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The Baltimore Ravens have been spending the entire offseason reflecting on their struggles last season, and that reflection could make them primed to be the most dangerous team in the league in 2020.
According to Fox Sports analyst Colin Cowherd, it could even mean the Ravens are primed to blow through the season and finish with a mark of perfection. Recently, Cowherd explained why he thinks the Ravens will have a huge season, and he admitted he thinks it has everything to do with the pain they sustained last year and how motivating that figures to be.
That might not be the case for their closest competition, both teams who competed in last year’s Super Bowl.
Cowherd said:
“Of the 3 great teams in the league, it’s actually been fairly easy for Kansas City. Patrick Mahomes learns from Alex Smith, next year it’s the AFC Championship, next year they win the Super Bowl. Pretty quick. San Francisco, first year Jimmy Garoppolo and Kyle Shanahan are together, they roll the good teams. They go to the Super Bowl. Of the great rosters, (in Baltimore), it’s been more of struggle than you think. It pissed (Lamar Jackson) off. The scariest thing in the world in pro sports is great people who have been humiliated, get out of their way. The AFC is a 2 team race. One of them is holding champagne parades. The other has been humiliated. Watch it. I’ve never said this in my life. Baltimore is the two scariest things in football. Stacked and pissed, because it’s been hard. Ravens 16-0. Count on it.”
Interestingly, the Ravens themselves have no thoughts on this line of thinking from the media. As John Harbaugh recently said, he refers to such lines of thinking as “noise.” Clearly, the Ravens are locked in ahead of a key season on the field.
It’s a season Cowherd thinks is likely to be dominant thanks to the struggles the team has already had.
Colin Cowherd on Ravens 2020 Bandwagon
This isn’t the first time Cowherd has warned folks the Ravens might be primed for a huge season. Recently, Cowherd explained that he thinks the Ravens can go 16-0 this season due largely in part to what they added over the offseason, the roster they maintain and the travel they have on their side for 2020. Cowherd qualified his thoughts by saying he never picks teams to go undefeated, but the Ravens have a lot working for them.
Cowherd said:
“When I look at Baltimore, Baltimore is the first team the more I think about it, the more I thought, I’m starting to think could go 16-0,” he said. “If you look at Baltimore, they bring back everybody. They upgraded their secondary. They now have the best secondary, the best running game in the NFL. Their toughest road game is at Philadelphia, they could take a bus there. They don’t go west. Baltimore travels 6,000 miles. They’re in a division where Cincinnati has a rookie quarterback, Cleveland’s got a rookie coach and Pittsburgh has an old quarterback off an injury. Baltimore is a rare team for me, I think it is very possible they steamroll Cleveland early and they just start rolling and don’t slow down. I think Baltimore, continuity, no OTA’s, a chip on their shoulder, schedule perfect, you may be looking at a 16-0 football team.”
The last team to go 16-0 during a regular season was the Patriots in 2007, but they met a losing fate in the Super Bowl after running their record to 18-0 and were unable to finish perfect. It’s a rare feat to go undefeated in an NFL season, and the last team to finish perfect were the 1972 Miami Dolphins. Since, few teams have even come close to that type of year.
If the Ravens finish 16-0, they would give themselves a chance at finishing the league’s first perfect season in decades. It would be quite a story, indeed.
Ravens Predicted for Average 2020 Finish
Others don’t see things as so cut and dry for the Ravens. Recently, USA Today writer Nate Davis took a look at making some predictions for next season, and while he had the Ravens doing some big winning, he didn’t have the title coming home to Baltimore.
According to Davis, the Ravens are going to win the AFC North, go 13-3 and win the AFC Championship while advancing all the way to the Super Bowl. There, they will lose to the New Orleans Saints.
“The top seed in last year’s AFC playoff bracket has a golden opportunity to make amends given it will travel a league-low 6,310 miles while playing this year’s easiest schedule (.438 opponent winning percentage in 2019) – one that wraps with non-playoff teams from last year over the final six weeks. Factor in the addition of veteran DL Calais Campbell and potential impact rookies in LB Patrick Queen and RB J.K. Dobbins … and this doesn’t seem like a fair fight.”
Fair fight or not, losing in the Super Bowl would be a huge frustration for the Ravens, who have spent the offseason improving in a ton of ways in order to take steps forward. Technically, it would be a step forward for the team, but it would still represent another disappointment a year after the team was booted from the playoffs early on.
Ravens Motivated Heading Into 2020 Season
Recently, NFL.com writer Marc Sessler put together a list of teams which will come into the season with a chip on their shoulder. According to Sessler, the Ravens are high on the list thanks to how last season ended.
Sessler wrote:
“Those same Titans operated as a chaos-inducing, third-party candidate by marching into Baltimore and thrashing the Ravens. To the naked eye, Baltimore appeared lost in the latter stages of a belladonna voyage as Derrick Henry flung dazed defenders into the terrible Maryland night. In a flash, the mighty Ravens — their 14-2 record, their MVP quarterback and all their boasts — were reduced to salt. Few teams burn more brightly for a chance to make things right.”
The way the Ravens lost in 2019 should have them very motivated into 2020, and could drive them forward most of the year. It’s safe to say of all the pain that was endured last season in the playoffs, nobody sustained as much as Baltimore.
That could be a huge motivating factor for the Ravens according to Cowherd in the end.
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