After a trio of Wild Card matchups that weren’t exactly memorable, the AFC’s Divisional Round promises to pack a punch — and plenty of pressure.
No two quarterbacks face more pressure to advance than the two men meeting in Buffalo on Sunday night. Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen has done it all this season, but Mahomes & Co. keeps getting in his way as he tries to win it all. Lamar Jackson knows that feeling well, having run into the red and gold brick wall that is the Kansas City Chiefs in last year’s AFC Championship.
Pressure? Yeah, just a little.
Here’s a look at the marquee AFC Divisional Round matchup between the Bills and Ravens, with one pressing question for each club.
No. 3 Baltimore Ravens @ No. 2 Buffalo Bills | Sunday 6:30 p.m. ET
Consideration for the NFL’s MVP award is limited to the regular season, but maybe the league can make an exception this time because Sunday night’s showdown between Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson feels like a referendum on this year’s award. We could review each QB’s regular-season feats — filled with career-highs for both — but that’s not the point of this matchup. Because this isn’t really about the MVP — it’s about two elite quarterbacks vying for the opportunity to claim a different piece of hardware, which has alluded them so far in their young and illustrious careers. It’s about legacies and windows of contention and ticking clocks and rewriting the narratives that are proven right every year they fail to reach the game’s biggest stage.
The Divisional Round stage doesn’t feel like a grand enough stage for this one, does it?
One key question for the Ravens: Can the Jackson-Henry run game keep rolling?
No team racked up more rushing yards in 2024 than the Baltimore Ravens, who led the league not just in total yardage on the ground but in yards per carry (5.8), first-down success rate when rushing (29.6), and explosive runs of 20 yards or more (29).
Few teams know this better than the Bills, who fell prey back in Week 4 to Baltimore’s run-heavy gameplan. Derrick Henry had his best game of the season in Baltimore’s 35-10 statement win, rushing for 199 yards on 24 carries — including an 87-yard touchdown sprint. He caught a pass for another score, too. Between Henry and RB2 Justice Hill, running backs were responsible for four of Baltimore’s five TDs that game (Lamar Jackson had the fifth on a run of his own). Hill was used heavily in the passing game, catching a TD pass and running one in. Could he be a not-so-secret weapon in this matchup?
Not much has changed for the Ravens’ offence since then — they racked up 299 rushing yards against Pittsburgh last Saturday, with Henry posting 186 himself. A lot has changed since for the Bills, though — and that’s the key here. Buffalo was without linebackers Matt Milano and Terrel Bernard and cornerback Taron Johnson — all three of whom are vital parts of the Bills’ run defence, and all three of whom will be in the lineup Sunday night. Buffalo is a different team with those three in the lineup. Last Sunday against Denver, the unit held the Broncos to just 79 rushing yards on just 17 carries — hardly a comparison for the Ravens (it’s hard to compare any offence to the one in Baltimore) but notable considering how little the run game registered in Buffalo’s win over the Broncos.
One key question for the Bills: Can Allen get a little help?
We’ve already looked at how different today’s Bills’ defence is compared to the banged-up one that first met the Ravens back in Week 4, but what about the offence? Rookie Keon Coleman was still developing his game, Mack Hollins wasn’t at his best, and Amari Cooper was still playing for the Browns at the time. While much has been made about Allen’s ability to make magic on offence without much star-power around him, he’ll need his weapons to be at their best if he’s to solve Baltimore’s defence.
Can Cooper cause problems for the Ravens’ secondary? Is Coleman ready to hit his stride after a quiet playoff debut last week? How creative will they get with running back James Cook?
While Jackson and Henry have worked their magic on offence all year, Baltimore’s defence has been busy, too. The unit has been elite against the run all season, but the first half of the campaign revealed holes to be patched up against the pass. Safe to say, they’ve been mended — the Ravens’ defence is now running at full capacity and enters this game having held opponents to less than 20 points in five consecutive contests.
Allen, whose game relies heavily on play-action passes, failed to muster much offence that way in Week 4, thanks to Baltimore’s excellent coverage against those kinds of plays. We’re about to see just how well the Bills learned from that last experience.
