Following a dominant Christmas Day performance against the Houston Texans, all the talk surrounding the Baltimore Ravens was about Lamar Jackson playing his way back to MVP favorite status.
It shouldn’t be, though. After all, the Ravens have a much bigger trophy to chase.
Lost in the MVP drama between Jackson and Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills is that Baltimore is heating up at the exact right time. The Ravens are winners of three straight and 11 of 14 after starting 0-2, and they’ve taken command of the AFC North. All they need to do to clinch the division — and the likely No. 3 seed in the playoffs — is beat the 3-12 Cleveland Browns at home to close out their regular season.
The Ravens have been battle-tested against fellow playoff teams the past two weeks, and have dominated both of them by a combined 65-19 margin of victory. The Bills are also rolling, but their defense is a major red flag with upwards of 40 points given up in two of their past three contests. They also barely squeaked by the 3-12 New England Patriots on Sunday, winning 24-21.
If the Bills lose out, Baltimore could be the No. 2 seed. That’s highly unlikely considering Buffalo’s opponents are the 4-11 New York Jets and then the Patriots again, but the point remains that the Ravens are currently playing much better football. That will help Jackson’s MVP case over Allen’s, but more importantly, it makes the Ravens the biggest threat to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC playoffs.
That should be Baltimore’s primary concern in the season’s final stretch, and it very likely is despite the noise from the narrative-obsessed NFL media. The Chiefs, despite being 15-1, are vulnerable with an offense that hasn’t scored more than 30 points in a game all season. It’s worth noting the Ravens were an Isaiah Likely foot placement away from taking them to overtime back in Week 1.
Kansas City is beatable, and the only reason it feels otherwise is because they’re the back-to-back defending champions. Individual awards are great, but the bigger story is that Jackson and the Ravens are playing their way into an opportunity to do something much more impressive: win a Super Bowl.
