Mission accomplished. Well, mostly. The Ravens will have that cherished, home playoff game in two Sundays, their reward for beating Cincinnati yesterday. What was accomplished wasn't all they wanted, though, because that would have been home field throughout the playoffs. It appears that was asking a bit too much. New England spoiled that by beating Buffalo and securing top seed in the AFC at 13-3.
The only way the Ravens can win their conference semifinal and have the AFC Championship game at home is if the Patriots lose their semifinal, also in two weeks. But if the Patriots do the expected and win their semi, the road to the Super Bowl goes through Foxboro.
Moral: The Ravens just never have done anything the easy way.
But it's hard to do things the easy way when so much of the team is banged up. Case in point: I'll never know how Marshal Yanda played in spite of badly bruised ribs that made it torture to take a deep breath and prevented him from practicing during the week. But not only did he start, he made the key block that sprang Ray Rice on his 70-yard touchdown gallop to open the scoring on the fourth play of the game. Serious kudos there.
Ray Lewis and Ed Reed were disturbingly invisible, but the defense did ... enough. Terrell Suggs caused the fumble that stifled a major momentum swing Cincinnati had going in the fourth quarter. It then swung the Ravens' way when Rice ran 51 yards for his second TD of the day. And you probably couldn't run, either, if your toe still hurt.
Most of Baltimore is gearing up to see the Ravens play Pittsburgh for a third time, but with Rashard Mendenhall lost for the playoffs with a torn ACL, in addition to Ben Roethlisberger's bad ankle, you can't automatically say the Steelers will beat Team Tebow out in Denver next Sunday.
Daring to look ahead to a possible matchup with New England for the AFC title, I'm not prepared to say the Ravens would win. Let's just say that without Anquan Boldin healthy and Lee Evans being in synch with Joe Flacco, the Ravens don't have a vertical game that can beat the Brady-to-Welker or Brady-to-Gronkowski combination. But then, the Patriots don't have a running back like Rice - if the Ravens use him as effectively as they did Sunday.
But given the time to heal up, a healthy Boldin would obviously give Flacco a weapon he is accustomed to having. What can't be projected is whether Evans can get any closer to the same page Flacco is on.
I get the distinct sense - and it takes no particular brilliance to say this - that the players nursing injuries find it easier to dismiss the pain from their minds and play through it when this much is on the line.
Let's just pray nothing happens to Rice. But if he got hurt, it would just put Ricky Williams, who went over the 10,000 career rushing yard mark against the Benglas, on stage.
(baltimoreravens.com image)
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