Handicapping The Ravens Super Bowl Chances
So here is your soon-to-be Super Bowl-champion Baltimore Ravens:
The Ravens are a team that somehow lost to the Philadelphia Eagles, and only three other teams can brag about something like that.
Sunday, February 03, 2013
Baltimore vs San Francisco
6:30 PM ET
Odds: San Francisco -3.5 at Bovada
Over/Under Odds: 47.5
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They are a team that basically stumbled into the playoffs, winning only one game in December.
Eleven teams gave up fewer points than did Baltimore this season, and it’s been a half-decade since Baltimore hasn’t been in the top five in that category.
They are where they are today because like so many Super Bowl teams before them, they got hot at the right time. And assuming the extra week off helps them heal and enables their veterans to rest their weary bones for seven more days and their muscles don’t start to atrophy, come Sunday night at about 9:30 p.m. Eastern time the Baltimore Ravens will be celebrating another championship.
In the playoffs momentum isn’t everything, but it certainly can cover up a lot of flaws.
At quarterback, for example.
You can make a valid argument that the Ravens have had the second-best quarterback on the field in all three of their playoff wins, though Joe Flacco would get plenty of support in bars ringing the Inner Harbor after beating back Andrew Luck (Colts), Peyton Manning (Broncos) and Tom Brady (Patriots) in a three-game playoff run that evokes memories of the New York Giants’ sprints to the Super Bowl following the 2007 and 2011 seasons. [soliloquy id=”82219″]
Flacco, who caused unibrows to be raised everywhere before the season when he said he should be considered in the same class as Brady, Aaron Rodgers and the Mannings, has to his credit raised his game in the playoffs.
He was as good as he had to be (282 yards, 2 TDs, no INTs) in the win over Indy, outplayed Peyton Manning (331, 3 TDs and zero INTs) at Denver, and was as efficient as necessary (three more TDs) in schooling the Pats and Brady in the AFC Championship Game.
Eight TD passes in the playoffs from Flacco. Those kinds of performances make life easier for RB Ray Rice and allow an aging defense to not have to win every game the way it used to. Win-win for everyone.
To beat the Niners, the Ravens will have to adjust their defense.
Instead of pressuring up the middle, the Ravens will secure the edge and keep Kaepernick from straying too far from the pocket. CBs will attack San Francisco receivers as they start their routes, much like they did to the Patriots in the AFC title game.
And Flacco will be only as good as he has to be, keeping the Baltimore offense on the field and allowing Ray Lewis, Terrell Suggs, Bernard Pollard and Haloti Ngata to stay fresh for the fourth period. When the Ravens will find a way to win, like they have done throughout the playoffs.
As someone once said, when you have momentum, you have confidence squared.
And the Ravens have both Joe and Mo, and that should be more than enough.
