They are generational talents, one certainly to be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the other most likely to be as well.

Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson and his Bills counterpart, Josh Allen, were both drafted in 2018, the former selected 25 picks after the latter was chosen by Buffalo with the seventh overall pick. They also made their NFL debuts against each other that year, both coming off the bench amid a 47-3 season-opening blowout by Baltimore.

Now they meet again — the stakes, of course, much higher.

The third-seeded Ravens will play the No. 2 seed Bills on Sunday night in the divisional round of the playoffs in Orchard Park, New York, where a trip to the AFC championship game will be on the line. The winner will face either the top-seeded Kansas City Chiefs or host the No. 4 seed Houston Texans. It marks just the fifth time the two stars will have faced off as starters.

Here’s a closer look at each quarterback, how they’ve fared this season and against each other:

Previous matchups

The past does provide some insight to the present.

The Ravens are 3-1 against the Bills in the regular season with Jackson and Allen starting, which included a 35-10 blowout in Week 4 of this season when Derrick Henry ran over Buffalo with 199 yards and two touchdowns and Jackson was an efficient 13 of 18 passing for 156 yards and two touchdowns to go with 54 yards rushing and another score.

With a mix of coverages and an adept pass rush, the Ravens also harassed Allen into one of his worst games of the season as he completed just 16 of 29 passes for 180 yards while keeping him without a touchdown, forcing a fumble and sacking him three times.But Buffalo is unbeaten against Baltimore when it counts most, having stifled Jackson and the Ravens’ offense in a 17-3 divisional round win, also in upstate New York, during the 2020 COVID season.

In that postseason showdown, Jackson was held to just 14 of 24 passing for 162 yards along with 34 yards rushing on nine carries before being knocked out of the game with a concussion near the end of the third quarter. A few minutes before smacking his head on the turf, he threw an interception that Bills cornerback Taron Johnson returned 101 yards for a touchdown to seal a 17-3 victory.

Allen, meanwhile, threw for 206 yards and one touchdown on 23 of 37 passing.

Their other contests were tantalizing at times, too.

In their first head-to-head matchup as starters in December 2019, Jackson, who went on to win his first NFL Most Valuable Player Award that season, threw three touchdown passes in a 24-17 victory in Orchard Park as Baltimore won its ninth straight en route to a 14-2 record. Three years later, Allen got him back, rallying Buffalo from a 20-3 second-quarter deficit with a touchdown pass and an 11-yard touchdown run to go with three Tyler Bass field goals, including one at the buzzer, in a 23-20 win in Baltimore. A lot has of course changed since then.

Jackson has won two NFL MVP Awards. Both are in the running for it this year after authoring historic campaigns.

Allen directed a Bills offense that became the first to score at least 30 touchdowns through the air and at least 30 on the ground. Jackson, meanwhile, was the man behind the first offense to rack up at least 4,000 yards passing and at least 3,000 yards rushing in the same season.

After Buffalo’s wild-card round win over the Broncos, Allen called Jackson “one of the most dynamic, if not the most dynamic, quarterback in the league” and added that he’s “so fun to watch.”

This one should be, too.

Inside the numbers

Jackson threw for more yards (4,172 to 3,731), a higher completion percentage (66.7% to 63.6%) and more touchdowns (41 to 28) along with fewer interceptions (four to six) than Allen during the regular season.

He also rushed for more yards (915 to 531), though Allen had more rushing scores (12 to four).

Both have also been equally sublime.

They were the only two quarterbacks to finish with a positive mark in expected points added under pressure, according to Tru Media. Jackson is also coming off a wild-card win in which he posted a career-playoff best 132 passer rating against what was a tough Steelers defense, while Allen was even better against a solid Broncos secondary that he tuned up to a 135.4 rating.

What they’re saying

“This is what everyone’s been waiting for, right?” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “So it’ll be a nice week and everyone will be looking forward to it, and they’re a great football team. I mean they handled us pretty good the first go around and they’re certainly playing well.”

Ravens coach John Harbaugh, who has said in the past how much respect he has for McDermott, was likewise effusive.

“I think offensively, they’re very coordinated in terms of blocking schemes and timing of routes and pass protections and how it’s all put together,” he said Monday. “The quarterback obviously is playing at a high level. Josh Allen is a great player. They’re well built around him — they did a good job of building the offense around him, and they have a lot of complementary pieces. All of their wide receivers and tight ends and backs — and the backs also serve as receivers — but they’re all very talented and skilled catchers. They all understand the passing game really well.”

Others have weighed in with their thoughts as well.

“Lamar was really good again this past weekend,” former NFL quarterback and current ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky said on the network earlier this week. “I thought some of the touch throws that he had; one for a touchdown, another for Isaiah Likely was great. Josh Allen was absolutely spectacular yesterday against a very good defense.

“Both of them have been sensational.”

Rex Ryan, who coached Buffalo in 2015 and 2016 before being fired and was Baltimore’s defensive line coach from 1999 to 2004 and defensive coordinator from 2005 to 2008, also weighed in during the segment with thoughts on how or if the outcome will be any different from the last time the two teams met when Henry ran for nearly 200 yards.

“It’s not gonna be different unless Buffalo makes it different,” he bellowed. “You gotta change what you do defensively. You gotta get out of playing all those little [defensive backs] all over the place, regardless of what their personnel grouping is. … You will get destroyed.”

There’s also the question of which quarterback is under more pressure, with neither having been to a Super Bowl and having to go through the other to get there.

“Lamar Jackson, you could argue, needs the postseason success more because of the weight of overwhelming accomplishment during the regular season,” Mike Golic Jr. said on his eponymous podcast. “But this is where Josh Allen has made his reputation with a few banner postseason performances but doesn’t have all the regular-season hardware Lamar has.”

Have a news tip? Contact Brian Wacker at bwacker@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/brianwacker1.