 Tempered Expectations. It means to readjust your expectations so that they are lower and therefore more realistic. This is mostly used for situations in which people had unrealistically high expectations about something. It means to readjust your expectations so that they are lower and therefore more realistic. Now when I think about tempered expectations, my definition doesn't exactly match this one. When I think about tempered expectations, I think of just hold your horses. That would be what my definition of tempered expectations would be. And that is what a lot of Ravens fans have right now when it comes to this team. Because for the past year and a half, we've seen this team completely change, completely turn into a different team than we've ever seen before. And especially from that first half of a year that was in 2018, once Lamar took over and then we saw him and that entire offense just evolve in 2019 and it was a beautiful thing to watch. But as we've gone on, the past two seasons, the end has been the exact same result. Regular season, all I do is win, win, win, no matter what. But then playoffs, complete dud, it's a bunch of nothing. And it's like everything just changes once the playoff bright lights come on. There have been some poor decisions by coaching. There have been some bad execution by the players. And it's been a perfect storm for going 0-2 in the playoffs. So it has made a lot of Ravens fans temper their expectations when it comes to the team. And with this being said, I mean you see the title of the video, the Ravens are, they are the second favorites to win the Super Bowl. They have the second best chance of winning the Super Bowl after ESPN's Football Power Index ran 20,000 season simulations. So they did 20,000 sims, it's like you're doing a connected franchise mode in Madden and you sim that same exact year 20,000 times. And it ended up being number one, who had the highest odds of winning, the Chiefs, okay, we can all understand why. And there's no denying that the Chiefs, they're the team to beat. They are definitely the team to beat. I don't know one Ravens fan who would think otherwise. I mean, they're obviously the Titans too, the Titans came in the M&T Bank stadium and literally ran through the Ravens. But anyway, the Chiefs are number one, the Ravens are number two, the Saints, number three. So okay, I can see that. Number four is the 49ers. And then is the big drop off after that, because number five is the Cowboys. I'm sure a lot of y'all in Team Cleveland are gonna have a lot to say about that. Then the Eagles and the Bucks. So it has the Chiefs at 21%, the Ravens at 17%, the Saints at 13%, the 49ers at 12%, and then there's that drop off the Cowboys at 5%, Eagles at 4%, and Bucking is also at 4%. So with that being said, and there's been a lot, I've seen a lot of the Vegas stuff. They are pretty high on the Ravens as well, obviously a little bit higher on the Chiefs. But this has been a consensus with a lot of people that the Ravens are one of the most favorite teams to win the Super Bowl this year. But again, tempered expectations. Now I'm not saying that you should think, oh no, the Ravens are gonna go 0-3 in the playoffs this year, no. I don't think that's the case at all, because I think the Ravens are right there. They're right there. They're on the cusp of finally getting over that hump, and I think they'll definitely do it this year. But I think a lot of Ravens fans this year, and not to try to rain on anybody's parade, anything like that, but I think a lot of Ravens fans are going to be in show me mode. A lot of Ravens fans are going to be in, okay, so now what mode? Because we got memories, and our memories, things just happened last year, and the year before. It wasn't like this is from something far distant past. The Ravens, they haven't gotten it done in the playoffs. They just simply have not gotten it done in the playoffs, and we could have the best regular season in the world. We could be flying high, I mean, because they Ravens, they birds, right? And we could just be steamrolling over teams, sort of like last year. But then now this year, I think a lot of Ravens fans are going to be like, ugh. But ugh, we know what these guys did the past two years in the playoffs. We know what happened. So I think their expectations may be tempered a bit, and they might be like, oh, hold your horses. Not that you will go into the playoffs expecting the team to fail, or wanting them to fail, of course not. But you'll just, we'll just have that in the back of our minds, like ugh. We know what these guys have been doing. But this has got to be the year. This should be the year. Because if you notice, if you notice about these Ravens, they, especially just including these past two playoffs, they've gotten that much better in the playoffs. They've gotten better. And of course, the biggest statistic that a lot of people use, which I can understand why, because he's a quarterback, say Lamar Jackson, 0-2 in the playoffs. This is true. He is 0-2 in the playoffs. And if you look at his numbers, look at his numbers from his rookie year in the playoffs. Oh, I think up, was it up until the third quarter, where he had like negative two yards, something like that? Something crazy. I forgot what the number was. I know they talked about it so much, and you heard about it over and over and over and over again. But then, look last year, look at his numbers in the playoff game from the previous, from 2018, the 2018 season, then look at his playoff numbers from the 2019 season. So a lot changed. And there has been steady improvement. And I talked to my guy, Josh, about it a lot over this past off season. And we've even talked about it in some videos too. And it's like with the Ravens, they improve. They improve that much every year. Every year, they get one step further. And I'm hoping that this is actually the year where they get about three steps further. And what I mean when I say that is that