There is nothing left to wait for. The Ravens have been waiting long enough.

Losing eight of the last nine games against the Pittsburgh Steelers has been painful enough. Enough years have passed. If teams have to go through their slumps and valleys, even in rivalries as storied as this one, the Ravens have spent enough time grasping in the dark.

They have enough talent — the better quarterback, running back and (without George Pickens taking the field) the better receiver and tight end. This defense isn’t perfect, but it ought to be good enough to mash against Russell Wilson. The stakes are high enough, unlike other late-season losses of years past, with the AFC North title on the line.

The missing factor — maybe the only missing factor — is what’s going on in the Ravens’ heads.

In the heyday of their success against the Steelers, when they won nine of 12 games themselves, the Ravens’ defense had all-time greats on the roster. But they also had unrivaled bravado and confidence, never captured better than by Terrell Suggs’ iconic walk-off line in 2011 after drilling Ben Roethlisberger for three sacks and two forced fumbles.

“Big Ben, you know, he’s a great quarterback,” he said. “God can have his soul, but his ass belongs to me.”

This week the Ravens have seemed a little looser than in Steelers weeks past, humbled by the results that have seemed eerily reserved for this specific opponent.

As good as the Steelers’ defense is, Lamar Jackson’s last two games in Pittsburgh have been his worst performances of the season. Players with normally steady hands, including Derrick Henry, cough up footballs at tough moments, which is why offensive coordinator Todd Monken ran around this week trying to rip balls out of his players’ hands. The Steelers won’t be as forgiving.

“Just self-inflicted wounds — penalties, turnovers,” Jackson said. “Stuff like that, we’re killing drives before they even get started.”

The Ravens’ defenders don’t just contend with trying to keep the Steelers in front of them but find themselves reining in their emotions — Marlon Humphrey acknowledged the dust-ups between the sides in the last game were challenging. Justin Tucker has struggled in a few games this season, but his misses in Pittsburgh drew a direct contrast to Chris Boswell going 6-for-6.

All the while, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin seems to enjoy the mind games as much as anyone. Reportedly telling his team in 2023 that the Ravens would “try to burn the house down” in dying moments, Tomlin always seems to manipulate end-of-game situations in his favor. All eight wins in this stretch have been by a one-score margin. The Steeler’s Week 11 victory in the rivalry was the first in which the winning team failed to score a touchdown when the losing team had reached the end zone — a real marvel the more you think about it.

For Baltimore, these games project a team more afraid to lose than confident enough to win, which lately has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This week, the Ravens have been forced to admit it even to themselves.

“There’s been a lot of different things that just seems like it hasn’t [gone] our way, but it’s not like ‘Oh, we were just unlucky.’” Humphrey said. “You got to play disciplined football. I think Tomlin wants to just keep the game close, keep the game close and then win it at the end and, honestly, that strategy works pretty well when they play us.”

Discipline will be necessary to win, no doubt. But how about a little fire and brimstone? How about a measure of confidence that the Ravens would bring when facing almost any other team in the league?

It’s not enough to hope for a win. God can save the Steelers’ souls, but victory has to belong to the Ravens on Saturday.

Losing to the Steelers is far from a death blow to Baltimore’s greatest ambitions, but it would signal vulnerability that real Super Bowl contenders don’t have. The Ravens have come up short so many times against the Steelers and the Kansas City Chiefs, there comes a point when confidence is hard to manufacture in the highest-stakes games of the year. The road to New Orleans almost assuredly goes through one of them — if not both.

The transition has to start now, with weeks to go until the playoff furnace turns up the heat. It has to be now, with a home game, a few key Pittsburgh injuries and the division up for grabs.

The expectation to win has never changed, but the Ravens’ belief in themselves must grow. There are no excuses left for a slump that has carried on this long — and none that will make another disappointment against Pittsburgh feel better if the wait goes on.