BALTIMORE — The Buffalo Bills had not even finished dispatching the Denver Broncos when CBS broadcaster Tony Romo jumped ahead a week, unable to contain his excitement over the Bills’ next showdown against Lamar Jackson and the Ravens.

“That’s the game I’ve been waiting for,” the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback said, blurting out a sentiment shared by hardcore football lovers around the world.

Once set, Ravens vs. Bills on Sunday night in Buffalo became the main event of the richest football-watching weekend on the calendar.

It’s a matchup rooted not in bitterness but in thrilling similarities — between Jackson and Josh Allen, the mesmerizing quarterbacks who front each team; between two perennial contenders desperate to get past the Kansas City Chiefs and back to the Super Bowl; between coaches John Harbaugh and Sean McDermott, who paid their dues side by side in Philadelphia; between tough cities, Ravens Flock vs. Bills Mafia, that feel perpetually underestimated in the national gaze.

You couldn’t call it a rivalry. It’s just the show everyone who cares a lick about pro football wants to see.

“I can’t remember the last time the stakes felt higher for two fan bases and two quarterbacks in this round,” ESPN commentator Mina Kimes said.

Harbaugh imagined John Facenda, the late narrator of NFL Films, “coming down from the heavens” to boom out an introduction for the game.

“Absolutely. You kind of feel grateful to be a part of it,” the Ravens’ longtime coach said as his week of preparation for Buffalo dawned. “You get a chance to play a team like the Bills … just a super talented, well-coached type of a team. On that stage, in their place — it’s going to be cold; it’s going to be blustery, all that. It’s great, yes.”

The story starts with the quarterbacks, both picked in the first round of the 2018 draft, nothing alike in physical stature but so alike in the torture they inflict on defenses.

“They’re the two most exciting players in football,” former Ravens cornerback turned ESPN analyst Domonique Foxworth said.

Harbaugh refers to Jackson and Allen as “two-play quarterbacks.” You stop the first thing they want to do, and that’s where the fun really begins, because they usually come up with something even better on the fly.

Both reached such sublime levels during the 2024 regular season that debate over which one deserves to be NFL Most Valuable Player became the sauciest topic in the sport in recent weeks. Sunday’s game won’t impact the vote, which already happened, though the result won’t be announced until Super Bowl week. But fans hope it will amount to a final referendum on Jackson vs. Allen.

“It’s going to be an iconic event,” Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey said. “I think I just saw a clip from [Amazon analyst and former All-Pro cornerback] Richard Sherman, and he was like — not that it’s all about the quarterback, but it is essentially all about the quarterback. He was saying whoever comes out of this game will kind of be that next quarterback up. I definitely think it will be a huge game for the NFL, a huge game for the fans.”

The beauty of this playoff collision is that its intrigues do not end with the MVP front-runners. Both teams pile up points with balanced offenses that pack as much old-school punch as new-school flash. Ravens running back Derrick Henry, a 6-foot-2, 247-pound living sculpture who exceeds 20 mph at top speed, shines as brightly as the quarterbacks atop the NFL firmament. He scored an 87-yard touchdown the first time he touched the ball in the Ravens’ 35-10 win over Buffalo at the end of September.

“Both teams play a uniquely physical brand of football, using jumbo personnel and fullbacks,” Kimes said. “The fact that they have aliens at quarterback on top of that just feels unfair.”

ESPN analyst Jeff Saturday played 14 seasons as an NFL center and coached the Indianapolis Colts in 2022. To him, Ravens vs. Bills is the ultimate in trench warfare.

“I’ve framed it on TV as this is just gonna be an onslaught of physicality,” Saturday said. “When you think about what both teams want to do, they don’t try to hide. They’ve got the No. 1 and 2 in the MVP conversation, and somebody’s gonna go home heartbroken. And they get to it different ways — the Bills by adding an extra offensive lineman and the Ravens by using [fullback Patrick] Ricard and Henry, who might as well be another offensive lineman but with speed unheard of for someone that size.”

A forecast kickoff temperature of 17 degrees, with players’ frosty breaths likely visible throughout the game, will only add to the atmosphere for this anticipated epic.

Winter weather is a major component of Buffalo’s football recipe and a reason the Bills have won more than 70% of their home playoff games over the years. The Ravens lost a divisional round game there four years ago, with Jackson throwing an interception that was returned 101 yards for a touchdown. “Hell yes,” he said when asked if that play sticks in his craw. “I just saw it.”

That memory aside, the Ravens and Bills have not met in a string of high-stakes games. This isn’t the Steelers or the Chiefs. For all their differences over which quarterback should win MVP, these fan bases have much in common, starting with the fact that both have tasted acid playoff disappointment at the hands of the Chiefs. The Ravens last played in the Super Bowl 12 years ago, the Bills 31 years ago. With Jackson and Allen in their respective primes, both teams face immense pressure to get back.

Beyond that, Baltimore and Buffalo share blue-collar histories, with pro football interwoven in their daily fabrics.

“Baltimore and Buffalo are regional cities where the fan bases are loyal,” Foxworth said. “Everyone in those cities are fans of their teams.”

That affinity won’t ease the pain of a loss for either side. Players, coaches and fans know the Bills and Ravens are both capable of winning it all.

“I could see whichever team wins this Baltimore-Buffalo matchup being the favorite next week in the AFC championship game,” six-time Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Belichick said this week on his SiriusXM show. “I still think that those two teams overall have been just a little more solid this year than Kansas City.”

That means someone’s big dream will die abruptly in frigid Buffalo.

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Baltimore Sun reporter Brian Wacker contributed to this article.

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