The NFL will release team schedules next week (May 12), and here’s my prediction for the Ravens’ fall lineup.
The National Football League’s current scheduling formula, established in 2002 and amended in 2021 to account for a 17th game, has neatly laid out for each team what most of their opposition looks like in future years. So, that’s why, when each season ends, I enjoy trying to predict what the following year’s Ravens schedule will look like.
The actual sequence won’t be released until May 12. But because we already know which teams the Ravens will play and where the games will occur, the “when” is the final mystery regarding the upcoming season.
It’s a fun, innocuous exercise that doesn’t really carry a lot of long-range importance. Still, I enjoy doing it each year, and recently, I’ve had a few predicted phenomena actually take place.
–In 2018, I was only one week off in predicting when the Ravens would have their bye week and when they would play their home games against Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and New Orleans, as well as the road game Cleveland. I was just two weeks off on the dates of the games against Oakland, Tampa Bay, and Buffalo.
–This column did better in 2019 than ever before, getting the exact week right on three games (Cleveland, Week Four; at Cleveland, Week 16; Pittsburgh, Week 17), and missing by just one week on four other entities: the bye, the Cincinnati home game, the Pittsburgh trip, and the San Francisco home game.
–In 2020, I erred by one week on a few matchups, two weeks on others, and nailed the exact week of the Cleveland road game, which turned out to be a high-scoring thriller.
This year, the Ravens will play 14 of 17 games inside the Eastern time zone with eight games against 2020 playoff teams and only two on the road. But one of those two will be in Chicago, a city where the Ravens have never won a regular-season game: The team will make its first-ever trip to Las Vegas this year as well.
Using the 2020 records of the 2021 opponents, Baltimore’s schedule is ranked as the league’s second-toughest, trailing only Pittsburgh.
Before I make my predictions, there are a few things to consider:
–The following guesses apply to Sunday afternoons only (indicated by the dates next to the week numbers in the sequence below). I don’t make speculative guesses regarding which games will be played Sunday, Monday, or Thursday nights, although some matchups seem to belong in prime time. The maximum number of prime-time games for any team is five. The Ravens played in 2020 and could reach again this year, given the national appeal of quarterback and 2019 league Most Valuable Player Lamar Jackson.
–Also, keep in mind the issue of the season’s first four weeks. As with the rest of the schedule, guesses will be applied to Sundays only, based on the Orioles’ already-determined schedule. Starting with Week Four, picks were made as if the Orioles will not be playing home postseason games in October (a rather safe assumption, it must be said), which would be a logistical nightmare considering the proximity of the two stadiums.
So, with all that in mind, what could the 2021 Ravens’ schedule sequence look like? Here’s our annual guess:
Week One (Sept. 12) at Cleveland: The Orioles will be at home to play Toronto that weekend, so it should be a Week One game on the road for the Ravens unless it’s a Monday-night affair when the bat-and-glove team has the day off. Given what transpired when Baltimore went to Cleveland last year, plus the national media’s never-ending love affair with the Browns, this would be a good choice for a prime-time spotlight to kick off the season with a bang.
Week Two (Sept. 19) Los Angeles Rams: Cross-country travel is tough on teams in all sports, so, to me, it just makes sense to get this game out of the way early. Plus, I don’t believe it will be a prime-time game. For the last time these teams were matched up under the lights, the Ravens rolled to a blowout win—a daytime home opener in late-summer sunshine (we hope).
Week Three (Sept. 26) at Las Vegas: My rationale for having the Rams fly to Baltimore early in the season applies here, too. This is one of only three Ravens road games outside the Eastern time zone this year.
Week Four (Oct. 3) Cincinnati: The Bengals’ quarterback Joe Burrow got a rough introduction to Charm City in 2020, getting sacked seven times and recording his 2nd-lowest road passer rating in a 27-3 defeat. This is far from a marquee matchup, and I think the two games between them will end relatively early. On top of that, with division games taking up only six of the 17 schedule spots, the league has tried to bunch them towards the beginning and end of the season to maximize drama.
Week Five (Oct. 10) Green Bay: The Ravens and Packers have met a half-dozen times in the regular-season play. Three of those games took place in October, so placing the game here seems rather fitting. Will Green Bay have worked out its differences with legendary quarterback Aaron Rodgers by then?
