Pats, Ravens adding another chapter to memorable rivalry
On Sunday night, the Patriots and Ravens will play the latest installment of a rivalry that has featured some incredible games over recent years, including four playoff battles -- two in the AFC Championship Game.How good has the competition been over the years? It's the first time since 2007 that either team enters the matchup with a losing record.Here's a quick reminder of the memorable meetings between the AFC foes.
The Patriots came into last season's meeting with the Ravens flying high, owners of a perfect 8-0 record thanks to the league's stingiest defense, which was allowing just 7.6 points per game and had forced 25 turnovers.
But what happened in Baltimore was a crash landing, thanks in large part to Lamar Jackson, who threw for one touchdown and ran for two more as the Ravens racked up 210 yards on the ground.
New England, which came into the game riding a 13-game winning streak, has gone just 7-10 since.
This time, it was Baltimore that entered the game with the NFL's top-ranked defense -- but Tom Brady lit the Ravens up for 406 yards and three scores, including a 79-yard strike to Chris Hogan with just over six minutes left that gave New England a 10-point lead.
The win was the Patriots' fourth straight -- a stretch of 10 straight victories that culminated with a Super Bowl LI win over the Falcons.
One of the most exciting non-Super Bowl playoff victories of the Patriots dynasty came in January 2015, when New England became the first team in playoff history to rally from not one, but two 14-point deficits in the same game.
New England's second-half rally included a touchdown pass from Julian Edelman to Danny Amendola and a go-ahead Brady-to-Brandon LaFell strike with five minutes left. The Patriots held on for the win thanks to a late Duron Harmon INT and a failed Joe Flacco Hail Mary on the game's final play.
Getting a small measure of revenge on a Baltimore team that bounced them from the playoffs 11 months earlier, the Patriots' rout of the Ravens late in the 2013 season featured the largest margin of victory in the history of this rivalry.
New England rolled to a 17-0 halftime lead and didn't led the Ravens score until the fourth quarter, then sealed the win with three touchdowns in a 1:16 span late, including a Legarrette Blount 7-yard run, a Chandler Jones fumble recovery in the end zone and a Tavon Wilson 74-yard interception return.
Tom Brady was an unthinkable 67-0 at home when leading at halftime... until he ran into the Ravens defense with a second straight trip to the Super Bowl on the line.
In a rematch of the 2011 AFC Championship Game, the NFL's highest-scoring offense came up empty in the second half. New England turned it over three times (two Brady interceptions, a Stevan Ridley fumble) plus had two punts and turned it over once on downs, while Baltimore rallied behind three Joe Flacco second-half TD tosses to advance and set up a Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh Super Bowl, which the Ravens would win.
Every good rivalry needs a little bit of controversy, and there was plenty of it on this Sunday night in Baltimore after Justin Tucker sent Ravens fans home happy by connecting on a game-winning 27-yard field goal as time expired... or did he?
The ball sailed over the top of the right upright, and officials immediately signaled that the kick was good, enraging Vince Wilfork and Bill Belichick, who grabbed an official's arm as he was running off the field. Two years later, NFL owners voted to increase the height of uprights from 30 to 35 feet.
The 2011 AFC Championship Game also came down to a last-minute field goal -- but this game had a very different ending, as the Patriots advanced to their seventh Super Bowl when Billy Cundiff shanked a 32-yard field goal with 11 seconds left, clinching the three-point New England win.
While Cundiff was the goat, the hero was backup Pats cornerback Sterling Moore, who stripped a potential touchdown catch away from Lee Evans two plays before Cundiff's ill-fated field goal attempt.
There's something to be said for chemistry, which Tom Brady and Deion Branch proved in the 2010 season when the wide receiver returned to New England four seasons after he was traded away.
With less than a week of practice, Branch finished with nine receptions for 98 yards and a touchdown as the Patriots rallied from a 10-point fourth quarter deficit to beat the Ravens in overtime on a 35-yard Stephen Gostkowski kick.
"Tom and I have been away for four years and I honestly don't feel we missed a beat," said Branch after the game.
The less said about this game, the better for all Patriots fans. Back in the postseason for the first time since their undefeated season was spoiled by the Giants in Super Bowl XLII, New England's playoff exit was both quick and exceptionally ugly.
Ray Rice scored an 83-yard touchdown on the game's first play from scrimmage, Tom Brady had three turnovers in the first quarter, and the Ravens led 24-0 after just 15 minutes as the Pats dropped their first home playoff game since 1978. It was so bad that Joe Flacco only needed to throw for 34 yards in the rout.
Another Patriots-Ravens battle that went down to the wire, New England escaped with a six-point win after Baltimore wideout Mark Clayton dropped a fourth-down pass inside the New England 10 with under 30 seconds left in the game.
Randy Moss had three catches for 50 yards, including his first touchdown reception from Tom Brady since setting an NFL record with 23 TD grabs two seasons earlier.
After the Patriots escaped the Eagles' upset bid a week earlier to improve to 11-0, they kept their undefeated season alive with another thriller against the Ravens on a Monday night in Baltimore.
Favored by 19 points but trailing 24-20 with a couple of minutes left, New England needed to convert on fourth down twice and finally took its first and only lead of the game when Jabar Gaffney hauled in an 8-yard TD strike from Tom Brady with 44 seconds remaining.
"I told him it was the best catch of his career and it was a great time to do it," Brady said about Gaffney, who only had that one catch in the game.
How bad were the field conditions when the Patriots and Ravens squared off in late 2004 in Foxboro? As Adam Vinatieri described it postgame, "That was as bad of a field as I've ever played on."
The New England defense took advantage of the sloppy conditions and limited the Baltimore offense to a grand total of eight first downs and 124 yards. Still, it was only a 9-3 game after three quarters, but the Patriots broke it open in a hurry thanks to a Corey Dillon touchdown followed in short order by a Jarvis Green fumble recovery for a score on a Tedy Bruschi strip sack.
