"Here's a little advice as we enter what – for some – will be a difficult week of Super Bowl hype and unrequited Purple Passion.

Buy a couple of squares in your office grid pool so you have a rooting interest in the big game and, as the song goes, don't stop thinking about tomorrow.

The hardest thing to deal with after such a dramatic and disappointing finish is the knowledge that an opportunity that promising doesn't come along every day, but it really won't require all that much heavy lifting for the Ravens to position themselves for another strong run at the Lombardi Trophy next year.

There is always change and uncertainty from one NFL season to another, so nobody ever knows quite what to expect, but the Ravens already went through their off season of dramatic change and still came within a stripped pass of playing the New York Giants for the NFL title.

John Harbaugh alluded to that during his news conference on Friday. The Ravens already have broken in a new group of young receivers and turned the page on several core veterans. They will come back next year with just about all of their skill players on offense and most of their key veterans on defense.

This isn't college football, of course, so there isn't the automatic presumption of improvement when most of the lettermen are returning, but there is a lot of untapped upside in young wideout Torrey Smith and tight ends Ed Dickson and Dennis Pitta, and there still is some room for Joe Flacco to grow into a truly elite quarterback.

The defense will retain a mix of elite veterans and maturing young players who already have made significant contributions to the franchise's great defensive tradition, but the pressure to win it all for Ray Lewis and Ed Reed (if he returns) will intensify along with the necessity of finding suitable replacements for them."