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Clutching the Numbers: Bills vs Ravens

By Keegan Ohta.

Congratulations the Buffalo Bills and their fan. They are going to be part of the AFC Divisional game for the first time since 1996, and are one win away from playing in the AFC Championship game for the first time since 1994.

But now, the mountain is big, the task to win is bigger, and the Bills must go through the second place team in the AFC North, the Baltimore Ravens, who grabbed the fifth seed after winning five straight to end the season.

Will Buffalo break its playoff curse, or will Lamar Jackson break the Madden curse?

Before we get into the stats, let’s go into the history of this matchup. These two teams have only played each other nine times in history dating back to 1999, with Baltimore winning the last three matchups. This will be the first time these two teams will meet in a playoff game.

Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson will meet each other for the third time in their careers. The last time they met was during Jackson’s MVP run. Both quarterbacks had the similar stats in completions and yards. But Jackson threw for 3 touchdowns to Allen’s 1, and it didn’t help the Bills that Allen got sacked 6 times where Jackson went down only once.

This year though, Allen could say that his stats were better, despite having played one more game than Jackson.

Allen accounts for 46 touchdowns for the Bills, while Jackson accounts for 33 touchdowns. Josh Allen was 23 yards away from eclipsing 5,000 yards on the regular season, while Jackson was 238 yards from getting to 4,000 yards.

Allen has been an absolute joy to watch if you’re a Bills fan, and it helps to have a man named Stefon Diggs who has the most receptions in the league at 127 and the most yards in the league for wide receivers at 1,535.

You can’t leave out Devin Singletary and Cole Beasley though, who were 33 and 44 yards off from 1,000 total yards, respectively. The only player that has over 900 yards but not 1,000 for the Ravens is J.K. Dobbins.

But the Ravens can make a dent in the Bills defense. The Ravens is seventh in least amount of yards given up per game with 329.8. Their passing defense gives up the sixth-least amount of yards with 207.9 yards per game, and the rushing defense gives up the eighth-least amount of yards, with 106.4 yards per game.

There’s also Lamar Jackson himself that should give the Bills some worry, as he is the only quarterback in the league to go over 1,000 yards rushing, making this his second straight year with over 1,000 yards on the ground.

This game really does feature two offenses who can adjust and have two quarterbacks at the helm that would be a threat to any team.

The question is, which threats will be handled and who will head to the AFC Championship game?

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