Stephen A. Smith: 'I Believe in the Baltimore Ravens' Despite Loss to Bills
The Ravens entered Week 1 as a Super Bowl favorite by both oddsmakers and pundits, and the No. 1 team in multiple sets of power rankings.
They certainly looked the part deep into the fourth quarter Sunday night against the Bills, another Super Bowl favorite. The offense was nearly unstoppable, as Baltimore led by 15 points in Buffalo, where the Bills haven't lost in the regular season since Week 10 of 2023.
Josh Allen then led a highly improbable comeback and the Ravens suffered yet another fourth-quarter meltdown. And just like that, the Ravens went from Super Bowl contenders to pretenders in the eyes of some fans and pundits.
Overreacting to Week 1 results is an annual tradition. Thankfully, there are voices of reason.
One such rational individual is ESPN's Stephen A. Smith. You read that right.
Smith picked the Ravens to win the Super Bowl before the start of the season, and their 41-40 loss to the Bills hasn't changed his mind.
"Absolutely. What I saw them do for basically the first 50-55 minutes of this game justified me saying they're the favorites to win the chip," Smith said on “First Take.” "I believe in the Baltimore Ravens. And it's not just because of Lamar Jackson. I believe in them because of Derrick Henry. When you have to pay that much attention to this bell cow out of the backfield, and he is the preeminent bell cow. … He's defying Father Time. He is a man amongst boys."
Smith admitted that he has "some trepidation" about the Ravens because of what he saw from the defense Sunday night, "but that offense and the fear that the combination of Derrick Henry and Lamar Jackson strikes in you, and [DeAndre Hopkins] with the one-handed catch, and Zay Flowers balling the way that he did. Man."
It's fair to be critical of the defense's performance against the Bills. It did not look like a championship defense. But again, it was just one game. One quarter, actually. Nearly half of the Bills' 497 total yards came in the fourth quarter.
Good defenses can have bad games. So can great defenses. The 2000 Ravens defense is arguably the greatest of all time, but it gave up 36 points against the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 2 and 521 yards (473 passing) against Vinny Testaverde and the New York Jets in Week 17.
Given the talent on the 2025 defense, it deserves the benefit of the doubt, especially this early in the season.
Another pundit who isn't bailing on the Ravens is Barstool Sports' Dave Portnoy.
"They looked far superior to me," Portnoy said. "I would say that is a fluke win for the Bills, if you account for the fact they got a tipped touchdown on fourth down. Game's over if they don't get that. Just a one in a million play. They get a fumble from Henry. Again, I would say – I don't have the stats – he never fumbles. That's a one in a million play. So, for me, the Ravens look like the better team coming out."
Calling the Bills' win a fluke isn't giving them enough credit. Buffalo took advantage of the Ravens' miscues and made plays in the clutch. That said, Portnoy is correct that some crazy things had to happen in order for the Ravens to lose.
Ravens Still Have Best Odds to Win Super Bowl, Based on DVOA
The Ravens still have the best odds to win the Super Bowl, based on DVOA (Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average), a metric that takes every single play during the NFL season and compares each one to a league-average baseline based on situation. The Bills have the second-best odds at 16.2 percent.
The reason that the Ravens have better odds than the Bills despite losing to them goes back to Portnoy's point about Baltimore being on the wrong end of the "one in a million" type of plays.
FTN's Aaron Schatz, who created DVOA, said that because the Ravens have a higher DVOA than the Bills, it "suggests their success on Sunday night is more sustainable than the Bills' success."
Kyle Hamilton Was a Standout During and After Sunday Night's Game
One of the few bright spots for the defense was the play of safety Kyle Hamilton.
"He was constantly around the ball, making the plays he is known for," Baltimore Beatdown’s Zach Canter wrote. "He blew up screens and run plays at the line of scrimmage. He broke up passes down the field. He picked off a two-point conversion attempt. He even got a piece of the game-winning field goal, but it wasn't enough. Hamilton [is] the highest-paid safety in the NFL and played like it."
The Baltimore Banner’s Childs Walker said Hamilton, who signed a four-year contract extension reportedly worth $100.4 million two weeks ago, was the best defensive player on the field, "as he usually is."
Walker was also impressed with how Hamilton handled himself when speaking with the media after a tough loss and a sub-standard performance from the defense.
"Hamilton held himself accountable along with all the others, which is what you want from the best player on the defense," Walker wrote. "But we can acknowledge that he was the least culpable for Sunday's failures, the one who made the most plays to cut drives short.
"The Ravens are paying top dollar for Hamilton's versatility, maturity and ferocity when he has the ball in his sights. He's next in the line of great Ravens defenders that started with Ray Lewis and includes perhaps the finest playmaking safety in NFL history in Ed Reed. He's a wealthy man at age 24, and Sunday's game was evidence that his extension will be just another leaping-off point as he aims to join Lewis and Reed in Canton."
