Ravens vs. Broncos: How Opener Shapes Season for Both Teams

The Denver Broncos and Baltimore Ravens are teams on two different trajectories following their season-opening duel at Sports Authority Field.

In what was expected to be another high-scoring thriller between the two amidst the high altitude of the Denver stadium, Peyton Manning turned the AFC playoff rematch into a laugher.

Heading into the season, we knew the retooled Broncos were going to be a force to be reckoned with. What we didn’t know, though, was how the new-look Ravens would fare after losing several of their biggest contributors to free agency.

Grantland editor Bill Simmons labeled the Ravens as “the team that nobody believed in” in his AFC preview, but Simmons, like many, may have severely downplayed the sweeping changes the defending Super Bowl champs underwent during the offseason.

Stealing pass-rusher Elvis Dumervil from Denver thanks to a fax-machine snafu was certainly a coup for the Ravens, but the significance of his absence—and Von Miller’s six-game ban—was highly overblown.

Denver proved it could weather the storm while waiting for Miller’s return by shutting down the Ravens’ running game and somehow creating enough pressure to keep Joe Flacco out of sync all night. It didn’t help that Flacco threw a career-high 62 passes, eight short of the NFL single-game record set by Drew Bledsoe in 1994.

So what can we expect from the two teams moving forward?

It’s hard to say the Ravens will roll over and die—we saw this same type of thing from them last year. John Harbaugh has proven to be, if nothing else, a consistent model of success in the league. The young coach has led the Ravens to the postseason in each of his first five seasons in the league.

But it’s even harder to deny how poor the Ravens looked on both sides of the ball in their 2013 debut. And it’s not certain how the team plans to mitigate the loss of so many starters from a season ago, especially on defense. The effect of the leadership and experience of future Hall of Famers Ray Lewis and Ed Reed is something you can't buy in free agency.

They added new names to fill the gaps on their depth chart, but we witnessed a team that looked very much inexperienced and without confidence in Denver. Their shockingly bad performance might not be a testament to their roster moves, but a credit to how well-prepared and efficient the Broncos performed.

We’ll go with that, at least for now. Don’t count out the Ravens, not yet.

A difficult schedule won’t make it any easier on them, though. The AFC North is beginning to even out. Cincinnati looks like bona fide contenders to steal the division, and the Pittsburgh Steelers are always a threat to play their rivals closely. Then there’s the resurgent Cleveland Browns, a team that is looking for just its third winning season since 1999 but has a promising and young roster.

We’ll learn a lot about the team next week against Cleveland at M&T Bank Stadium. The smart money, though, is on the Ravens getting a bounce-back win and keeping hope alive in 2013.

While I said not to count out the Ravens completely, there are real concerns after watching their new product on the field. I think they’ll get better as the season goes on, and I guess anything is possible if they get hot again at the end of the season, but this doesn’t look like the same team from past seasons.

Offensively, they’re painfully thin at wide receiver, and tight end looks like a real problem area without Dennis Pitta out there. On defense, their massive talent turnover has created more question marks than I think they can answer this year.

Not every offense they face will be as finely tuned and near-perfect as the Broncos were on Thursday night, so they’ll have a good chance at competing in most games. But with a difficult docket of nonconference games against the NFC North, the Ravens look like they’re headed for a big let-down this year.

On the other side of the equation, the Broncos haven’t lost a regular-season game since Week 5 against the New England Patriots last season. That’s 12 in a row for those of you keeping score at home.

And if they play even remotely as well they did in the second half against Baltimore in their opener, there isn’t a team in the AFC—maybe even the NFC—that they don’t have a shot at beating in four quarters of football.

Manning has a solid offensive line that boasts three Pro Bowlers, possibly the best receiving corps in the league and a lifetime of football intelligence and experience to help lead that charge. One thing is certain: The Broncos aren’t going to struggle to score points.

And with their current slate of games, they won’t have too hard of a time outscoring their opponents before they get their top pass-rusher, Miller, back against the Indianapolis Colts in Week 7. If Manning put up seven touchdowns on Baltimore, he could put up 10 against Jacksonville or Oakland in the coming weeks.

What are the expectations for the Broncos after this win? Many, including myself, had them as Super Bowl favorites in the AFC, and they did nothing to change that outlook after annihilating the defending champs on national television.

You can quote me on this: Denver wouldn’t be too off-base if it started making early arrangements for a trip to the Jersey Shore in February.