Quick Slant: SNF - Like Sisyphus, Summoning the Strength to Push the Stone Another Time
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant
Four teams enter Week 1 with an over/under of 11.5 wins in 2025. Two of them will meet Sunday night in a game that feels like the fresh pour of foundation to support the entire 2025 AFC title race.
It’s too early to call anything life-or-death. And yet, when chips are counted in December, September games often end up fueling the regrets that define a season. The league is too chaotic to predict which ones will matter most, but if one opener feels destined to gnaw at the nerves of regret like a saw, this may be the one.
These younger iterations of the Bills and Ravens have yet to appear in the Super Bowl, much less win one; yet, somehow, they feel like legend. They are guided by arguably the two best QBs in the game. If statistics solved these arguments with extreme pragmatism, there wouldn’t be a case for another (though Joe Burrow is present, filling out his application). However, invisible things make the quality of Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts immeasurable, which is why they are icons rather than luminaries.
When the dust settles and Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson walk through the museum of their lives, there will be tales of incredible athleticism, laserbeam throws cutting through ballhawking defenders, impressive accolades, and heaps upon heaps of nice words; that much is certain. But will there be a championship wing? Somehow, for all they accomplish, for all of the data we have to support simple variance factoring in which way the participants weep—over victory or defeat—this is the one measure that will always matter to a majority of football casuals. For those, this will singularly define a player’s greatness.
When we speak of the greatest QBs in NFL history, Dan Marino can never be the answer, nor can Dan Fouts, Fran Tarkenton, Jim Kelly, or Warren Moon. The answer begins with a counting of rings, and vindication lies in crossing this line, and this line alone.
And so for Jackson and Allen, three MVPs between them, they strive for this one mission, as they have before. Like Sisyphus, they find themselves again at the foot of the mountain, summoning the strength to push the stone another time. The stakes are not only to win the game they’ve set out to play; the stakes are to clear their names, to convince the casuals that they are good enough, and to claim their place as icons beside Mahomes and Hurts.
Ravens
Implied Team Total: 26
The Ravens enter as road favorites, more a credit to them than a censure of the Bills. Based on 2024 Pythagorean wins, the Ravens and Bills each had 11.4 expected wins, tied for third behind only Detroit and Philadelphia. Almost any credible source rightly classifies Baltimore and Buffalo as serious contenders for the AFC crown.
The game sets up as a shootout with the highest over/under for Week 1 (50.5). The Ravens and Bills were the two most potent offenses, leading the NFL in EPA per play in 2024.
Jackson and Allen also led all QBs in EPA per play.
Jackson and Allen also finished first and second in NFL MVP voting, with Josh Allen receiving 383 points (27 first-place votes, 22 second-place votes, one third-place vote, zero fourth and fifth place votes), and Jackson receiving 362 (23 first-place votes, 26 second-place votes, zero third-place votes, one fourth-place vote, and zero fifth-place votes). No other player received a first-place vote.
The Ravens not only led the NFL in offensive EPA per play, but finished top-3 in EPA per rush, offensive success rate, and rushing success rate; they were first in the league in EPA per dropback.
Jackson has always been a good QB. Since Todd Monken took over as the Ravens’ OC in 2023, he’s leveled up. Two of his three best fantasy seasons have come in the past two years, though some of that may be providential, as Jackson’s played 33 games in that span compared to just 24 from 2021-2022.
Part of Jackson’s appeal (and Allen’s) is his rushing ability, which gives him a better floor and ceiling. As I explained in June, we think of a floor, in general, as a safety net. What a rushing QB has is more like a headstart; from it, a QB can either successfully pass, in which case their rushing and passing will make ceiling, or they can unsuccessfully pass, in which case they will achieve the minimum floor their rushing provides.
Jackson and Allen are the top two QB rushers since 2018, their mutual rookie season. This is part of what makes them special. The other part is their equal acumen as a passer.
Throughout the same span, they each also have top-15 passing yards and passing TDs. Jackson’s opportunities as a passer have improved under Monken after stagnating in the middle-upper tier throughout Greg Roman’s tenure as OC. His expected fantasy points in 2023 and 2024 were higher than at any other point in his career, including his MVP season in 2019.
The Ravens get a decently high play volume through sustained drives, but they have one of the run-heaviest game plans in the league. In 2024, they ran on 53% of the plays, trailing only Philadelphia. Their -7.5% pass rate over expected (PROE) ranked 28th, according to NFL Elo. As a result, Jackson only had 597 dropbacks, ranking 16th. Consequently, he depends on extreme efficiency to produce in fantasy.
