Sole possession of first place is on the line, so the stakes couldn’t be higher at this point in the regular season. Both teams have talked about the importance of playing with physicality and poise. There is a season-ending loss to revenge. Angst has descended on both teams’ fan bases.
Sunday’s game between the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers at M&T Bank Stadium has all the elements of what’s made this matchup one of the NFL’s best and most enduring rivalries. This year’s first of at least two chapters is also accompanied by something far less typical for both of these organizations: a sense of disappointment and frustration for how the season is unfolding.
There are calls for change, growing in intensity with each passing week, in both cities as well.
In many ways, Sunday’s result could be a defining one for the Ravens and Steelers, two 6-6 teams coming off desultory losses and don’t currently resemble Super Bowl contenders. Somebody, though, has to win the AFC North. Sunday’s game, along with the rematch in Pittsburgh four weeks later, figures to go a long way toward deciding which team that will be.
You wouldn’t know it, however, from the prevailing conversation surrounding the game, which has gotten far less billing this week in comparison to Dallas Cowboys-Detroit Lions, Chicago Bears-Green Bay Packers, Indianapolis Colts-Jacksonville Jaguars and Houston Texans-Kansas City Chiefs.
“Honestly, when I look at it, it is a little different,” Ravens veteran cornerback Marlon Humphrey said Wednesday. “It’s weird. Maybe I’m on ESPN a little too much, and I guess the AFC North is the mid (division). I think that’s not normal, but it is two teams that literally can control their own narrative. I think it’s a great opportunity. There’s no better stage than two teams just trying to get right.”
The Athletic’s NFL Playoff Simulator gives the Ravens a 76 percent chance to make the playoffs if they win Sunday. If they lose, their odds drop to 32 percent. The Steelers’ playoff chances currently sit at 30 percent. By beating the Ravens on Sunday, they’d increase to 65 percent. With a loss, they’d fall to 18 percent.
There’s a good reason why NFL analyst Aaron Schatz, who specializes in statistical methods, wrote this week that the Ravens-Steelers matchup has more “playoff leverage” than any game contested this season.
Yet, the game’s weighty ramifications have been largely overshadowed by conversations about the futures of the team’s longtime Super Bowl-winning head coaches, the health of the two starting quarterbacks and the on-field issues that have plagued both teams and were on full display in the Ravens’ 32-14 loss to the still-alive Cincinnati Bengals on Thanksgiving night, and the Steelers’ 26-7 loss to the Buffalo Bills three days later.
Last week’s results set up the first December or later matchup between the two teams with neither owning a winning record since 1999. The Ravens have a monitor just outside their training room with a countdown to Sunday’s kickoff. Yet the latest Ravens-Steelers week has already felt unique compared to so many others before it.
“We both sit at 6-6,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said Tuesday. “Both of those positions come with some scars certainly, but they need to come with some lessons learned as well. I think the team that displays the ability to apply those lessons best is going to be the team that’s going to be in position to control this game and thus be in control of the North.”
Tomlin, the NFL’s longest-tenured head coach, has been at the eye of the storm. “Fire Tomlin” chants broke out Sunday at Acrisure Stadium with the Steelers en route to their fifth loss in seven games. Tomlin, who is in his 19th season, is suddenly facing questions about whether he and the team he coaches would benefit from a parting, a suggestion that longtime Steelers stars Ben Roethlisberger and James Harrison backed this week on separate podcasts.
The Ravens’ John Harbaugh, who is in his 18th season and is the NFL’s second-longest-tenured head coach behind Tomlin, heard the same chants and boos, albeit at more muted levels, during home losses to the Houston Texans and Los Angeles Rams earlier this season. One of the preseason Super Bowl favorites, the Ravens started 1-5 and won five straight games before losing to the Bengals last week in another game where quarterback Lamar Jackson looked like a shell of himself and the defense wasn’t good enough to carry the day.
“We’ve both been in this situation before, but this is our time and this is their time,” Harbaugh said Wednesday. “We’re looking forward (to it).”
On Sunday, Harbaugh and Tomlin will coach against each other for the 39th time, the second-most for two coaches in league history. Only George Halas and Curly Lambeau opposed each other more.
The two longtime coaches, who aren’t close but do seemingly share mutual respect, have talked annually about how special the matchup is to them. They’ve had a front-row seat for many of the rivalry’s defining moments, from Troy Polamalu’s pick six in the 2008 AFC Championship Game to Antonio Brown’s division-securing “Immaculate Extension” on Christmas night in 2016 to Torrey Smith’s last-minute touchdown that silenced Heinz Field in 2011 to Terrell Suggs’ between-the-legs interception in a wild-card game during the 2014 season.
