The Ravens and Steelers split two games in the 2024 regular season and they’ll have the chance to break that tie on Saturday night.
The two AFC North teams will tangle in a wild card game, so the result will end someone’s season in addition to determining who wins the season series. Ravens head coach John Harbaugh would prefer to be on the winning side of the final score and he was asked during a Monday press conference if it is harder to prepare for a third game against the same opponent.
Harbaugh said it wasn’t and that it actually allows you to start working on things at greater depth because of how much knowledge is already in place.
“I don’t think there’s any specific difficulty in it — this process is still the same,” Harbaugh said, via the team’s website. “You probably have certain things that are understood. There’s a lot of things that have kind of been ingrained in your knowledge of a team in division like that who you’ve already played twice, so your jumping-off point is further down the road for sure. That’s about the only difference.”
Baltimore’s 34-17 win in Week 16 broke a string of nine straight one-score games between the two teams and Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin will be working to make sure things don’t unfold the same way again. That may mean trying a few things the Ravens haven’t seen before, but the long history between the two coaches and the two teams means there’s not a lot of items in that particular drawer.
