The Baltimore Ravens 2012 regular season schedule appears on paper to be one of their toughest in years, which is the reward a team gets for winning their division. In addition to playing what is known as a 1st place schedule, the Ravens play the NFC East next year, with their game hosting the New York Giants at Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium ranked among the league's most anticipated interconference games.

A story on NFL.com has this game rated the third-best of all the interconference match-ups. Here is what the story on the game between the defending AFC North champs and the defending Super Bowl Champions, with a little dig at the Ravens 34-7 Super Bowl 35 victory over the Giants:

It's hard to imagine this Week 16 game not playing a huge factor in the playoff race. It's also hard to imagine the game being worse than the Ravens-Giants Super Bowl.

The two higher-rated interconference games on the 2012 regular season schedule according to the story were the October 7th game between the Pittsburgh Steelers at the Philadelphia Eagles and the December 16th game with those same popular Steelers at the almost-as-popular Dallas Cowboys.