The Baltimore Ravens lost in Kansas City in Week 3 last year, and then at home to Cleveland in Week 4, to stand at 2-2. Then they won 12 straight to roll to a 14-2 record and hold one of the byes in the AFC side of the NFL playoffs. Then, the unthinkable happened, as the Tennessee Titans came to town for the divisional round of the playoffs. Ryan Tannehill and Derrick Henry torched the Ravens’ defense, which had not permitted more than 23 points since Week 4, in a 28-12 win that may have shown the rest of the league how to slow down the Baltimore offense. If you take a lead, then the Ravens will have to pass their way back into the game — but they are a run-first team. No team has had a longer, more painful off-season than the Ravens after seeing their high hopes dashed at home.
We have their NFL betting odds for winning the Super Bowl, the AFC and their own division — and some thoughts about their prospects.
NFL Betting News:
2020 Season Betting Analysis for Baltimore Ravens
Odds to Win Super Bowl LV: +500 | Check the Odds
Odds to Win the AFC Championship: +250 | Check the Odds
Odds to Win the AFC East: -180 | Check the Odds
Lamar Jackson is 19-3 as a starting quarterback in the regular season — and an 0-2 starter in the playoffs. On offense, they only lost one key player: Pro Bowl guard Marshal Yanda, who hung up the cleats after a storied 13-year career.
The Ravens’ offense is both old-school and innovative at the same time. They like to pound the ball on the ground, and they have a quarterback with a cannon of an arm and with speedy legs. Jackson and Mark Ingram II both ran for more than 1,000 yards a year ago, and the team loves to bleed the clock. In 2019, they had five scoring drives that lasted nine minutes or longer; in the NFL, no other franchise had more than one such drive.
The key is the deception that Jackson can pull off at the mesh point when he runs the read option. Defenders often have no idea who has the football, and so edge defenders can’t pin their ears back. If they cheat to the outside, then Jackson can just give the ball to Ingram or Gus Edwards. If they cheat to the inside, Jackson can keep the ball and win the race to the edge. The Ravens ran for 3,296 yards in 2019 — an NFL record for one season. Jackson became the first NFL player ever to gain 3,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards in the same season. For those who question his arm, Jackson threw 36 touchdown passes — tops in the league — with just six picks. He had no wide receiver with over 600 passing yards, so he can spread it around, although his favorite targets are tight end Mark Andrews and wide receiver Marquise Brown.
The Ravens’ defense was fourth in the NFL last year, but in those three losses, they looked like they were just beaten up at the point of attack. In those losses to Kansas City and Cleveland, they gave up more than 500 yards of offense in each game. If you watched the Ravens’ playoff loss to Tennessee, you got used to seeing Derrick Henry’s back, as the Tennessee running back kept finding huge holes in the Baltimore defense and running for big yardage. The Ravens drafted Patrick Queen out of LSU and Malik Harrison out of Ohio State to add to their inside linebacker corps. The Ravens love to blitz, and Queen can both drop into coverage and beat his man on the blitz. Brandon Williams is still in the middle of the 3-4 scheme, and he can stop runners.
The Baltimore specialists — kicker Justin Tucker, long snapper Morgan Cox and punter/holder Sam Koch — have combined for seven Pro Bowl appearances (three each for Tucker and Cox and one for Koch). Tucker is the most accurate place-kicker in league history, with 265 makes in 292 attempts (90.8 percent). The return game was a little pedestrian, but wide receiver James Proche, a rookie out of SMU, is pushing hard to return kickoffs and punts after the speed he showed in college.
So can the Ravens pull off all three wins — division, conference and Super Bowl? They have the talent, they made the right changes and they should have the hunger. We’ll know more when we see how they approach their season opener.
Baltimore Ravens | Check the Season Odds
