We are gathered here in the Babe Ruth Suite for a roundtable discussion in the run-up to Sunday's game (1 p.m.-Cincinnati’s Local 12) in Baltimore, birthplace of the Babe and the town's first Sultan of Swat before Ray Lewis.

Here in the clear light of day after four straight prime-time games, that new-look Ravens defense doesn't look so new prepping for a Bengals offense that has never blinked against the NFL's best pass defense of the century.

A portrait of Paul Brown hangs on the wall.

As every fan of the AFC North knows, he founded both the Ravens and the Bengals. The team that lives in Camden Yards arrived from the Cleveland lakefront on a day in 1995 Bengals president Mike Brown sat in his dark Spinney Field office and stared at a framed photo of his dad's 1948 Cleveland Browns.

Our meeting is chaired by former Bengals head coach and current media mogul Marvin Lewis, who set the table for the current state of the rivalry. Lewis, architect of the Ravens' 2000 record-setting defense that won a Super Bowl and became the blueprint for the NFL's stingiest pass defense, has in his briefcase how the Ravens have kept the same roots that go back to his Ray-Ray unit that allowed a historic 165 points. (In 16 games, kids.)

A blue-ribbon committee of quarterbacks have been gathered to also probe why the Bengals have had so many big passing games against a defense that has allowed the fewest touchdown passes and the lowest passer rating and completion percentage since 2000.

Joe Burrow fronts the contingent leading the Bengals to three of the nine biggest passing days against the Ravens since 2000. His 525-yard Mona Lisa of 2021 leads the individual list, where he holds three of the 11 biggest passing days against Baltimore, via Pro Football Reference.

No other quarterback is on there twice until Drew Brees at No. 20, after another Burrow big one. Peyton Manning doesn't get there until No. 5, and Tom Brady and Eli Manning don't arrive until games 12 and 13, respectively.

Hall-of-Famers all.

But it doesn't begin and end with Burrow.

Go back to when Carson Palmer shocked the Ravens in their building in 2004 with a 24-point fourth quarter. Andy Dalton stunned them deep down there to win the '14 opener in the last five minutes, and three years later knocked them out of the playoffs on fourth-and-12 on the Bengals' last offensive snap of the season. Jon Kitna gifted Marvin Lewis his first Paycor Stadium win in 2003 on an 82-yard touchdown pass to Chad Johnson to beat the Ravens, the kind of big play Marvin's proud Ravens of Ray Lewis and Ed Reed rarely allowed.

(Chase channeled Johnson with his own back-breaking 82-yard touchdown in the '21 Calling Card Game in Baltimore he went for 201 yards.)

Joining the discussion are Burrow backups who have seen it from both sidelines. Joe Flacco was the man in Baltimore for 11 seasons and another Super Bowl title, while Josh Johnson served two recent stints with the Ravens, including 304 yards in the face of his O.K. Corral Shootout with Burrow in the '21 Paycor game.

Also sitting at the head of the table is Bengals All-Pro wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase, author of three of the eight biggest receiving games against the Ravens since 2000. He's joined by running mate Tee Higgins, who, like his Bengals idol A.J. Green before him, had his career-best game against Baltimore.

Higgins' 194 in the Mona Lisa game is the seventh-biggest receiving game against the Ravens, while Green's 227 in a 2015 fourth-quarter silencer comeback in Baltimore is third behind Chase's 264 and Jimmy Smith's 291 in the second game of the century.

Also checking in is Bengals offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher, a Lewis hire who has dueled the Ravens defense with six different quarterbacks.

"This is a team that is always good at the skill positions," Flacco says of the Bengals. "It's a division game, so it's not like they're scared to kind of go in there and do it. When you have division opponents, you get used to playing people. There's no mystique. You just go in and play them."

Certainly mystique reigns at M&T Bank Stadium with a tone not set by offensive fireworks, but by the explosive pregame dance of Ray Lewis, the Hall of Fame linebacker. Since 2000, the Ravens allow an NFL-low 17.5 points per home game.

But it's also where Chase has racked up his two biggest games against them to bookend the gargantuan days of Green and T.J. Houshmandzadeh. Houshmandzadeh had a 171-yarder in the 2004 game down there that has striking similarities to the Burrow-Chase Calling Card Game of 2021 on the same field.

And you just can't say it's because they play the Ravens twice a year that they have more chances for big numbers. We're talking 26 seasons here. The only receiver from the current AFC North on that top 10 hit list against the Ravens is the Steelers' Antonio Brown from nine years ago.

That top 11 list of passing days against the Ravens that Burrow is on three times? The only AFC North quarterbacks on there are the Steelers' Ben Roethlisberger in a 2017 game and the Browns' Josh McCown going back to 2015.

