Sunday Night Football: Steelers vs. Ravens

The NFL season is so short, only 16 games, but over the course of these four months, things seem to ebb and flow so quickly that it is almost like having 16 different mini-seasons. Players get hurt, teams get in a rhythm or lose their way. So it was that just 8 weeks ago, Pittsburgh went into Baltimore and had one of their worst performances in recent memory, and the Ravens one of their best.

Pittsburgh had 7 turnovers, the Ravens ran for 170 rushing yards, and Joe Flacco threw 3 touchdown passes and averaged over 7 yards a pass as Baltimore won 35-7.

Hit the skip ahead button, and now Pittsburgh is coming off its best performance of the year in controlling the game against New England, and Baltimore limps in after a disastrous loss to Jacksonville and a nearly titanic disaster at home against Arizona.

Does it matter that Baltimore handled Pittsburgh in the opener? Probably not.

Since 1990, when two division opponents who both eventually finish with a winning record had a 24+ point blowout in the first game, the team that was blown out won the rematch 15 of 22 times. They were 10-3 in avenging the earlier loss when the second game came at home, and still 5-4 when they had to go on the road after previously getting destroyed at home. This is cheating a little, because we assume that Pittsburgh and Baltimore both finish with winning records independent of these two games, and I suppose there may have been some cases where a team finished 8-8 because they did not get “revenge” in the second game.

That said, who knows what to expect. Momentum is the next day’s starting pitcher, and in a sport without them, the closest thing is the quarterback and offense swinging wildly. Baltimore has looked really bad until they rebounded for a big comeback against Arizona. They can play better. We just never know what we are going to get.

In this series though, it’s usually a slobber knocker. The last game was likely the aberration.