Twelve years have passed since the Ravens won their first Super Bowl title, defeating the Giants in 2001. The next season wasn’t quite as successful. The Ravens finished 9-7 and failed to make the playoffs. Not exactly a stout title defense.
This, however, is somewhat is a trend in the league, with significant statistical evidence of a Super Bowl hangover for the defending champs.
In the 11 seasons since that 2001 Ravens title in Tampa, five Super Bowl champions failed to qualify for the playoffs the following year, and it’s been eight years since a reigning champion won a playoff game the following year. Only one team, the 2004-05 Patriots, repeated as Super Bowl champions in that span.
Are the 2013 Ravens falling into that Super Bowl defense malaise? It sure looks like it, as they take a 3-5 record into Sunday’s crucial divisional home game against the division-leading Bengals (6-3), who have a chance to bury the defending champions.
The Ravens no longer have linebacker Ray Lewis (retired) and safety Ed Reed (free agency) — two players who not only were defensive rocks on the field for the Ravens, but irreplaceable locker room leaders.
Nevertheless, the Ravens have their Super Bowl MVP quarterback, Joe Flacco, and star running back Ray Rice, who has been one of the toughest outs in the league running and catching the ball. Not surprisingly considering the Ravens’ record, neither is having a good season.
Flacco, who was given a six-year, $120.6 million contract in the offseason, making him the highest-paid player in the league at the time, is ranked 24th among NFL quarterbacks with a 79.3 rating, with a pedestrian 59.4 completion percentage, 2,167 yards 10 touchdowns and nine interceptions.
Rice has averaged 1,266 rushing yards the past four seasons, during which he had 33 rushing touchdowns, and he never has had a yards-per-carry average of less than 4.0 per run. Rice’s 259 rushing yards this season (with a 2.7-yard average) ranks him an astonishing 23rd in the AFC and 42nd in the NFL among running backs,
The Ravens’ overall offense is ranked 23rd overall, including a shocking 29th in rushing.
The absence of Lewis and Reed has nothing to do with the Ravens’ offensive woes, so what gives? Have teams figured the Ravens out? Are the Ravens as hungry?
The hunger question is most relevant, and it is not to suggest the Ravens are dogging it and don’t care, but human nature is a powerful force. When you’ve reached the pinnacle and have had the world patting you on the back for several months, it’s difficult to power the engine back up.
The Packers, who defeated the Ravens in Week 6 this season, won the Super Bowl in the 2010-11 season and followed that with a 15-1 regular-season record the next year — only to lose their first playoff game to the Giants.
“I would say 2011 was much more difficult than 2010. I know we won a lot of games, I just felt it was a tougher ride than 2010,” Packers coach Mike McCarthy told reporters the week the Packers played the Ravens.
“There was definitely at times some complacency we had to deal with for sure,” Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said.
“It’s just a matter of having to answer some questions about it,” Flacco said of defending a title. “Other than that, the challenges are just as normal as you’d get any other season.”
This is simply not true. Teams play defending champions differently. There is a bull’s-eye on the back of the champs, who get opponents’ best effort against them. Only the strongest teams defeat human nature and make it back to the postseason the following year — and the Ravens haven’t looked so strong in 2013.
“Ultimately, you’re defined by adversity,’’ Ravens receiver Torrey Smith said. “We lost three games last year in a stretch towards the end and people were [saying], ‘They lost it, their leadership [is gone], they’re going to miss the playoffs.’ We ended up winning the Super Bowl.’’
Ravens coach John Harbaugh conceded his team is “kind of in a corner,’’ adding, “It’s how you handle it that’s going to be remembered. We have opportunities to accomplish everything that we want to accomplish. Momentum is a crazy thing. You’ve got to stop theirs and build yours.’’
Failure to do that, though, will leave the Ravens as yet another post-Super Bowl road-kill statistic — for the second time in 12 years.