If the Baltimore Ravens find a way to come out of Gillette Stadium with a third playoff win in four tries against the New England Patriots, it will have littleor nothingto do with their first two victories.These are two very different teams since the 2012 AFC Championship Game. In fact, a majority of the major contributors in that game will be watching Saturday's game from somewhere else.Make no mistake, there are several key players who are still playing for their respective teams. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and Ravens defensive end Terrell Suggs won't be exchanging Christmas cards anytime soon, but they may exchange words on the field. Head coaches Bill Belichick and John Harbaugh will still be the ones drawing up the game plans to beat their opponent.Though some common threads remain, a lot has changed since the last time these two teams met in the playoffs. Twenty-seven of the 44 starters (11-of-22 for the Patriots, 16 out of 22 for the Ravens) for those two teams will not be suiting up on Saturday.One player who was not available to the Patriots in the 2012 AFC Championship Gameorin the 2013 Week 16 showdown: tight end Rob Gronkowski, who was injured for both meetings. Gronkowski is without question the most talented and most valuable player on the roster not named Brady, and he has the ability to impact a game plan whether he gets the ball or not.Once you consider that Gronkowski was absent, any and all comparisons to previous meetings hold about as much water as a spaghetti strainer."Everything's different at this point," Brady said Monday, per WEEI.com. "We can never change anything that's happened in the past, nor can they. You can't bring players out of retirement, they can't either. It's the guys we've got versus the guys they've got, which that's an entirely new team that we have and an entirely new team that they have."Of course, the guys he's talking about are former Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis and safety Ed Reed. But neither of those players were on the Ravens roster the last time these two teams met.Amid the hype of the playoff showdowns leading into the rematch, folks seem to be glossing over the most recent meeting between these two teams, a decisive 41-7 Patriots victory in Baltimore that effectively ended the Ravens' 2013 season in Week 16.In that game, the Patriots ran the ball down the Ravens' throats with 34 rush attempts for 142 yards (4.2 yards per carry) and two touchdowns. The Patriots defense, not the Ravens defense, took over by flustering Flacco (and backup Tyrod Taylor) with four sacks and three interceptions.It goes without saying that the rosters this weekend will bear a much closer resemblance to the ones that took the field in Week 16 of the 2013 season than the ones that took the field in the 2012 AFC Championship Game. There will be 15-of-44 combined starters (five for the Patriots, 10 for the Ravens) who will not carry over from Week 16 of the 2013 season.Even though the rosters will be fairly similar to what they were in Week 16 of the 2013 season, the Patriots certainly aren't resting on their laurels."To me I don't think you can put too much [stock in the old games]," safety Devin McCourty said. "You'll watch it, and you can get some X's and O's from that, but it's different years, it's new guys out there, it's all about this year."The Patriots tend to change their game plan from week to week based on their opponent, so while they may have used some similar strategies in the past to what the Ravens could see on Saturday, there's a good chance that Belichick has cooked up something new based on not only the Ravens' new personnel, but the Patriots' new personnel as well.One key difference between the previous Patriots teams and this year's incarnation: the secondary. In the past, Flacco has been tossing his deep balls against a coverage unit consisting of the likes of Alfonzo Dennard, Kyle Arrington, Steve Gregory and even wide receiver Julian Edelman.Yes, some of those players will have roles on Saturday (though Edelman's probably won't be in the secondary), but cornerbacks Darrelle Revis and Brandon Browner are the big dogs of the unit and will undoubtedly lead the way for the Patriots on the back end.That alone gives them an edge in a way that is difficult to put into words. At quarterback, the Patriots have the advantage on paper with Brady over Flacco. However, the Patriots defense has been so dreadful in past years that Flacco has ended up looking like the better quarterback."They are as good as there is in the game," offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak said. "They can lock you down. They match them up. Bill moves them around. They match people. They have a lot of confidence in what they're doing, man coverage-wise. I think we have to go do what we do. We can't sit here and assume, 'Well, this guy is going to play that guy.' We can't do that. We have to go out and run the things we run and do them well."But that's a strength of their defense, and if we're going to find a way to get it done, we're going to have to beat as good a man coverage as there is in football, and we understand that."The Patriots have far more strength to their defense than they had the last time these two teams met, playoffs or otherwise.In the past seven meetings between the two teams, Flacco has a combined rating of 91.1; Brady's combined rating is 73.4. Those numbers will probably have to be flipped if the Patriots are going to come away with a win on Saturday.But with so much change in both teams over the years, there's no way to tell what will happen this week based on what happened in the past.Unless otherwise noted, all quotes obtained first-hand or via team news release.Follow @ErikFrenz
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