Normally quick with a quip or response, Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs asked respectfully for a little more time to think about the question. About two minutes elapsed when Suggs turned to the reporter and wanted to hear the question again.
Why is it that the Ravens have had postseason success against the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium and what do they have to do to replicate it?
"I still don't have an answer," Suggs said as he walked away briskly. "I'm sorry. I don't know and if I did know, I probably wouldn't tell you either."
Several Ravens Tuesday downplayed the importance of their two previous playoff road victories against the Patriots, and insisted they'll mean nothing come Saturday, when the two teams will meet for the fourth time in the past six postseasons.
But at the very least, those two matchups, along with a narrow loss in the 2012 AFC championship game remembered around these parts for the late-game struggles of Lee Evans and Billy Cundiff, give the Ravens the blueprint of how to win at Gillette Stadium.
In those three games, the Ravens largely dominated the favored Patriots, controlling the line of scrimmage, logging more time of possession and winning the turnover battle by a wide margin. The Patriots turned the ball over 10 times — seven of them on interceptions thrown by Tom Brady — in the three games, while the Ravens turned it over just three times.
"We can't change what has happened. You just have to move forward and you have to think about the things that we've done really well this year, try to look at those and use those and the ways to attain the goal that we set out for a long time ago — to win this game," Brady said Tuesday. "We've got a great opportunity to be able to do that. We've put ourselves in a good position — we've just got to take advantage of it. So, you've got to have respect for your opponent and their ability to do things. They're a very good football team. They finished 10-6 [and] won a road playoff game, so it's a very capable team."
Brady's reputation as a winner and clutch performer has been both well documented and deserved. However, he's looked especially ordinary in the playoffs against the Ravens, throwing three touchdown passes, seven interceptions, completing 56 percent of his passing attempts and averaging just under 238 passing yards per game.
Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco, on the other hand, has thrown five touchdown passes and two interceptions in the playoffs against the Patriots, completing 57 percent of his passes. He essentially accumulated those numbers in two games as he threw the ball just 10 times for 34 yards in the Ravens' 33-14 victory over the Patriots in the 2010 wild-card game. He averaged 273 passing yards in the other two games.
"It's crazy how games have gone up there," said Flacco who has thrown 13 touchdown passes and no interceptions in his past five postseason games. "It's kind of gone both ways. It's not really about out-dueling Tom or him out-dueling me. We're not playing against one another. We're playing against two really good defenses."
Flacco was nursing a deep thigh bruise for that 2010 wild-card game and the Ravens didn't need him to do much more than turn around and hand the ball to running back Ray Rice, whose 83-yard run on the first play from scrimmage set the tempo for the most lopsided home playoff defeat in Patriots head coach Bill Belichick's tenure.
In the 2012 AFC championship game, won 23-20 by the Patriots, the Ravens outgained the Patriots by 67 yards, committed two fewer turnovers and held the ball for seven minutes more than New England. However, Evans couldn't secure the potential game-winning touchdown pass in the final minutes and then Cundiff shanked a 32-yard attempt at the game-tying field goal.
A year later, however, the Ravens shut out the Patriots after halftime and Flacco threw three second-half touchdown passes in his team's 28-13 victory, which booked a trip to Super Bowl XLVII.
"It's ancient history," Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said of the previous playoff matchups. "It really doesn't matter. You watch some, schematically, there are things you look at. You try to pull out [things] that you think may apply going forward, but that's the extent of it."
Belichick also had little interest in discussing those previous playoff matchups and offered a reminder that the Ravens and Patriots also played in the regular season last year. New England came into M&T Bank Stadium and beat the Ravens, 41-7, in one of the worst losses of the Harbaugh era. That late-season defeat was a big reason the Ravens missed the playoffs for the first time in six seasons.
"We played them last year, we've played them in previous years. They've won some; we've won some," Belichick said in a conference call with Baltimore reporters. "There have been some great games, close games. The teams compete hard against each other, so we'll see what happens this week. I don't think any of those games really matter."
The reality, as Brady has pointed out several times this week, is that both teams have changed significantly since they last met in the playoffs. The Ravens will have only 18 players in uniform that were also on the team for their 2013 Super Bowl run.
The Patriots, meanwhile, still have Brady at the helm, but he has a host of different weapons, a healthy Rob Gronkowski at tight end and a far better defense to lean on. But what they don't have, at least in the Ravens' eyes, is an aura of invincibility while playing on their home field in the postseason.
Belichick is 12-3 in home playoff games with two of those losses coming against the Ravens.
"I think it's kind of funny that people would be intimidated at any point in any game against anybody," Flacco said. "It's just not in our nature. We've played in a lot of big football games and this is no other. It's not like it's not in our mind to go up there and win this football game. We're very confident, and we believe we have a good team. We believe we have a team that can win this game."