Patriots Put Undefeated Road Record on the Line vs. Lamar Jackson and the Ravens this Sunday Night

Not exactly the most optimistic of weeks for the New England Patriots this season, all things considered. Off the heels of the Buffalo Bills snapping their 10-game win streak, they appear to be heavily banged up on the defensive side of the football, which is the last thing you're trying to hear when you're about to play a team like the Ravens with Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry at their disposal.

Baltimore has been... an interesting team this year, to keep it simple. They've won five of their last seven and most recently shut out the Cincinnati Bengals on the road. However, it's clear that even after returning, Jackson is still not at 100% physically, and you get that sense from both the eye test and some of the numbers, standard and advanced, over the last month or so. Pair that with a 3-5 home record, with losses to the Bengals, Steelers, Lions, Texans, and Rams, and they're effectively in a must-win game at 7-7, as an AFC North Championship is their only realistic path to the postseason at this point. Here's what you need to know going into Sunday.

Game Info

Date: Sunday, December 21st

Start Time: 8:15 EST

Location: Baltimore, Maryland

Stadium: M&T Bank Stadium

TV Info: NBC/Peacock (Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth on the Call)

Patriots Uniform Info: All White

Players Already Ruled Out Before Sunday

Ravens: Jay Higgins (LB) [CB Chidobe Awuzie is listed as Doubtful]

Patriots: Robert Spillane

Baltimore Ravens

Defense

As it pertains to this game, the Ravens are in one hell of a predicament defensively. Overall, they have one of the worst pass rush units in the NFL, can't apply pressure without blitzing, and while their 44.7% pressure rate when blitzing is tied for 11th best in the NFL, their eight sacks while blitzing are the sixth fewest in the league. Well, all of this is to say it's not exactly a great week to be a team that's probably going to need to blitz out of sheer necessity, given how good Drake Maye has been vs. the blitz in 2025.

Trading Odafe Oweh to the Chargers didn't exactly spark anything gigantic for the Ravens up front. Still, they did bring in someone else at the deadline, ex-Titan Dre'Mont Jones, who has quietly been a quality pass rusher in a six-game sample size. His eight quick pressures rank second on this team, even with the late arrival, and his 20 total pressures rank third. Only 1.5 sacks, but I would probably chalk that up to the fact that the Ravens haven't had that interior 1-2 punch of Travis Jones and Nnamdi Madubuike for a while, as the latter suffered a season-ending neck injury earlier this year, but that goes back to the lack of overall pass rush production that's plagued Baltimore this year. Madubuike was that big of a deal to them.

As has been the case the last several years, you can't talk about the Ravens' defense without Roquan Smith, who's in part having one of his best seasons in coverage but appears to be set to finish much lower than a year ago in the "stops" and run defense departments. Unfortunately for both he and this team, his running mate, Teddye Buchanan, who was the most efficient blitzing linebacker on the Baltimore roster, tore his ACL in the shutout win in Cincinnati last weekend. His responsibilities will revert back to Trenton Simpson, who lost his gig to Buchanan earlier this year, but Ravens' DC Zach Orr sounds confident in the third-year backer out of Clemson.

Even more important than Smith in recent years is Kyle Hamilton, arguably the single best defensive back in the NFL today. Far less a "safety" than he's ever been, Predominantly, you'll be seeing No. 14 as either a slot corner or as an outright box defender, although I wouldn't go as far as to say linebacker. When the Ravens get him in the box, however, they're statistically a lights-out run defense. According to NextGenStats, the 3.5 yards per carry they allow on those plays with Hamilton in the box is the best mark in the NFL.

Coverage-wise, Nate Wiggins and Marlon Humphrey are the two key names, with Wiggins being an up-and-down player this year, with his highs being very high. Expect to see the Ravens run a lot of Cover-3 and Cover-1, and if there's a weak spot to be exploited, it's those two if you can catch them on a bad day. Both Wiggins and Humphrey find themselves among the 10 worst pass defenders in the league in terms of yards allowed, and wheter this is by happenstance or teams feel as if he's exploitable, Wiggins is the most targeted player in the league this year with 95 passes at him in coverage.

