The stakes of Sunday’s game against the Miami Dolphins are clear to the Ravens: Lose, and the fight for playoff seeding drags on another week. Win, and delight in what safety Kyle Hamilton called a “two-for-one special.”
“If we get a win, we win the division and we win the conference,” he said Thursday. “It doesn’t get much bigger than that.”
Only a week ago, the Ravens’ showdown with the AFC East-leading Dolphins (11-4), who have the conference’s second-best record, loomed large. Then the Ravens (12-3) blew out the NFC-leading San Francisco 49ers on Christmas Day, pulling them one win closer to an AFC North crown.
Now there are new wrinkles to the matchup at M&T Bank Stadium. With a win, the Ravens would clinch the AFC’s top seed and home-field advantage through the conference championship game. With a loss, the Ravens would cede the inside track to the No. 1 spot to Miami. They’d also enter Week 18 needing a win over the Pittsburgh Steelers to deny the surging Cleveland Browns (11-5) the division title.
“Nothing comes easy [that’s] worth having,” inside linebacker Roquan Smith said Thursday, “so we’ll be ready.”
Here’s what to watch in the teams’ Week 17 matchup.
1. The Ravens could have the NFL’s next Most Valuable Player. They could also have the league’s most impressive defense. But, for quarterback Lamar Jackson to secure his second career MVP award Sunday, he’ll have to beat a unit that can look a lot like Baltimore’s.
Since Week 8, the Dolphins rank first in the NFL in success rate, second in yards per play allowed, second in pressure rate and fourth in sack rate, according to TruMedia. First-year Miami defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, like Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald, relies on disguised coverages and creative four-man pressure packages to unsettle opposing quarterbacks. The Dolphins rank second in the NFL in sacks this season (52), behind only the Ravens, despite blitzing at the NFL’s fourth-lowest rate (17.7%)
“To the naked eye, you would sit there and say that they’re not complicated, but they do a great job with their tools, whether it’s upfront or in the back end,” Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken said Thursday. “I think they do a great job. … They immediately can get to another tool or another answer based on how you’re attacking them. I think they do a great job of adjusting. Their guys play awfully hard, and they’re playing with a lot of confidence right now.”
Statistically, Jackson’s season is atypical for an MVP front-runner. He has 19 passing touchdowns, five rushing scores and seven interceptions, and his QBR is only eighth best in the NFL. But Jackson hasn’t beaten up on lightweights. According to FTN, the Ravens’ schedule is No. 12 in overall strength of opposing defenses, and Sunday’s game against the Dolphins will be his fifth this season against a defense ranked in the top 10 in weighted efficiency, which reflects performance in more recent games.
“He’s unlike anybody else,” Fangio said Thursday of Jackson. “The only other player that’s been like him in the last 50 years is Michael Vick. … Thirty-one other teams that passed him by are kicking themselves. He’s really improved over the years. Dynamic with the ball. Good passer. He makes their offense go.”
2. The most tantalizing game of Ravens wide receiver Rashod Bateman’s career came against the Dolphins in Baltimore: four receptions, 108 yards, one highlight-reel catch-and-run touchdown.
But much has changed for the former first-round pick since Sept. 18, 2022. A foot injury ended Bateman’s second season after just six games. Then came a long offseason rehabilitation, an offensive overhaul under Monken and an early-season hamstring injury this September.
Bateman enters Week 17 with 28 catches for 313 yards and one touchdown — and plenty of fans wondering why a receiver who, by one metric, is one of the NFL’s best separators hasn’t topped 39 yards in a game this season.
Ball security has been a factor; he has three drops on 31 catchable targets, according to Pro Football Focus. The Ravens’ bolstered depth at wide receiver has been another. But bad luck hasn’t helped, either. Jackson has missed Bateman several times on deep shots, and, against San Francisco, he had a 20-yard catch negated by a penalty on left guard John Simpson. On his final of five targets Monday, Bateman was wide open on a shallow crossing route but Jackson’s pass was deflected at the line of scrimmage.
