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The Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers have met 64 times in their storied rivalry, but never like this. On NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” with a potential audience of over 25 million. In Week 18, with an AFC North title on the line. Two iconic quarterbacks under center. Two Super Bowl-winning coaches on the sidelines.

“As a Ravens fan or in the organization, you have to take a step back and you have to nod your head a little bit and go, ‘Yes, that’s probably the way it should be,’” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said Monday of the prime-time packaging.

It’s also a path to the spotlight that no one expected. To the winner of Sunday’s game at Acrisure Stadium go the spoils: the division title, the AFC’s No. 4 playoff seed, offseason bragging rights. To the loser goes a heaping mess of questions: What just happened? And what happens next?

Week 18 could be a referendum on quarterbacks Lamar Jackson and Aaron Rodgers. It could be a referendum on Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin. It could be a referendum on the front offices that built these flawed teams and the fan bases that have tired of those flaws.

Battle lines have been drawn. Positions have been staked out. All the Ravens and Steelers can do now is change the narrative before it swallows them whole.

“When you’re winning, there’s no noise,” Jackson said Thursday. “But soon as you lose, or things don’t look right, all types of noise come out of nowhere.”

As the Ravens (8-8) and Pittsburgh (9-7) prepare for their Sunday night matchup, here’s what to watch in the final game of the NFL’s regular season. All stats are courtesy of Sports Info Solutions, Pro Football Focus and the NFL’s Next Gen Stats unless otherwise noted.

1. Jackson said he plans to wear equipment Sunday to protect his bruised back. If the gear emboldens Jackson as a runner, it could also power up the Ravens’ ground game.

When the Ravens rushed for a franchise-record 299 yards in their wild-card-round win over Pittsburgh last year, the Steelers stumbled against the read option. Jackson had eight keepers for 44 yards against a Pittsburgh defense determined to keep the ball away from running back Derrick Henry. Henry still finished with three option handoffs for 57 yards, including a 44-yard touchdown that all but put the game away in the third quarter.

This year, Jackson’s lower-body injuries have limited the Ravens’ reliance on the read option. A year after finishing with 130 option runs for 743 yards (5.7 per carry) and five touchdowns, the offense enters Week 18 with 69 option runs for 347 yards (5.0 per carry) and three touchdowns.

Offensive coordinator Todd Monken could crank up the usage Sunday. The Ravens had seven option runs for 29 yards in their Week 14 home loss to Pittsburgh, though the last carry — a 3-yard loss by Henry on third-and-2 late in the fourth quarter — proved costly. Jackson entered that game limited because of an ankle injury. He should be a full participant in practice this week for the first time since Week 10.

Tomlin, whose run defense was without impressive rookie defensive lineman Derrick Harmon in Baltimore, said Tuesday that Jackson and the Ravens “force you into 11-on-11 football.”

“Whether or not Lamar keeps the ball or not, there’s a threat of him keeping the ball, and that thins out, oftentimes, your second and your third level of defense when it comes to point-of-attack running,” Tomlin told local reporters. “And so some things that they do uniquely [are things] that others don’t. The quarterback mobility is a component of it that makes it unique with Lamar’s unique talents. And certainly the unique talents of the big runner [Henry] makes it a challenge as well.”

2. Steelers defensive coordinator Teryl Austin hinted at T.J. Watt’s looming return Sunday, saying Thursday that “it’ll be great to have him back.” But the star outside linebacker’s role could be situational in his first game back from a partially collapsed lung.

In recent years, Watt has rarely left the field against the Ravens. Since 2021, Watt has played at least 85% of Pittsburgh’s defensive snaps in all but two regular-season meetings: a Week 18 win in the 2023 season that he left early with a knee injury, and the Ravens’ blowout win in Baltimore last season.

With the well-rounded skill sets of fellow outside linebackers Alex Highsmith (8.5 sacks) and Nick Herbig (6.5 sacks), Austin can pick and choose his spots. Will Watt, who last played in Week 14 against the Ravens, be used more as an early-down run defender? In their loss to Pittsburgh, the Ravens averaged just 2.8 yards on their 11 carries to Watt’s side of the field, and 6.9 yards on the 18 carries away from him.

Or will Watt be used more as a late-down pass rusher? He has just seven sacks this season, but he’s been chip-blocked on an NFL-high 31% of his pass rush snaps this season, a testament to Watt’s gravitational pull on offensive game plans.

