3rd: Baltimore Ravens
Speaking of being more bark than bite, there is no better way to describe the Baltimore Ravens. When looking at overall talent on both the field and the sideline, there is no good reason for the Ravens to have achieved as little as they have in the Lamar Jackson era.
This is not to say that the Ravens are a bad squad, as they were able to amass 10 wins this season and make the AFC Wild Card Round. Going by how close their playoff loss was in spite of Lamar Jackson’s aforementioned absence, one must wonder what they could have done if they were at their best.
Unfortunately for them, though, today’s discussion has nothing to do with hypothetical playoff performances. Rather, it has to do with how well they will likely hold up next season when compared to those in their division. In that regard, I cannot confidently give them any ranking higher than third.
Something that I have long believed is that Baltimore has the pieces necessary for becoming a top contender in the AFC, but the blame for it failing to do so falls heavily on their divisional counterparts—most notably Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.
For one, Cincinnati is clearly the best-built team in the AFC North, winning it in back-to-back years (along with coming very close to doing so for the entire conference). As for the Steelers, they have given the Ravens a heaping amount of trouble throughout the Lamar Jackson era. This is despite the unpleasant final years of Ben Roethlisberger’s career headlining what was already a worse quality of play overall.
But hey, over the past few years, Lamar Jackson has missed some serious time for multiple reasons (injury and COVID, to be specific). Certainly that makes up for it, right? Well, not entirely.
As we’ve already established, Baltimore has blatantly failed to meet its potential, and it takes more than some QB rehabilitation days to earn such a sorry image. Jackson having been in the league for almost five years now doesn’t make things any better, either.
But even if we were to completely disregard his stretches of absence, we would still see several instances of him and his Ravens falling short in games that they have no business doing so in. Whether said games unfold due to inconsistency, careless mistakes, missed opportunities, or merely being outplayed, there is no good reason for them to be seen as often as they have been so far.
Again, the Ravens have the potential to be much more than what I’ve described, but we all know the old saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me countless times, and maybe you just aren’t as good as we thought you were.