Week Six (Oct. 17) at Chicago: This will be one of only two Baltimore road games in 2021 against a 2020 playoff team. However, Chicago is nowhere near that level now. So why not dump this non-descript interconference opponent into the middle of the dog days of October when few fans leaguewide will be paying attention? Baltimore had better be alert because it has never won in the Windy City in three tries. Moreover, Chicago weather could again play a factor; rain and a tornado delay have hampered Baltimore before.
Week Seven (Oct. 24) Indianapolis: I really don’t care how many years go by or how many generations die off. There will forever be a special aura around Charm City whenever the blue-and-white gang with the horseshoes on their helmets pay a visit. The Ravens finally won in Indiana in 2020, so doubling down by beating the Colts at home will be even sweeter, to be sure.
Week Eight (Oct. 31) at Pittsburgh: A little late for this, you might say? Well, there have been years where the Ravens and Steelers didn’t see each other until November. In 2019, Houston and Tennessee didn’t play each other until just before Christmas. If Pittsburgh is contending by this point, the pent-up fan emotion will be let loose quite intensely on this day. Add Halloween to the mix, and, well…
Week Nine (Nov. 7) BYE: I usually place my bye guess here each year, only because it’s the midpoint of the season–although with a 17-game campaign, it’s not the mathematical midpoint. In fact, the Baltimore bye has fallen right around this spot quite a bit in recent years, the near-perfect spot for a team to assess its health and state of play when the season resumes.
Week Ten (Nov. 14) Kansas City: Now, how perfect would this be? A post-bye home game, but not just any game. It would be a perfect time to see how these two AFC powers stack up at the point when the season begins to pick up plenty of intensity and the campaign heads for the final run-in.
Week 11 (Nov. 21) Minnesota: As you can tell, I have the Ravens’ four games against the NFC North Division teams in two back-to-back groups. Because the itinerary is done randomly by computer at the National Football League’s New York home office, rarely do things work out in a neat-and-clean fashion. But to me, December and January are when the conference and division should take precedence.
Week 12 (Nov. 28) at Detroit: The date here does not take Thanksgiving into account, which falls on the 25th, but it could very well happen on holiday. Only once has a Baltimore team played in the Motor City on Turkey Day; the Colts and Lions played to a tie in 1965. On top of that, what would have been a mouth-watering holiday matchup with Pittsburgh on Thanksgiving Day, 2020, was wiped out by COVID, so this could be considered payback.
Week 13 (Dec. 5) at Miami: This guess is dedicated to you, the many, many fans on my social media page (@BaltimoreJoeyP) who have told me that you want to fly down to a warm place in December. Baltimore has played in Miami on nine occasions, but only three of those have taken place after Thanksgiving, and none since 2015.
Week 14 (Dec. 12) Los Angeles Chargers: I know, I know…. I remarked earlier that the coast-to-coast thing could be tough and that games of that type should be held as early in the campaign as possible. But then I remembered that cracking-good December game the pair played in 2018 when Baltimore kept a playoff chance alive.
Week 15 (Dec. 19) at Cincinnati: If all my projections come true, this will be the first intradivisional return match to be played, and it simply has to be against the Bengals. There will be much more important fish to fry from here on out.
Week 16 (Dec. 26) at Denver: The Broncos have been a rather confounding outfit in recent years, in that you don’t seem to know what to expect from them. This could be a very tricky game for the Ravens, one of those so-called ‘trap games’ that could jump up and bite them as they look ahead.
Week 17 (Jan. 2) Pittsburgh: In this annual column, I had been screaming for years for a Ravens-Steelers season-closing game, and we got one in 2019. Alas, the game meant nothing, but I’m sure things will be different this time. No matter how old and brittle the black-and-gold team maybe, you never truly count it out.
Week 18 (Jan. 9) Cleveland: A perfect bookend for the campaign, in that Baltimore and Cleveland will likely be projected to contend for the AFC North crown in 2021. Why not begin and end the season against each other?
That’s it, fans! Come next Wednesday, May 12, 8 p.m. Eastern, you can watch it be revealed live on NFL Network.