“You really can see with each day, each week, he’s gaining more and more confidence,” Monken said. “His ability to practice [after] basically almost being out a year — missing the offseason is a better way of putting it, or a lot of [training] camp — you can see his confidence beginning to grow, and he’s playing faster. You can see that, and he has it in him. It’s been better every week, and he’s been able to practice every week. That’s a big part of a player’s development when you have a skill set that he has. He loves football. He likes to practice, so it’s just a matter of staying healthy, and that development will continue to come.”
3. After suffering a high-ankle sprain against the Dallas Cowboys and missing practice Wednesday and Thursday, Dolphins wide receiver Jaylen Waddle is reportedly expected to miss Sunday’s game. His absence shouldn’t doom Miami’s passing offense, though.
If anything, quarterback Tua Tagovailoa might be better off with just one star out wide. According to TruMedia, in his 119 drop-backs this season with top wide receiver Tyreek Hill on the field and Waddle sidelined, Tagovailoa has passed for more yards per attempt (8.9), averaged more expected points added per drop-back (0.19), completed a higher percentage of passes (75.2%) and posted a better touchdown-to-interception ratio (5.5) than when he’s had both on the field.
“They do a great job of getting him the ball creatively,” Macdonald said Thursday of Hill, who leads the NFL with 1,641 receiving yards. “It’s different if someone just lines up at the ‘X’ [as an isolated wide receiver] and he’s on the ball, and he’s not moving, and you know where’s he’s going to be. That’s definitely not the case with Tyreek.
“So we have some initial plans on how we want to handle it. Obviously, don’t want to divulge it right now, but it’s a challenge in how they move him. It’s a credit to them with their system and the things he’s able to do from different spots.”
According to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats, Hill has gone into motion 87 times this season on drop-backs, ninth most in the league. With a running start, the seven-time Pro Bowler doesn’t need long to reach top gear. On routes with presnap motion, he’s hit 18 mph 23 times. Ravens receivers have reached that speed on plays with motion a combined 10 times.
4. The details of the Ravens’ fourth-quarter collapse against Miami last season are not pleasant. They’re also not especially relevant.
“We haven’t talked about last year,” said Macdonald, who had coordinated just one game for the Ravens’ defense before that 42-38 loss, in which Miami scored 28 fourth-quarter points. “So far into the season, [it’s] a completely new team.”
And a much-improved, much healthier secondary. On Tagovailoa’s final pass, a go-ahead 7-yard score to Waddle with 14 seconds remaining, the Ravens lined up with rookie Jalyn Armour-Davis, recently signed practice squad member Daryl Worley and a not totally healthy Marcus Peters at cornerback. Hamilton, a first-round pick who’d struggled mightily in the second half that day, was one of four safeties on the field. Patrick Queen was the team’s only inside linebacker.
Conspicuously absent was cornerback Marlon Humphrey, who’d entered the game with a groin injury and was limited to about half of the Ravens’ fourth-quarter defensive snaps. With him off the field, according to TruMedia, Tagovailoa went 11-for-13 for 151 yards and three touchdowns, a staggering 11.6 yards per attempt.
A year later, the Ravens’ secondary has Humphrey back at full strength but new injury concerns. Outside corner Brandon Stephens missed practice Thursday with an ankle injury, nickel back Arthur Maulet (knee) remains limited after missing Monday’s win, and Hamilton (knee) said after practice Thursday that he was “still evaluating” whether he could play Sunday.
5. How important could a week off before the AFC’s divisional round be to the Ravens and Dolphins? Just look at their injury reports.
Twelve Ravens — most notably wide receiver Zay Flowers and right guard Kevin Zeitler, plus Smith, Queen, Stephens and Hamilton — have either missed a practice or been limited this week.
In Miami, the list is even longer. Fourteen Dolphins, including running backs Raheem Mostert and De’Von Achane, left tackle Terron Armstead and safety Jevon Holland, as well as Tagovailoa, Hill and Waddle, have landed on this week’s injury report.
“You get into this time of the year, you play yourself into these types of a game where you have an opportunity where the game means so much, where winning one game brings such a big reward because of what you’ve done up until this point,” coach John Harbaugh said Wednesday. “And that’s an earned thing, and the Dolphins have earned the same thing.”