Tomlin once stepped on the field and broke Jacoby Jones’ stride. Haloti Ngata once broke Roethlisberger’s nose. And Roethlisberger, and even Charlie Batch, Byron Leftwich and Kenny Pickett, have all broken the Ravens’ hearts.
“There’s been a lot on the line in past years and this year is no different,” said Pittsburgh defensive lineman Cam Heyward. “Obviously, there’s a lot of great players that have been involved in it. But also, I just think it’s come down to one possession. Usually, these games are separated by like a field goal. When you put it all together, it makes for special games. You want to be a part of that.”
Ten of the last 12 regular-season meetings have been decided by seven points or less. The Steelers won eight of those 12 matchups, but the last time the teams met on the field, roughly 11 months ago in Baltimore, the Ravens thumped their biggest rival 28-14 in an AFC wild-card game. Baltimore rushed for 299 yards in that game, maintaining a physicality advantage in the trenches that sticks in the craw of the current Steelers.
The two organizations share similar team-building philosophies and tenets, and they constantly emphasize toughness, physicality and resilience. That’s one explanation for why the teams play so many close games.
Former Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome used to say the Baltimore front office built the team with beating the Steelers in mind. Years later, there is a well-worn phrase that is inescapable in the Ravens’ locker room when they’re preparing to play the Steelers: You’re not officially a Raven until you beat the Steelers.
Current Steelers inside linebacker Patrick Queen, a 2020 Ravens first-round pick, knows it well.
He remembers the week of his first Steelers-Ravens game five years ago. Harbaugh stood in front of the meeting room and played highlights that depicted the biggest hits and most memorable moments from the series’ history. Ravens defensive coordinator Zach Orr, who has played and coached in this rivalry, has done the same thing this week.
“You got all those big-time names, all the Hall of Famers,” Queen said Wednesday. “You see all those highlights, and it sticks with you, and it lets you know what the rivalry is about and how great you could be, just from games like this.”
Patrick Queen, a 2020 first-round pick of the Ravens, has been on both sides of this rivalry. (Joe Sargent / Getty Images)
To some outside the respective locker rooms, the rivalry has lost a bit of luster. The rhetoric between the two teams, often charged by the likes of Suggs and Joey Porter Sr., has toned down considerably over the years and been replaced by willing nods of respect.
“I think it’s respect, but, you know, these two teams are trying to bloody each other up,” Heyward said. “It’s always a bloodbath when you play.”
There is a sense of urgency for both teams, who know that at 6-6, winning the division is the most likely path to the playoffs, given the quality and depth of the AFC wild-card field. The Steelers led the Ravens by three games a little more than a month ago, but Baltimore pulled even at the end of Week 12. Neither team, however, is where it wants to be from a record standpoint, despite sharing the lead in a division that was initially touted as one of the league’s best.
“You never would have envisioned 6-6 at this point with the expectations, but at the end of the day, expectations are expectations, and they don’t mean anything,” Ravens middle linebacker Roquan Smith said. “It’s more so about what you go out and do.
“If you told me, Week 14, at the beginning of the season, you’ll be tied for first place, you control your own destiny, I’m signing myself up for that every day of the week and twice on Sunday. I’m sure each and every guy can attest to that in the locker room.”
The Steelers have won nine or more games in 10 of the past 11 years, but they haven’t had a playoff victory since the 2016 season. The standard is high in Pittsburgh, although this year’s squad had modest expectations. It was hoped that the addition of future Hall of Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers and star wide receiver DK Metcalf would buoy the offense, and bringing in Jalen Ramsey would solidify an already star-studded defense. The recipe looked good for a while, but Pittsburgh has suddenly fallen on hard times.
The Ravens’ issues have been a far bigger surprise. Many pundits touted them in the preseason as having the most talented roster in the NFL. This was the year, many felt, that Jackson and company would finally get over the hump after making the postseason in six of the previous seven years and failing to advance to a Super Bowl.
There’s been turbulence from the jump. They blew a 15-point lead in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter in a Week 1 loss to the Bills, and they struggled to recover. The defense was brutal early. The offense has struggled mightily of late, and Jackson has rarely looked like the player who holds two league MVP awards in his home.
“We’re too good of a team on paper,” Humphrey said, lamenting how the Ravens haven’t played good complementary football all season. “Now, it’s time to be a good team on Sunday.”
Or else?
“Every game you play in the NFL is very meaningful. If you can’t get up for this one, I think that shows something about your character, that shows something about your will. And honestly, I think that just shows if you are a Raven or if you’re not a Raven,” Humphrey added. “How we come out of this game and how we prepare this week kind of echoes, not only for this game, but for the rest of the season, because we’re basically in playoff football right now.
“They say that there’s no must-win game, but this is definitely a must-win game.”