Burrow, and there's absolutely no surprise here, best sums up their ability to throw it against the Ravens.

"We make some big-time plays on the outside. Their front is disruptive. Their corners make everything tough," Burrow says. "They're not going to give up anything easy, and we have guys that can make contested plays on the outside.

"We can make plays outside the pocket, outside the structure. These guys make everything so hard. And if you don't make contested plays, you're going to have a long day because they're going to stop the run, and they're going to make you throw it deep. They're going to play everything down from shallow to deep. And if you don't make those contested plays down the field, it's going to be a long day."

Marvin Lewis seconds that and Burrow's observation that the structure is different from the one he tore up in 2021, when he turned defensive coordinator Wink Martindale's exotic looks into bread-and-butter.

Even though new head coach Jesse Minter worked for the Ravens during four years under John Harbaugh and his defensive coordinator, Anthony Weaver, was a Ravens edge player Bengals Ring of Honor right tackle Willie Anderson kept away from Palmer in '04, Marvin Lewis says it's a different scheme but that some key things have stayed the same.

He says it starts with Ozzie Newsome, the two-time Super Bowl champ general manager, and Eric DeCosta, the current general manager who broke in as a player personnel assistant under Newsome when the Ravens were born in 1996. With Newsome still in the building and guys like executive vice president of player personnel George Kokinis still there after breaking in when the Ravens were still the Browns, Lewis can see the continuity.

"The characteristics and the traits have not changed. I think schematically things are different, but I think the characteristics of how they go about the evaluation are still the same. A lot of the personnel people are people who have gone and come back," Lewis says.

"Smarts is the most important trait. I always tell people they never gave them enough credit for how smart they were,  and they could go out and execute the plan. They knew what the plan was, what the focus was, and they would go out and execute it."

Other traits, Lewis says, that make Minter's Ravens defense not all that different than his: physicality and a just-do-your-job-discipline. Plus, they always seem to make sure they have big defensive tackles and versatile three-down linebackers.

Marvin isn't going to go as far as calling current middle linebacker Roquan Smith a Ray Lewis, but he says Smith is talented, smart and has that Ravens DNA. Indeed, when Lewis visited Georgia 10 years ago as the Bengals head coach, he was struck by how similar Smith was to former Bengals linebacker Odell Thurman, another Georgia Bulldog.

Marvin Lewis thought Thurman could have the same kind of impact on the league and the Bengals the same way Ray Lewis did for him in Baltimore. Until off-field troubles ended Thurman's career after that brilliant first season in 2005 he was named the league's Defensive Rookie of the Year by some entities.

"Just as I was looking at Roquan down there and thinking that," Lewis said of that 2018 visit to Athens, "Odell comes up and grabs me by the back to say hello."

Then there's Ravens safety Kyle Hamiton, the guy Bengals head coach Zac Taylor calls the most underrated player in the league and a guy Burrow says is so dangerous because he's long, active, and smart.

"Kyle Hamilton plays his ass off. He's kind of the Swiss Army knife who does it all," Marvin Lewis says. "He was like Rod Woodson was for me. Could be your nickel, could be your safety, could be your dime. Could blitz.  After Rod was Ed Reed, who did the same sort of thing."

Now there is Hamilton.

Dan Pitcher: "One thing you know when you play this team every time is you know it's going to be an intelligent scheme. A team that is able to adapt with players who play hard and are fast. My experience is they have really smart players, particularly their leaders, that make it go.

"I have a lot of respect for them because  I think they play the game intelligently. They're able to check in and out of looks probably as much or more as any team in the league."

So same guys, different scheme. Josh Johnson says it's not Martindale exotic, but Mike Macdonald solid with a versatile, chameleon two-deep zone that's not always what it seems because they disguise so well. And Johnson was there in 2023 when Macdonald did well enough to get the Seahawks head coaching job.

"Different, but similar," Johnson says. "Heavy-handed D-line. An attack down secondary where they try to play at the top of a lot things. Very aggressive corners. Press coverage a lot."

Marvin Lewis, who had been hoping to call this game for USA Radio but is, instead, headed to Las Vegas this week, isn't sure the Ravens can cover everything the Bengals throw at them with Chase and Higgins.

"Have to get positive yards on the early downs so that line can't tee off," Lewis says.

So what's changed since Chad and T.J.? Not all that much, it seems.

"A clash of styles," says Josh Johnson in our final presentation. "They want to ground and pound and take deep shots. We throw it around.

"We're tough to cover. You play us, it's like you have to play a two-minute defense. With those receivers? Heavyweight fight and it's going to come down to who imposes their will."