Patriots Favorites over Ravens, One Step Away from the Super Bowl!

Frank Doyle previews an epic AFC Championship Game between New England and Baltimore!

Two fundamental truisms will face each other across the line of scrimmage in Foxboro on Sunday. Only one can win.

If the NFL is a quarterback league, as we’re so often told, then New England will stroll to the AFC Championship and another Super Bowl appearance. There is no comparison between Tom Brady and Joe Flacco. None.

Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees are gone but Tom Brady is still standing, with his million dollar smile and trillion dollar arm. Flacco is Matthew McConaughey to Brady’s Brad Pitt and the Ravens quarterback’s comments coming up to the game against Houston last week suggest that the pressure is getting to him. It’s no contest between those two as to which of them gets thrown the keys of the car.

However. If Championships are won by great defences, then it’s Baltimore all the way. The New England defense is terrible – natural victims, dead last in the AFC in total defense.

Baltimore is third in total yards, and the defense features a roll call of future Hall of Famers. Ray Lewis is sixteen years in the NFL, and he’s playing as well as ever. If you’re not frightened of these guys, you ought to be.

Baltimore stomped New England 33-14 in the playoffs at Foxboxo two years ago. The Ravens won because Ray Rice ran for 159 yards and two TDs, but the real reason Baltimore won was because the Ravens defense took Brady behind the woodshed for a comprehensive whupping, sacking him three times and forcing three interceptions.

Of course, that was a different Patriot team. The heart of the team, which is Belichick and the head coach’s on-field manifestation, Brady, have stayed the same since the Patriots announced themselves as a dynasty by shocking the Greatest Show Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI, but the team’s fortunes have ebbed and flowed as supporting players changed.

Right now, the Patriots are on the up. The arrival of tight end Rob Gronkowski has given Brady a threat he hasn’t had since Randy Moss was in New England, and the NFL betting suggests that lightning is not going to strike twice for Baltimore on Sunday. New England is an eight point favorite, reflecting the Patriots’ comprehensive dismemberment of the Broncos on Saturday and the Ravens’ struggles to get past the Texans on Sunday afternoon.