“Guys that can get to the quarterback change the game,” Monken said Thursday. “All you have to do is look at who gets paid the most money in this league, and that’ll tell you who’s the most important. That’s a fact. … He’s an elite player, and we’ll scheme like he’s going to play, like we’re planning on him playing."

Over 17 career games against the Ravens, Watt has 17 sacks, 34 quarterback hits, four forced fumbles and 23 tackles for loss.

3. Life without DK Metcalf has not been easy for Rodgers this season.

Over his 67 pass attempts without the Steelers’ star wide receiver, who will miss Week 18 while serving a two-game suspension for a Week 16 confrontation with a Detroit fan, Rodgers has completed just 56.7% of his passes (down from 67.2% with Metcalf) and averaged just 4.7 yards per attempt (down from 7.1).

In Baltimore four weeks ago, Rodgers targeted Metcalf on a game-high 12 passes, completing seven for a season-high 148 yards. He had just two drop-backs without Metcalf on the field. Rodgers’ one pass fell incomplete. His other drop-back ended with a 1-yard scramble into the end zone for Pittsburgh’s opening score.

With Calvin Austin III, another starting Steelers wideout, sidelined Sunday by a lingering hamstring injury, the team’s passing production suffered in an upset loss to Cleveland. The Browns held Pittsburgh’s wide receivers to eight catches on 21 targets for 60 yards.

“Obviously, DK, he’s a heck of a player, one of the top receivers in the league,” Ravens defensive coordinator Zach Orr said Thursday. “But Aaron Rodgers and [Steelers offensive coordinator] Arthur Smith, they’re running the same offense. They’re still going to take the shots on the outside, give their guys chances one-on-one. So I don’t see anything changing much, and they have capable receivers. They just didn’t come down with the plays. I’m sure that they wanted to, but the offense really hasn’t changed.”

Ravens cornerbacks have been erratic in man coverage this year, but they should have the upper hand in matchups against 35-year-old Adam Thielen, 31-year-old Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Scotty Miller and Roman Wilson.

4. Rodgers likes to run the show. That could mean a lot of solo performances in the Steelers’ backfield Sunday.

Pittsburgh has used “empty” formations — five eligible receivers split out wide across the field, with Rodgers alone in the shotgun — on about a third of Pittsburgh’s offensive plays over the past two weeks, the highest rate in the NFL. The look typically forces defenses to “declare” their intentions before the snap, but it puts added stress on quarterbacks and their offensive lines.

Rodgers is now “having more control at the line of scrimmage and really just calling his own pass plays, trying to dictate the game,” Orr said. “Obviously, he’s been doing it for a long time, and he’s great at doing that. So yes, it presents a lot of challenges, because he wants to ball out quick. It’s easier to see rushers when they’re coming. It’s easier to see certain coverages when you spread them out. So we have a good plan for that, and we got to go out there and execute it.”

The Steelers’ uptick in empty formations started in Week 13, a week before they traveled to Baltimore. In that win over the Ravens, Rodgers went 7-for-8 for 88 yards and was pressured just twice out of empty.

While the Ravens haven’t faced quarterbacks lined up in the formation often this season, they have struggled against it, allowing an All-Pro-level 0.45 expected points added per pass. Overall, opponents in empty looks are 31-for-48 (64.6%) for 410 yards and two touchdowns and have been sacked just once. Even Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy went 3-for-4 for 90 yards in a Week 10 loss to the Ravens.

5. The Ravens aren’t just fighting for a playoff berth. They’re also on the verge of AFC North history.

Over the division’s 23 previous seasons, there have been six teams to win back-to-back titles. The Ravens, for instance, defended their AFC North crown in 2012, 2019 and 2024. But there’s never been a three-peat.

That would change with a win Sunday. Harbaugh said Monday that the historical quirk initially came as a surprise — “but then not a surprise when I thought about it for about five seconds, because it’s so darn competitive” in the division.

“It’s something to think about,” Harbaugh added. “It’s a big deal, but it’s a game. It’s like any big game. There’s a lot riding on it, and there’s a lot to earn, but you have to go play a winning football game. You have to go play the type of game that can beat a really good football team in their stadium when the stakes are really high, and I know they feel the same way.”

The Steelers, meanwhile, have not won the AFC North since 2020, their longest such streak in franchise history.

“It’s for everything this week,” defensive lineman Cameron Heyward told local reporters Thursday. “You don’t have to look around. You don’t have to wait for somebody else to play. If you’re a competitor and you understand this rivalry between Baltimore, it’s what you want. We control our destiny.”