The good news is that Jackson consistently hits high fantasy points over expected (FPOE) in passing alone, a metric I highlighted as a prime indicator of QB upside.
Jackson has by far the most passing FPOE of any QB in the past two seasons.
And he has the most total FPOE of any player in that span, regardless of position, well ahead of Allen in second. There’s been plenty of talk about Jackson as a regression candidate this summer, but this is precisely where we need to be careful with regression arguments based on efficiency. A hyper-efficient player like Jackson is generally going to remain hyper-efficient, so his baseline is higher than the league’s. Any regression measurements should be taken from his long-established individual efficiency level, not the league base rate.
As an interesting wrinkle, while the QBs are similar entities, so are the defenses they face. The Ravens and Bills are among the best against rushing QBs; they allowed the fourth- and sixth-fewest schedule-adjusted fantasy points on QB rushes a year ago.
Buffalo was beatable through the air in 2024, ranking 24th in defensive success rate on dropbacks and 19th in defensive EPA per dropback.
They ranked 20th in schedule-adjusted fantasy points to QBs on passes and were middle of the pack against WRs, ranking 16th in schedule-adjusted fantasy points to WRs. If Jackson is going to come through for fantasy GMs in this one, it may come through the air.
The Bills’ primary defensive alignment in 2024 was Cover 3 (29.4%), which is not unusual. They ran Cover 2 second-most (18.2%), which is, and they ranked 6th-highest. They were also commonly in single-high Cover 1 (15.2%) and quarters (15.3%). They ran one of the higher zone-coverage rates in the league at 73.3%, ranking 8th.
In 2024, WR Rashod Bateman was the best WR in football against Cover 2, scoring almost an entire fantasy point per route. WR Zay Flowers was far better against Cover 3, ranking seventh. They were both poor against Cover 4.
Flowers led the team in market share at 27%. This still only amounted to 112 targets—again, a byproduct of lower team-level pass volume.
The Ravens added DeAndre Hopkins to the roster; Hopkins is expected to play in 11-personnel. Hopkins carries a big name, but it has now been four whole years since he was last highly effective. Hopkins is 33, which is getting long in the tooth, but to be fair, he was traded midseason from the Titans to the AFC champion Chiefs; switching teams midseason is often a difficult transition for a WR. Before that, he was in a low-efficiency offense in Tennessee, but PFF still gave him a top-30 PFF rating in 2024. Still, he’s hard to trust in a low-volume offense based on his career trajectory and the Ravens’ historical WR usage patterns.
Last year, the Ravens would switch back and forth from 11- to 12-personnel based on specific matchups. They utilized 12 personnel at a 31% rate, according to Sümer Sports, the fifth-highest rate in the league; they achieved the highest EPA of any team in this alignment.
For this game, Isaiah Likely has been ruled out, as he has been nursing a foot injury. This may force the Ravens to lean on 11-personnel more, or they may slide TE Charlie Kolar, who has enjoyed moderate success in small doses, into two-TE packages and not think twice.
It seems principally accurate to assume Likely’s absence could increase opportunities for Andrews, who is often pulled off the field situationally in favor of Likely (which wouldn’t happen without Likely being active). While technically accurate that Andrews benefited in the two games he has played without Likely since 2022, a two-game sample is too small to be reliable.
Andrews turned 30 on Saturday, so he’s no spring chicken, but plenty of high-profile TEs like him have performed very effectively well past their 30th birthday. He’s a highly efficient player who ranked second in FPOE, bolstered by his 11 TDs, which ranked first. After a slow start through the first five games, Andrews was a top-12 TE option in ten of his last 12 games, and was TE5 overall from Week 6 onward. We should also remember that Andrews was in a car accident last summer; it is certainly possible, supposing all of the evidence, that Andrews started slowly a year ago as a direct result.
A year ago, Buffalo was beatable on the ground, and that could present a problem. Though Jackson is the Ravens’ identity in many ways, it is arguable that the offense really runs through RB Derrick Henry, who finished as the fantasy RB2 overall last year behind only Saquon Barkley.
As a ground entity, Henry is arguably better than Barkley. In 2024, he bested him in first downs, yards after contact, forced missed tackles, zone success rate, and gap success rate; Barkley, who played behind a famously good offensive line, earned more yards before contact than anyone in the league.
According to Fantasy Points Data Suite’s rush grade, which measures the advantage or disadvantage an offensive line has in adjusted yards before contact per attempt vs. the adjusted yards before contact per attempt their opponents surrender (in this case, using 2024 data), the Ravens hold the most significant advantage of the week.
This feels like a game that will feature a lot of Henry if the Bills can’t figure out how to overcome this disparity.