Road to the Super Bowl: Baltimore Ravens

By Sean Tepper, sportsnet.ca

With the Super Bowl XLVII less than a week away, sportsnet.ca takes a look at the Baltimore Ravens’ road to New Orleans.

What Happened Last Year

Last season marked a year of heartbreak for John Harbaugh’s Baltimore Ravens as the reigning AFC champs seemed poised to make their first Super Bowl appearance since winning the Lomardi trophy back in 2000.

And had it not been for a shanked field goal at the end of the fourth quarter of the AFC Championship game that cost Billy Cundiff his job, they would have.

There were a lot of question surrounding the Ravens at the beginning of the 2012-13 season. How would they rebound for such a deflating loss? Would Flacco, who declared himself to be an elite quarterback throughout training camp, live up to his lofty expectations? Would one of the oldest teams in the NFL be able to compete in the new pass happy NFL? Would Ray Lewis retire at the end of the season?

With Super Bowl XLVII’s kickoff less than a week away, let’s take some time to reflect on the season that was for the Ravens.

Ravens season in Review

Close games seemed to be a trend that the Ravens would follow throughout the first quarter of the season. After blowing out the division rival Cincinnati Bengals by more than 30 points in their Week 1 home-opener, Ray Lewis & Co., stayed true to their hard-nosed defensive identity as the ensuing five games were all decided by a touchdown or less.

Having held off a late fourth quarter comeback by Tony Romo’s Dallas Cowboys in Week 6, the Ravens enjoyed their best start to a season (5-1) since 2000, when Tony Banks and Jamal Lewis powered Baltimore to a 5-1 start that helped pave the way for their first and only Super Bowl appearance and win.

If the first half of the season was any indication, Ray Lewis and Baltimore’s seasoned defence seemed ready to take the AFC by storm.

Quarterback Joe Flacco was silencing his critics and showed that he deserved to be mentioned in the same conversation as Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger and Matt Ryan; Ray Rice continued to rip through defences, as he was on pace for his fourth consecutive 1,000 yard season; and at the ripe age of 37, Ray Lewis was once again at the heart of one the NFL’s hardest hitting and most fundamentally sound defences. In his fifth season as Baltimore’s head coach, Harbaugh appeared to quell whatever worries might have come along with being nine months removed from a heartbreaking loss in the AFC championship game, as the team was firing on all cylinders.

That is until they took a trip to Reliant Stadium.

In what ended up being their biggest loss of the season, the Houston Texans overtook the Ravens atop the AFC, humiliating them in a 43-13 loss.

The offence, defence and coaching staff looked lost, as the Texans amassed 420 yards of offence and held Flacco & Co., to under 200 yards of total offence.

Although the loss appeared to be an anomaly — the Ravens went on to win their next four games against Cleveland, Oakland, Pittsburgh and San Diego, all teams that finished the seasons with a .500 or sub-.500 record — many critics began questioning whether or not the Ravens could beat a quality opponent, let alone be legitimate Super Bowl contenders.

Entering Week 13 with a 9-2 record, the next five weeks would feature matchups against the Denver Broncos, Washington Redskins, Cincinnati Bengals and New York Giants. Finishing this stretch with a winning record would silence their naysayers and solidify their place as one of the NFL’s elite teams, while losing would confirm what their critics were saying.

First a loss to the division rival Steelers was quickly followed up by losses to the Redskins and Broncos. Although they were able to snap their three-game losing streak by beating the struggling Giants, the Raven dropped their season finale to the Bengals and limped into the playoffs having lost four of their last five regular season games.

Road to the Super Bowl

On Jan. 2, four days before their wild card matchup against the Indianapolis Colts, Ray Lewis announced that this would be his last season in the NFL. In an emotional speech that both shocked and inspired his teammates, the Ravens dominated Andrew Luck and the Colts, ending the rookie’s Cinderella-esque rookie season in dramatic fashion by holding them to under 10 points.

Next up was a thrilling double-overtime win against the ageless Peyton Manning and a revitalized Broncos squad that heralded one of the league’s most dynamic passing attacks. That shocking upset was followed up by a dominating 28-13 win against the New England Patriots that saw both Harbaugh and Flacco out-perform future hall-of-famers at their respective positions. The victory was confirmation that this Ravens team was playing with as much confidence as the squad that won the Lombardi trophy over a decade ago.

Turning Point of the Season

This is a tough point to judge, because the Ravens had two storylines that elevated this team to the next level.

The first was the firing of offensive coordinator Cam Cameron. Following a deflating 31-28 overtime loss at the hands of Mike Shannhan’s Redskins, the Ravens fired Cameron and replaced him with former Colts head coach Jim Caldwell. Although it seemed surprising that a team with a then 9-4 record would fire their offensive mastermind, many fans were aggressively calling for Cameron’s job following the team’s Dec. 2 loss to the Steelers. In that game, Cameron elected to shut running back Ray Rice out of the offence by not giving him the ball once. Since taking over the position, Caldwell has powered the team to three straight playoff wins and has helped harness Flacco’s abilities in ways that we have never seen.

The other turning point of the season is more of emotional one rather than a personnel decision. When Ray Lewis announced that he would be retiring from professional football at the end of the season, his team seemed to rally behind and help the veteran linebacker play some of the best football of his career. While the legend of Ray Lewis will forever be ingrained in Baltimore’s defensive identity, the extra motivation that his retirement announcement has brought about exceeds any personnel changes that the team went through over the season and have made the Ravens look like a team of destiny.

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