On New Year’s Eve, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson was asked whether he had any resolutions for 2025. He looked down for a moment, then back up.

“Yeah, but I’m gonna try to keep it to myself,” he said with a grin Tuesday, chuckling softly.

It’s not hard to figure out at least one. Jackson is a two-time NFL Most Valuable Player who could add a third award this season, but the Ravens have not advanced past the AFC championship game in his six years in Baltimore. A win in Saturday’s regular-season finale wouldn’t make the Ravens Super Bowl front-runners — they’re 18-point favorites against the visiting Cleveland Browns, according to DraftKings, which would be the biggest such spread in team history — but it would help ahead of a potential run to New Orleans.

The Ravens (11-5) need either a win over the depleted Browns (3-13) or a loss by the Pittsburgh Steelers (10-6) to the Cincinnati Bengals (8-8) on Saturday night to repeat as AFC North champions and secure the conference’s No. 3 playoff seed. Here’s what to watch in their Week 18 matchup at M&T Bank Stadium.

1. Saturday’s game in Baltimore will kick off Week 18 and set the table for a handful of AFC playoff contenders and hopefuls.

With a win, the Ravens would lock the Steelers out of a potential home playoff game. But Pittsburgh still needs to beat the Bengals to secure the fifth seed and a wild-card-round game against the depleted Houston Texans. With a loss and a Los Angeles Chargers win over the Las Vegas Raiders, the Steelers would fall to the No. 6 seed and face the Ravens in Baltimore.

With a Pittsburgh win, however, the Chargers would be locked into the No. 6 seed, meaning they could rest key players Sunday ahead of their rematch against the Ravens. Leading wide receiver Ladd McConkey (toe), former Ravens running back Gus Edwards (ankle) and starting defensive lineman Poona Ford (elbow) all missed practice Wednesday with injuries.

With a Ravens loss and a Steelers win, the Ravens would fall to the No. 5 seed and face the Texans again in Houston. The Texans, who will take on the Tennessee Titans in their regular-season finale but are locked into the No. 4 seed, could also rest key players ahead of a potential rematch.

The Bengals, meanwhile, require some help to get into the playoffs as the AFC’s final wild-card team. Not only do they need to beat the Steelers, but they also need the Miami Dolphins to lose to the New York Jets and the Denver Broncos to lose to the Kansas City Chiefs, who are expected to rest some starters.

2. Whoever awaits the Ravens in the playoffs next week won’t need much of a scouting report. They should already be well acquainted. The Ravens faced the Chargers in Los Angeles in Week 12, hosted the Steelers in Week 16 and took on the Texans in Houston in Week 17, winning all three games rather handily.

Late-season rematches are rare in the playoffs, but the Ravens fell short in their last one. In 2018, Jackson’s first year in Baltimore, the Ravens beat the Chargers in Carson, California, in a must-win game in the second-to-last week of the regular season. Two weeks later, after the Ravens had clinched an AFC North title and the conference’s No. 4 seed, the Chargers came to Baltimore and smothered their offense in a 23-17 wild-card-round win.

This season, the Ravens’ circumstances aren’t too different. They need to win in their finale to secure a home playoff game, just as the 2018 Ravens did. Which means the Ravens have no plans of holding anything back, according to defensive coordinator Zach Orr. They’ll worry about their postseason game plan next week.

“This game right here is for the AFC North, and that’s one of our goals,” Orr said Wednesday. “The first goal is to go 1-0 that week. Make the playoffs; we did that. The next one is to win the AFC North, so we’re pulling out all the stops that we need to do to go get this win on Saturday.”

3. The Ravens have seen an awful lot of awful Cleveland quarterbacks over the years. Twenty-two different Browns have started under center against Baltimore since 2000, according to TruMedia, a depressing list of has-beens (Deshaun Watson, Jeff Garcia) and never-weres (Jason Campbell, Cody Kessler).

