Baltimore has played six road playoff games the past three seasons, and have won four of those games -- the most recent a 30-7 dismantling of the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.p90x, p90x dvd, p90x cheap, power 90;ghd hair, ghd styler, tai chi , bao chi;vibram running shoes , five toe shoes , vibram five finger;nike air , adidas shoes , ugg boots , moncler jackets , coach handbags , chanel handbags
To advance to the AFC championship game, though, the Ravens have to win where they have yet to win in the playoffs: Pittsburgh.
The Ravens established their road trend during their Super Bowl season in 2000, when they went on the road as a wild-card team and beat Denver, Tennessee and Oakland in consecutive weeks, before dismantling the Giants on a neutral field. The last three seasons, the Ravens have defeated Kansas City, New England, Miami and Tennessee on the road. Add in the 2001 season, when the Ravens split, and include the Super Bowl, and Baltimore is 9-3 on the road in the playoffs since 2000.
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But ... there is a major caveat. Two of the three losses have come to the Steelers -- a 27-10 loss in the divisional round in 2001 and a 23-14 loss in the AFC championship game following the '08 season. Baltimore plays Pittsburgh again at 4:30 p.m. ET on Saturday.
"We'd be happy to see them out of it," quipped Baltimore coach John Harbaugh about the Steelers.
Perhaps Baltimore is due to win in Pittsburgh. And perhaps this season will be for road wild-card teams, since three of them won this past weekend.
The '08 championship game was as nasty and as hard-hitting a game as has been played in years. The final score read that the Steelers won by nine, but Baltimore had the ball in the fourth quarter down two with a chance to take the lead. Pittsburgh's Troy Polamaluintercepted Joe Flacco, though, and returned the pass for a touchdown.
The Ravens have made that "almost" theme a constant the past few years. Baltimore has qualified for the playoffs seven times the past 11 seasons. But they had to go the wild-card route six of those years -- including this one.
Oddly enough, the two seasons the Ravens hosted their opening playoff game, they lost -- in the wild-card round to Tennessee in '03 and in the divisional-round to Indianapolis following '06. Lose at home, win on the road does not exactly follow the script. Then again, neither did the Steelers-Ravens games in this year's regular season. The home team lost both, by three points each time.
Baltimore's win this season, though, came with Ben Roethlisberger suspended. Pittsburgh has won six in a row over its arch-rival with Roethlisberger on the field.
Baltimore-Pittsburgh is the kind or rivalry that produces slobber-knocker football that is not for the timid. The two teams have played seven times the past three seasons, and games have been decided by less than 10 points each time -- and five of those meetings were three-point affairs.
"It seems like poetic justice -- Pittsburgh in the playoffs at their place," Harbaugh said. Then he added a dose of reality: "One of these days, we'll be good enough to earn the right to play them at our place."
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