this year, this year, they got to the divisional round in the playoffs, obviously lost. But they got to the divisional round. Why? Because they had the number one seed and they got to skip the wild call round. So they got to the divisional round this year. Okay. Boom, divisional. Last year, they got to the wild card. So one step back, they got to the wild card and it was like, okay, nice in the playoffs. And then the previous year, they didn't make the playoffs, but they were one game out of the playoffs, actually one down out of the playoffs, one down in the 2017 year, they were one down away from the playoffs. That's the famous fourth and 12 that we all remember. And then the previous year, 2016, they were two games out of the playoffs because I believe that was the Antonio Brown, that was that play where he got through like three Ravens defenders and then that was in week 16. So then in week 17, it was just a week 17 didn't mean anything. So again, every year, they've gotten that much closer. So this year, hey, they're going to AFC championship game at the least, at the least, at the least. So that means that this is the year they finally, when their first playoff game, Will and Marjaxon as a starting quarterback, this is the year, you gotta be, I mean, look at history. One step closer every year. But what us as Ravens fans are hoping is that they go three steps further again, winning their first playoff game, winning in the AFC championship and winning the Super Bowl. They have the roster to do it. But that's the thing they've had the roster to do with the past couple years, especially last year, but they just didn't use that roster to the best of its abilities. And then the roster, they didn't use each other to the best of their abilities. Whether it was a pass, a bad pass by Lamar, a bad throw, whether it was drops by the receivers, whether it was just not being able to wrap up, not set the edge, whether it was just not being able to bring down Derek Henry, whether it was just biting hard on that play action. Whoo. Because again, when you, if you can't defend the run, you as a team, like not, you're not necessarily done, but it's a lot harder for your team to succeed. If you can't stop the run, because the run sets up so much. And that is what the Titans thrived off of in that playoff game. The running game, the Ravens weren't stopping it for the most part. And the type play action, play action Ravens, biting hard, biting. And Titans even threw in that little Statue of Liberty play. Got Derek Henry even playing quarterback. Hmm. Not bad for a running back, right? But man, again, the Ravens tie off season. Shout out to my guy, JT. Remember the Titans tie off season. That's what it's been about. And we keep repeating that same thing on here because that's exactly what it is. And that's exactly what it's been. Remember the Titans. But one thing that the Ravens need to do this year in the playoffs. Is actually remember the Ravens. Remember the Ravens. Remember who you are again at the Pro Bowl, Earl Thomas and Lamar Jackson. They were having a conversation. They knew. And it's got to be frustrating as a player when you know what you did that got you to where you are, but coach wants to do otherwise. And again, it wasn't all on coaching. It was a collective effort in that loss against the Titans. So I'm coaching is on players on all of that. But like Earl Thomas was telling Lamar, Jack, what they were talking about. We can't forget where we what got us here. We got to stick to what worked. And Earl Thomas said, we got to treat every single game like it's the Super Bowl. He said, don't treat any game different from the other one. So when we do get to the playoffs, when we do get to the Super Bowl, it'll be like, OK, it's just another game, but we got to take care of business. And when he said that, in my opinion, I think he was saying, make sure every game is treated specially, make sure every game is important because it is, it is. This ain't like this ain't no 82 game schedule. Well, you could slack off for 10, 20, 30 games, still make the play. No, NFL schedule for now is 16 games. I wish they would leave it like that, but they won't. But the NFL schedule for now is 16 games. Soon to be 17 next year. But the 16 games and each of those games is so important. And some people think, oh, you lose a game in the beginning. Oh, you'll be fine. And you can be, but depending on how many more you lose, that one game that you lost early in the season, it could change everything. It could change everything. You know how tricky playoff seeding is. Y'all know, especially as Ravens fans, because we've had so many different scenarios, oh, this got to happen for us to get in. Oh, this got to happen for us to get in. Oh, this team got to lose. This team got to win. This team got to beat that team and they can get crazy. That's why I absolutely love how Ravens did their thing last year in the regular season, because they took care of their own business. They didn't make it to where they had to rely on this team and they had to rely on that team and they had to rely on the node. They didn't do that. They took care of their own business. That's why I loved how it was in the previous season. Previous season, Ravens. Hey, it was looking like these dudes were down and out. And but they had, they had to win every game at the end of the season. And that was all they had to do. They had to win every game at the end of the season and they'd be in the playoffs. That's all they had to do. That is no easy task. You got a rookie quarterback, you don't change the offense and you got to win every single game to get to the. Oh, yikes, but they did it. So they took care of their own business. So now it's important that the Ravens take care of their own business when the business is at its biggest and that's in the playoffs. So team, keep it clean like I'm hoping the Ravens won't be saying this year, especially after just one game in the playoffs. I'm out.