Cleveland’s Week 18 depth chart, however, might be a new low for the series. With Watson sidelined by a season-ending Achilles tendon injury and backup Jameis Winston waylaid by a shoulder injury and a bad turnover habit, the Browns’ starting options are bleak.

Cleveland will reportedly turn to Bailey Zappe, who hasn’t played this year and averaged 2.9 yards per attempt in his last start, a 17-3 loss by the New England Patriots to the New York Jets in Week 18 last year. But the Browns might also play Dorian Thompson-Robinson, who averaged 3.6 yards per attempt in Sunday’s 20-3 loss to the Miami Dolphins, his second straight start.

In six games this season, Thompson-Robinson has no touchdown passes, six interceptions and a QBR of 18.9, which would rank last among all qualifying quarterbacks. In 10 games last season, Zappe had six touchdown passes, nine interceptions and a QBR of 23.9, which also would’ve ranked last.

“We’re obviously familiar with Thompson-Robinson,” said Orr, who was the Ravens’ inside linebackers coach last season when Thompson-Robinson was the unexpected starter in a 28-3 home loss, throwing three interceptions and taking four sacks. “Now we’re doing some work on Zappe, so our game plan really won’t change much. How we approach these guys, the system is going to be the same. We expect a little more QB runs with Thompson-Robinson in there, but we’re going to do what we do. We have to go out there and handle business.”

4. Running back Derrick Henry could be in line for a meaningful weekend.

He turns 31 on Saturday. He’s 117 rushing yards from his second career 1,900-yard season. He’s one rushing score away from becoming the first player in NFL history with three seasons of 15 rushing touchdowns and 1,500 rushing yards. And he could help run up the score against a Browns safety who seemed to rankle him after the Ravens’ Week 8 loss.

A day after Cleveland’s 29-24 upset win, Grant Delpit posted a series of photos from the game on Instagram, along with a seemingly Ravens-themed caption: “They raven from a distance we call that bird watching, like im @kodakblack we ain’t doing no flockin.” (The rapper Kodak Black is childhood friends with Jackson and has a song called “No Flockin’.”)

One of the photos in the set shows Delpit delivering a blow to Henry, who finished with 11 carries for 73 yards and a score. Henry, who does not follow Delpit on Instagram, commented on the post, “Bet,” slang that’s usually used to agree with someone or confirm a statement — perhaps ironically, in this case.

Henry, who did not speak to reporters this week, is coming off a dominant two-game stretch. In wins over the Steelers and Texans, he had 51 carries for 309 yards and a touchdown, along with four catches for 45 yards.

“Les Miles used to say this years ago … ‘There’s nothing like being able to turn around and comfortably hand the ball off to the running back,’ and there’s something to that,” said Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken, who worked under Miles at Oklahoma State. “And some of those times … it’s kind of a smoke break for your quarterback. There’s not much processing. You can just turn around and hand the ball off, and there’s not a lot of reading it, throwing it, protection. I can hand the ball off, and that’s big.”

5. The Ravens will get a taste of playoff weather Saturday, when temperatures in Baltimore are expected to reach a high near 34 degrees, according to the National Weather Service, with gusts as high as 33 mph.

The road to the Super Bowl won’t be much warmer. In Kansas City, Missouri, home of the top-seeded Chiefs, snowfall is expected this weekend. In Orchard Park, New York, home of the Buffalo Bills, temperatures should be below freezing.

The Ravens have played just three games outside in below-freezing weather since 2019, when Jackson became a full-time starter, according to TruMedia. They lost in Cleveland to the Browns in Week 15 in 2022, a 13-3 defeat Jackson missed because of injury. A week later, they beat the Atlanta Falcons in Baltimore, 17-9, again without Jackson. And in the playoffs last year, with Jackson healthy, the Ravens walloped the visiting Texans in the wild-card round, 34-10.

“It’s January, so whatever weather you get, you get,” Harbaugh said after a blustery Thursday practice. “That’s how it works. We had a chance to get out there this week. Today, obviously, was very cold and windy, and we were out there in it. The guys were on point, and they were sharp, and it was good.”