Being a fan of the Baltimore Ravens is hard.
Stay with me here.
The Ravens have gone 68-30 since 2019, Lamar Jackson’s first season.
Sixteen of those defeats came in 2021 or 2022, the two seasons that Lamar Jackson suffered injuries.
Jackson himself is 70-24 in his regular season career. But I digress.
The pain of being good
Beyond Lamar Jackson, the Ravens are a good team, perhaps the strongest on paper in the NFL.
It is hard to find a position of significant weakness in Baltimore, with everyone fully healthy.
Understandably, the Ravens are expected to challenge for the Super Bowl – again.
And here is where the pain comes in.
The Ravens have been, at best, disappointing in the postseason – and again, no it is not all on Jackson.
Let us put the postseason aside for just a moment – we will come to that in January hopefully. The Ravens have competed for the top seeds in the AFC playoffs in three of the past five seasons.
It seems unlikely the Ravens fail to make the playoffs in 2025.
Given their strength in the regular season and struggles in the postseason, we cannot avoid the feeling that regular season games do not matter.
How to break the cycle
The typical NFL fan has now come to the attitude, understandably, of ‘prove it to me in January’.
The Ravens are by no means the first team that this has applied to.
Peyton Manning’s Colts or Tom Brady’s relative lack of Super Bowls between 2005-2013 come to mind.
In reality, every game matters, of course.
The Ravens do need to win every game they can to avoid having to travel to Arrowhead, Orchard Park or Paycor Stadium in the playoffs, if they make it.
Not that the Ravens have performed well in Baltimore in the playoffs.
That will be the feeling again if they deliver on their potential in 2025.
The season starts in earnest in January
I am not expecting anyone to shed even a crocodile tear for the Ravens ‘plight’, far from it.
But in reality, stacking wins to secure a higher playoff seed is not quite as dramatic or nerve-shredding as clawing for every win to secure a playoff spot or a division title.
And to be fair, winning the AFC North is far less certain than making the playoffs.
But regardless, the regular season at the moment just lacks the same juice that it has in the past for Ravens fans.
They know that if they make it, the playoffs is when their season will be truly judged.
And the only way to get out of this cycle is to make it to the big games and deliver when the Lamar Hunt and Lombardi trophies are on the line.
