition of defensive back Corey Graham to the starting lineup will more than make up for absence of the Ravens best corner.
I could waste your time and mine by calculating the average points allowed and scored at home and on the road over the course of the season for each of these teams as many of the games that I would be plugging into each equation are irrelevant because of current differences in major intergral cogs to each team's figurative machine. I could then determine which games ARE relevant in that respect, but the sample size is simply too small in both cases that I feel as though I might infuriate a couple of good friends of mine who are Patriots fans by leaving out many impressive Patriots perfomances from the course of this season.
I am, thus, left to use a less mathematical method of determining the likely winner of this game. This game boils down to the major aforementioned factors of the health and current condition of each team. Which team has improved since the last meeting between these two teams? Well many would argue that the Patriots' defense improved as they acquired Aqib Talib to bolster a poorly performing secondary, and I certainly wouldn't argue with them on that point. The Ravens, on the other hand, have also improved defensively with the return of Terrell Suggs and the rise of Dannell Ellerbe. This was evident in the defense holding the Giants to 14 points, the Colts without a touchdown, and Peyton Manning's offense to 21 points (please note that 14 of the Broncos 35 points were scored by the Broncos special teams).
Offensively, the Patriots are now worse. Yes, their running game has improved over the course of this season, but that running game will take a hit without the Patriots' best blocking tight end. The Patriots pass offense lost its biggest, most effective target and touchdown leader. At the same time, the Ravens pass offense has come alive as the Ravens newly reshuffled line has been able to keep flacco upright and confident enough to step up into the pocket to launch deep balls to his speedy targets. It must be mentioned that Flacco put up a monster performance against one of the league's top defenses last weekend, and the Patriots pass defense is worse than the Broncos pass defense by quite a substantial margin. The Patriots pass defense ranked 29th in the league this season, while the Broncos pass defense ranked 3rd. Aqib Talib is better than anything the Patriots had earlier in the year, but he is certainly not better than the pro bowl cornerback, Champ Bailey, that Torrey Smith so gracefully embarrassed last weekend.
If the Patriots believe they'll render Torrey Smith ineffective by putting him in double coverage all night, they'll find themselves being methodically taken apart by Anquan Boldin, Dennis Pitta, Ray Rice and occassionally Ed Dickson, Jacoby Jones, and even Vonta Leach. The key is Flacco's protection and it all boils right back down to Bryant McKinney's return at left tackle.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This post is unquestionably slanted in favor of the Ravens. I am a Ravens fan, and if you didn't know that already, then I'm afraid there's little hope for you. The Patriots are a great football team, and they will undoubtedly make this a tough game for the Ravens. A big play or two on the part of either team could blow this game wide open. I simply can't ignore, however, the dominance the Ravens have displayed in their two playoff games thus far. The Ravens beat up on a decent but clearly flawed Colts team, and scored seemingly at will in one of the NFL's harshest environments against one of the NFL's top defenses. Flacco's previous inconsistent nature stemmed from the Ravens' inconsistent ability to protect the man. The Patriots, however, didn't sack Flacco once in the Ravens' week 3 victory, and it will be even harder to get to him this weekend.
On the other hand, the Patriots will have a harder time protecting Brady than they did last week against the Texans or in their first meeting with the Ravens this season. Paul Kruger has stepped up to become one of the leagues best pass rushers in the second half of this season, and Terrell Suggs was on fire with 10 tackles and 2 sacks on Peyton Manning last weekend despite his recent injury.
If the Patriots allowed the Texans to score so furiously in the 4th quarter, then they're going to have a tough day against a team that features the best deep passing game in the league and the only running back to rush for over 100 yards on the Patriots run defense all season. Oh...and complimentary running back Bernard Pierce is once again healthy and ready to add to the Ravens ground attack.
To put it simply, the Patriots were a better team than the Ravens for the vast majority of this season. They consistently dismantled teams and successully stopped the run week in and week out. The Ravens, however, have made too many adjustments and improvements in time for the playoffs and are the strongest team left at this point. Their offense and defense have now shown that they both travel and played well enough to win in the playoffs against a team that many people said was a lock to go to the Super Bowl. On top of ALL of that, Ray Lewis is back and playing his best football of the year with 30 tackles in only 2 post-season games. I had faith that the Ravens were strong enough to take down the Broncos, and I definitely have faith that they're more than strong enough to take down a Gronkless Patriots team. It'll be a great game and most likely a fight to the bitter end, but I truly believe Ray Lewis will be back after this weekend for one final game.
MY PREDICTION: RAVENS 34-27.
This is a game that will likely be remembered for a long time regardless of the outcome. I can't say that I'm a fan of Tom Brady, but I have the utmost respect for the consistency with which he and Bill Belichick have dominated the last decade of NFL football. This game features everything that true football fans love in a great championship rivarly game. We'll see big hits, long runs, spectacular passes, and equally spectactular catches. We'll see some of the greatest leaders in NFL history squaring off for one last time, and we'll see the energy and explosiveness of the talented young players on each team that will ultimately take their respective places. The Ravens had a daunting path to the Super Bowl going into the playoffs as they had to go against the Colts, go through the Denver, and will soon have to face the Patriots in Foxboro...but I wouldn't have it any other way. Only one last thing to say:
WHAT TIME IS IT?!?! GAME TIME!!!!!!
AS ALWAYS
GO RAVENS!!!
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