Do the Ravens have an easier path?

The Baltimore Ravens will face the Tennessee Titans in the divisional round. Did their path to Super Bowl LIV down in Miami get a lot easier?

The Baltimore Ravens, like the rest of us, watched a wild Wild Card Weekend in the NFL playoffs last week. The road team won three of the four games and the Buffalo Bills nearly made it a clean sweep, but couldn’t hold on vs. the Houston Texans. Does last week’s wildness in the Wild Card round make the Ravens’ path to Super Bowl LIV down in Miami easier than if we got chalk?

On this week’s episode of Stacking the Box, FanSided‘s Matt Verderame and Mark Carman, along with former NFL offensive lineman Geoff Schwartz, assess if the path to Super Bowl LIV is easier for teams that were on bye last week like the top-seeded Ravens (53:15).

Verderame believes that the Ravens’ path to the Super Bowl is slightly harder than it was at the start of the NFL playoffs. That’s because he feels the team Baltimore will be hosting this week in the No. 6 Tennessee Titans presents a more difficult matchup for Baltimore over the Texans or the Bills. However, he does feel that the Ravens advance to the AFC Championship anyway.

Schwartz doesn’t think it’s an easier path for the Ravens to get to the Super Bowl, as the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds are still alive in both conferences. Well, of course, they are. That’s because all the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds were on bye last week. They haven’t played yet. Come on! That being said, he does say not having to face the New England Patriots at any point is huge for the Ravens.

Overall, one could argue it got slightly harder for the Ravens because Tennessee is no easy out and match up better against Baltimore than either the Bills or the Texans could ever hope to. That being said, not having a potential meeting with the Patriots on the horizon is massive for the Ravens’ chances to reach Super Bowl No. 3 in franchise history.

Ultimately, Baltimore has to beat Tennessee and then beat the winner of the Texans vs. the Kansas City Chiefs game to get to the Super Bowl. Kansas City will be a tough matchup for the Ravens, but Baltimore will face any AFC opponent the rest of the way at home this postseason.

Here are a few other topics discussed on this week’s episode of Stacking the Box:

• Saints shockingly go home on controversial call (4:24)
• Should the NFL change overtime rules? (8:39)
• Does Tom Brady return to the Patriots? (25:19)
• What are we looking forward to this week? (57:10)

All this and more!

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