Colin Cowherd believes the Ravens could go undefeated in the regular season

Success in the NFL doesn’t always carry over from year to year and historic seasons are rarely followed up with equal or greater success. The 2019 Baltimore Ravens were the best team in the regular season and rewrote the record books with their prolific offense that went against the conventional grain with their run-heavy approach led by their young quarterback, Lamar Jackson, who became just the second player to ever be unanimously voted league MVP after a sensational sophomore season.

No team won more games in the regular season than the Ravens last year. Their 14-2 record was the best in the league and the best finish in franchise history. While most media pundits believe that the Ravens have bolstered an already championship ready roster on paper with the additions that they made this offseason, the vast majority also don’t believe that they’ll be able to replicate or improve upon their win total in 2020.

However, there is one popular sports talk show host that believes that it is not a far-fetched idea that the Ravens not only best their win total from last season, but not lose a single game the entire regular season. Colin Cowherd of Fox Sports said on his radio and television simulcast show ‘The Herd” that it wouldn’t be a ridiculous idea if Baltimore went 16-0.

“Baltimore is the first team maybe I’ve ever thought … I’m starting to think they’re going to go 16-0,” Cowherd said. “And it’s not ridiculous.”

The last team to go undefeated in the regular season was the 2007 New England Patriots who remained perfect throughout the postseason as well until they were defeated by the New York Giants 17-14 in Superbowl XLII (42) in arguably the most stunning upset in the history of sports. Since the NFL expanded the regular season to 16 games in 1978, no other team has been able to complete a perfect regular season besides that Patriots team that looked destined to join the 1972 Miami Dolphins as the only teams in league history to complete a regular and postseason with an unblemished record.

There have only been two teams that have ever won as many as 14 games in back to back years and even if the Ravens come up just a game or two shy of 16-0, they could still join the elite company by becoming the third.. Those two teams were the San Francisco 49ers in 1989 and 1990 and the Patriots in 2003 and 2004.

The reasons that Cowherd listed as the justification for his bold prediction are the same reasons that many people believe the Ravens will still be one of the best teams in the league again this fall. He mentioned all the key cogs that would be returning on both the roster and the coaching staff from last year’s stout team—including both offensive and defensive coordinators a well as the reigning league MVP himself—the upgrades and reinforcements brought in at positions of both weakness and strength and their favorable schedule.

The Ravens will travel the least number of miles of any NFL in the last four years and they have the NFL’s easiest strength of schedule based on the 2019 records of their 2020 opponents. They play the NFC East which had the worst winning percentage of any division in the league and the fact that they only leave eastern time zone once all year—Week 2 at the Houston Texans—and don’t play on the west coast at all is a huge advantage in terms of keeping the travel fatigue on the bodies of the players to a minimal.

“Their toughest road game is at Philadelphia. They can take a bus there,” Cowherd said. “They don’t go West. Seattle next year travels 30,000 miles. Baltimore travels 6,000 miles.”

He is also not a believer in the popular notion that the other teams in the AFC North will be able to match or keep pace with the Ravens in 2020 either. While he did and has acknowledged on his show that Ravens divisional opponents have improved this offseason, he still views a significant gap between the two-time defending division champs and the next best team is wide and each of them has question marks that won’t be answered until the season rolls around. The Ravens won all but one game in the division last year, going 5-1 overall that included sweeping both the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cincinnati Bengals and splitting with the Cleveland Browns.

“Cincinnati’s got a rookie quarterback, Cleveland’s got a rookie coach, and Pittsburgh has an old quarterback off an injury,” Cowherd said. “Baltimore is a rare team for me. I think it is very possible they steamroll Cleveland [in Week 1], and they just start rolling and they don’t slow down. … We may be looking at a 16-0 football team, and I don’t think it’s crazy.”

Cowherd doesn’t even believe that the reigning Superbowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs will keep the Ravens from running the table in the regular season. The two powerhouses of the AFC and league overall have faced off in back to back seasons with the Chiefs winning both games by a combined eight points and will do so again in 2020 except this time it won’t be in Arrowhead Stadium with the loud roar of Chiefs’ kingdom cheering them on. They are slated for a primetime matchup in Week 3 at M&T Bank Stadium on Monday Night Football in a game that is already being proclaimed as the “Game of the Year” and the opinionated talk show host believes that odds will be in Baltimore’s favor this time around.

“Kansas City has to go to Baltimore for ‘Monday Night Football.’ Good luck,” Cowherd said. “Kansas City beat them last year, so they’ve got a chip on their shoulder.”

The Ravens have a huge chip on their shoulder and even though they didn’t win the Superbowl last year, every team on their schedule will have their game against Lamar Jackson and Co. circled on their schedules. A target is on their back and head coach John Harbaugh knows that they won’t be sneaking up on anybody this season like they did last year during their unprecedented sensational season.

“Starting next year, we’re not going to be the iceberg,” Harbaugh said to season ticket holders in a conference call last month. “People are going to see us. We’re going to be everybody’s most important game.”

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