Parallels Between The 2012 and 2024 Ravens

Every Ravens fan remembers the 2012 championship run. Going on the road and knocking off two all-time greats in Peyton Manning and Tom Brady en route to a legendary Super Bowl which ended in Joe Flacco and Ray Lewis lifting the Lombardi Trophy. A vision no Ravens fan will ever forget.

However, the Baltimore faithful tend to forget the journey it took to get there. The aforementioned QBs (and that team from Pittsburgh) halted playoff run after playoff run. The struggles climaxed in the 2011 AFC championship with a Lee Evans drop followed by a Billy Cundiff shanked field goal. The 2011 Ravens, which many believed to be better than the 2012 team, walked off the field feeling like they blew their best shot at a championship in over a decade.

Fast forward to 2024 and there are some glaring similarities if you examine the journey this Ravens team has faced up to now. Regular season success followed by playoff shortcomings that have severely dampened the overall body of work the organization has put together over the last half-decade.

Those playoff shortcomings peaked when the Kansas City Chiefs marched into Baltimore and took home the AFC Championship for the fourth time in five years, a devastating loss that brought forth a feeling only comparable to the one felt after the 2011 AFC championship.

When examining the journey that 2012 team took, it’s easy to look at Joe Flacco’s historic postseason run as the catalyst. But what played an equally important role is the organization’s culture. A culture built on relentlessness and resiliency. There is a standard that is set from the moment anyone walks in the building. To most, repeated failures and shortcomings can extinguish any existing flame within. For the Ravens, they “add more fuel” for the years to come, as Roquan Smith put it, in his postgame press conference after the AFC Championship defeat.

The 2024 Ravens have a chip on their shoulder. John Harbaugh is still here. He knows how to get his team ready on Sundays, and his innate ability to instill the longstanding ‘Play Like a Raven’ mentality into each player who walks in the building is why the organization’s winning culture is alive and well to this day.

The NFL will never see another Ray Lewis. His intense leadership combined with his dominance in between the lines is unparalleled, but the closest thing we have in today’s game is Roquan Smith. The All-Pro middle linebacker is the unquestioned leader of the defense. No stat or metric measures the impact such a leader has on a football team, and no organization understands this better than the Ravens.

Then there is Lamar Jackson.

The reigning MVP has received just about every personal accolade imaginable at this point in his career, but he is not satisfied. Lamar has had to silence many doubters and critics through the years. First, he was told he couldn’t play quarterback at an NFL level and should consider moving to another position. He responded by leading the NFL in touchdowns on his way to becoming the youngest MVP in NFL history.

The narrative then shifted to him not being able to win a playoff game, he put an end to that by avenging the playoff loss to the Titans the very next year. However, after all the success and personal accolades Lamar has obtained, the doubters and critics are as loud as ever, and they will continue to be until Lamar and the Ravens reach their ultimate goal.

The Baltimore Ravens are built to overcome adversity, and that foundation was built long before anyone on the current roster put on a Ravens uniform. With the majority of last year’s core still intact, there is no doubt this edition of the purple and black has what it takes to hoist another Lombardi.

And his year’s big game venue happens to be the Superdome in New Orleans, the last stage we watched that 2012 team play on.

The 2024 Baltimore Ravens are after the same result.

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Source: https://russellstreetreport.com/2024/08/25/street-talk/2012-ravens-v-2024-ravens/