Baltimore Ravens shaping up to be wild card team at the moment
The AFC North is up for grabs but the Baltimore Ravens look like a wild card team:
The Baltimore Ravens should get one of the seven playoff spots this season. They already have five wins and their schedule isn’t incredibly hard. The Ravens have a very good chance at having double digit wins on the year. That’s the good news. The road to the Super Bowl is still a road the Ravens can hope to drive on.
Here’s the bad news. The Steelers have no losses at the moment. Assuming the Steelers beat the Cincinnati Bengals, they will be 3-0 in AFC North games after week 10. They play one of the easiest schedules in the NFL and it’s not getting much more grueling for them. Will they lose? Almost certainly. Will they lose enough for the Ravens to take the AFC North crown? That’s a low probability.
The AFC North is still up for grabs, but it’s shaping up to be the Steelers. It’s not even certain that the Ravens will finish second in the division. They just lost their left tackle, Ronnie Stanley, for the rest of the year. The Cleveland Browns have the same record as Baltimore and now they’re not just feeling dangerous, they are dangerous. This is all the bad news.
The Ravens aren’t a bad football team. They have a very respectable defense and the offense has its moments. The season isn’t over and there is no reason to sound the alarm of doom, gloom and every thing sad. The Ravens have a chance of finding themselves and having a great season. They just need to get hot at the right time and anything can happen.
The expectations the Ravens came into the season with need to be put into a trash bag. 14-2 is most likely not happening again. The number one seed is almost 100 percent not happening again.
The Ravens may or may not be Super Bowl contenders, but they aren’t in the same category as the Kansas City Chiefs and the Steelers. They aren’t there at the moment and there is no promise that they will be. The season has opportunity left in the bag, but it could go either way.
The Ravens schedule may not be brutal but they have the Colts, Patriots, Titans and Steelers in the next four weeks. The Colts and the Patriots may not be great, but there are no easy games in that stretch. If John Harbaugh can get the team to go 3-1 in that stretch they would be 8-3, which would be good. It still probably isn’t good enough to win the division, especially if the Steelers beat them again.
If the Ravens go 2-2 in that stretch, which is very possible, the Ravens would be 7-4. They’d be in the thick of things but it would be much more muddled. The Ravens currently would be the fifth seed in the playoffs. They have the same record as the Titans, Colts and Browns. If the Ravens have anything less than 2-2 in the next four games they could be in trouble,
The bottom line:
Last season is last season. The Ravens just gave the Steelers a clear path to a division title. Now the Ravens have to aim for the wild card unless they can get help from Pittsburgh’s opponents and take them down on Thanksgiving night.
Next. NFL Trade Deadline: More targets for the Ravens. dark
There is still plenty to play for in this season. The loss to the Steelers makes it feel otherwise. The division title may or may not be up for grabs. Right now, the Ravens can’t worry about that. They just need to stay in the playoff picture. They need to make this the best season it can be.