Offense

Before last week, when he dropped back only 18 times, Lamar Jackson was riding a five-game streak in which he had negative EPA numbers, total and per dropback, a passer rating below 100, and averaged 197.4 yards per game, with two passing touchdowns and four interceptions. Outside of the Miami game, where he looked great and got a ton of dropbacks, he hasn't looked anything close to the MVP form that he's had the last couple of seasons. Now, his mobility is still there to an extent, as you see below, but do I think Lamar is going to be a consistent positive rushing/scrambling threat based on his health? I'd say no, but I've been let down before.

Derrick Henry gave this Ravens team an entirely new dimension last year in what was as prolific a rushing season as we've seen in the previous decade (and unfortunately for him, overshadowed by Saquon Barkley, but I digress), but he's on track to finish what's been a down year statistically for him. What should come as no surprise is that he's the running back who's faced the second-most stacked boxes in the league this year, but there have been some teams that've really been able to bottle him up in those looks; namely, the Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers. A lot of that ultimately comes down to not falling for any pre-snap motion eye candy with Patrick Ricard or another stand-in fullback pre-snap, and having linebackers that read their keys, but then you had some runs like this one vs. the Lions, where you get washed out on the block, and the future Hall of Famer does this.

The good news is that this coaching staff is very familiar with Henry from his days with the Titans, but there's only so much you can do to stop him. Make no mistake; not letting Henry beat you should be priority one this week. On top of the obvious, there's (still) a lack of consistency across the board pass catchers on this Ravens team. Zay Flowers is the only receiver on this team over 40 targets, and he's at 100 with three games to go. Although it's looked legitimately scary at times this year and especially in Weeks 1 and 2, Mark Andrews has been far more good than bad. He's been a huge part of their red zone production this year, and the key thing to know about Flowers is that they will motion him...a lot. His 205 motions are the most in the NFL as things stand. Should make things interesting for Christian Gonzalez.

New England Patriots

Defense

Now that we know Robert Spillane is definitely out this week, this defense, coming off a horrific second half against the Bills, needs some guys in the front seven to step up. I'm talking about both linebackers, Jack Gibbens, who was pretty bad in run defense, and Christian Elliss, Khyris Tonga, and any of these other run-specific IDL in place of Milton Williams. It's going to be a game where things will ultimately come down to them, and at least two of these guys have to show up in a big way.

Tonga wasn't super strong coming back from injury, but I'm hopeful he can bounce back now that he's had at least one game under his belt. To me, the key name is Jack Gibbens. Will almost certainly be the green dot defender, and he needs to be better and more decisive getting into run fits and containing guys once they hit the second level. It's been rough sledding in the run game since Williams went down, but it's ultimately up to the guys in that locker room to turn it around.

Something that would also concern me going into Sunday Night is the number of bodies the Ravens have at tight end, and the Patriots' inability this year to stop them. Baltimore will absolutely pass it out of 13 personnel in this game, much less 12, and that's given the Patriots some problems all year.

Beyond that, keep Lamar in the pocket, don't give him scramble lanes, pray that Henry doesn't get off to a hot start, and if so, they're should realistically be some chances to turn Jackson and co. over. Absolutely paramount that the Patriots don't let them off the hook.

Offense

Short and sweet here, this needs to be one of, if not the single biggest standout performance of Drake Maye's second season if the Patriots hope to win this game. In tandem with that, however, this is equally as big a night for OC Josh McDaniels, who had an even worse performance than Maye last week. He acknowledged a fact that you can certainly see on tape, that teams (specifically Buffalo) are going out of their way to prioritize sending bodies onto Stefon Diggs and Hunter Henry in coverage. Knowing that, McDaniels has to find ways to open things up, organically or otherwise, for guys like Kyle Williams and Pop Douglas.

If we're back here on Monday or Tuesday, and the problems that sunk this team last week, such as the abandonment of the run game, lack of play action game, etc, sink them again, then everything McDaniels has gone on about this year will amount to vapid lip-service, which wouldn't shock me, but would certainly be disappointing.

Prediction

The further we get into the week, the more this game feels like a matter of who/what you trust more. I can't say I have a ton of faith in any one unit on either team, but the fact that Lamar is still struggling after the early hamstring, and I trust Mike Vrabel and his staff more than John Harbaugh and his right now, is what sticks out to me the most. So with that in mind, I'm going to reluctantly give the Patriots the benefit of the doubt and trust their road success will continue with a bounce-back win, although I don't feel the greatest about it.

Final Score: New England Patriots 24, Baltimore Ravens 23

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