Monday night’s AFC showdown in Baltimore is a must-win for the Ravens.
It may be only Week 3 but it feels like the Game of the Year (at least in the AFC) is set to take place on Monday night. Patrick Mahomes and the 2-0 Kansas City Chiefs head to M&T Bank Stadium to take on the 2-0 Baltimore Ravens in a showdown of the last two NFL MVPs as well as a tiebreaker edge in the race for home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs.
This is the third career meeting between Mahomes and Jackson, with the Chiefs winning regular-season showdowns in both 2018 and 2019. Each of those matchups came at Arrowhead Stadium, so this is the first time that Jackson gets to have home-field advantage against Mahomes.
2018’s meeting went to overtime with the Chiefs winning on a field goal in a game that is often forgotten about as one of the first starts of Jackson’s career. The rematch came ironically in Week 3 of the 2019 season, where the Chiefs won a 33-28 thriller on the strength of a brilliant performance out of Mahomes, who completed 27 of 37 passes for 374 yards and three touchdowns.
Mahomes easily overshadowed Jackson in that game since the Ravens’ quarterback had one of his worst passing performances of the season, completing just 22 of 43 passes for 267 yards. Jackson has yet to throw for a touchdown against the Chiefs’ defense and this is a game that the Ravens need to win in order to set themselves up for success in 2020.
While everyone talks about how physical a game the NFL’s brand of football is, the mental aspect of the sport cannot be overlooked. Aspects like momentum are critical to a team’s success as well as a psychological edge that one team can gain over another with a sustained winning streak over a rival.
The AFC East has seen this plenty in recent years as the New England Patriots have lorded over their division, partially due to their continued wins over the Buffalo Bills. The two teams were nearly equal last season but Buffalo came up short in Week 16 with a chance to win the AFC East due to the mental pressure of beating a team that has owned them for years.
We also saw this happen last season in the NFC Championship Game between the Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers. The two teams met on a Sunday night in San Francisco earlier in the year where the 49ers absolutely embarrassed the Packers and the lingering impacts of that game carried over into the rematch, which turned into another San Francisco blowout.
If the Chiefs are able to beat the Ravens for a third straight time it will raise serious doubts about Baltimore’s ability to top Kansas City in a big spot. This holds doubly true for Jackson, who needs to put up a good performance against the Chiefs so he can build confidence for a seemingly inevitable playoff rematch.
The Ravens are also the team entering the game with all the pressure of trying to live up to the hype of their expectations. Kansas City has already shown they can win in big spots with their Super Bowl title run while Baltimore is coming off a 14-2 season that ended in an unceremonious beatdown at the hands of the Tennessee Titans in the divisional round. Falling to the Chiefs in their first big matchup of the season would get all the sharks circling the waters in Baltimore to call out the Ravens for being frauds who can’t beat a worthy opponent in the clutch.
The playoff ramifications of this matchup also can’t be understated. The winner of this game will get the critical head-to-head tiebreaker for playoff seeding purposes, which could be massive in a year with the expanded postseason. One of these two likely will end up with home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, which would guarantee a first-round bye, something not afforded to the two seed this year with the extra wild card entrant.
The Chiefs can feel reasonably confident about their ability to win against anyone pretty much anywhere thanks to their history with Mahomes. Baltimore hasn’t proven a thing in that regard yet so this matchup with Kansas City is their major opportunity to show they are a true threat to bring home the Lombardi Trophy. A loss here would raise more questions that the Ravens don’t want to answer over the course of the season.