With the best record and scoring margin in the AFC and a 1 1/2-game lead in their division, the Ravens have aced their season to this point. And that’s with three maddening collapses built into their resume.

But general manager Eric DeCosta and coach John Harbaugh did not assemble and hone this roster with the goal of looking good on the first weekend of December. The next two months will define them and especially quarterback Lamar Jackson, who has yet to come close to a Super Bowl in six otherwise dazzling seasons.

With that in mind, what do we still need to know about the 2023 Ravens, who have already answered many of the questions we posed heading into the season? What flaws could be exploited, what traps set, to keep them from reaching their lofty goals? Here are five pressing questions as they look ahead to a difficult five-game stretch run and the playoffs beyond.

Can they count on Ronnie Stanley?

Stanley injured his right knee in the season opener and reinjured it in the Ravens’ Nov. 12 loss to the Cleveland Browns. He missed just one game before starting at left tackle Sunday night in the Ravens’ 20-10 victory over the Los Angeles Chargers. His performance against the great Khalil Mack and other Chargers pass rushers was alarming; he surrendered a team-high six pressures and earned the lowest grade of any Ravens offensive player, according to Pro Football Focus.

For the season, Stanley leads the team’s offensive linemen in pressures allowed and penalties. Though 15 of those 28 pressures were packed into the two games he played immediately after returning from injury, Harbaugh did not mince words Monday in assessing Stanley’s knee-related struggles.

“It’s not been great,” he said. “I think he’d probably be the first person to tell you it’s not been great. He needs to get stronger and get his technique right. He needs to get out at practice and keep growing back into … He’s a great player. We want to get him back into playing at that high level.”

The Ravens invested $98.75 million to lock in Stanley as Jackson’s chief protector, a move that made all the sense in the world coming off his All-Pro performance in 2019. Almost since the day he signed, however, injuries have robbed him of the mobility and sturdy base that made him a star at one of the league’s premium positions.

Stanley showed he could still play at a near-elite level last season and hoped to build on that this year after a healthy offseason. His knee injury has clouded that hopeful narrative.

To be fair, Stanley bounced back from his initial injury to deliver solid performances in the Ravens’ wins over Tennessee, Detroit and Arizona. Perhaps the bye week, as Harbaugh suggested, will do him a world of good. If he continues to be the player we saw against the Chargers, however, would the Ravens consider turning to Patrick Mekari?

It would be a surprise given that Stanley’s PFF pass blocking grade is still higher than Mekari’s. The Ravens feel, correctly, that they‘re strongest when they hold Mekari in reserve as a utility lineman. But the Chargers’ pressure pushed Jackson to a subpar performance, and they can’t let that become a regular occurrence as the playoffs draw near.

The Ravens also seem unlikely to eat $17.8 million in dead money to move on from Stanley before June 1 of next year, but they need to draft a future starting tackle in April given his injuries and the fact right tackle Morgan Moses will turn 33 before next season.

When plays breakdown, to whom will Lamar Jackson turn in the absence of Mark Andrews?

The Pro Bowl tight end’s ankle injury, which will probably sideline him the rest of the season, was a sharp blow to the Ravens’ Super Bowl ambitions. As Jackson has said many times, he does not have the same instinctive connection with any other receiver. When chaos ensued, he knew he could look for No. 89 in a free patch of ground.

“There are times when they do things, and they do it so fast that you think that that was the play,” quarterbacks coach Tee Martin said. “Mark may break a route off, Lamar may throw it back-shoulder or throw it on an angle that it wasn’t meant for it to be thrown on, but he saw Mark’s body language going that way, [and] he threw it toward that angle. And you just can’t make that up; you can’t practice that; you can’t re-create that.”

There are plenty of appealing options remaining. As Harbaugh said recently, the Ravens are probably better equipped to play without Andrews than they would have been in any year going back to 2019.

Isaiah Likely, Andrews’ understudy, is a genuine threat to defenses. Offensive coordinator Todd Monken said he has more “twitch” getting to the outside than Andrews, a quality we saw when Likely turned a check down pass into an 18-yard gain against the Chargers. Is he consistent enough to be Jackson’s go-to? He still needs to earn that trust.

Jackson has flashed lovely timing connecting with Odell Beckham Jr. on slants in recent weeks. The veteran superstar still has plenty of vigor in his legs after he catches the ball on the move. But will Beckham, who’s nursing a shoulder injury, be on the field consistently enough?

Rashod Bateman’s surgically repaired foot has held up, and he’s made a few terrific catches in traffic, but Jackson still seems inclined to look elsewhere for long stretches.

Which brings us to Zay Flowers, who leads the team in targets, receptions, receiving yards, and missed tackles forced (per PFF). We’ve seen Jackson target Flowers on a lot of quick passes to the flat with mixed results (including a 68-yard touchdown erased by a sketchy holding call), but the rookie seems the best option to join Andrews in the go-to pantheon given his reliable hands, his gift for creating separation and his versatility to line up outside or in the slot. Will he and Jackson learn to operate on a unique wavelength? The answer to that question could determine the Ravens’ offensive ceiling come January.

Can Justin Tucker and the Ravens’ special teams return to excellence?

Tucker has spoiled us. That much was obvious from the minor panic that ensued after he missed a rushed 44-yard field goal attempt in the fourth quarter against the Chargers.

Fans could shrug off Tucker’s previous four misses this season. The first two were from 59 and 61 yards, respectively. He hit the left upright on a 53-yard attempt in Arizona and had a 55-yard attempt blocked against Cleveland. Inside 50 yards, he was impeccable as ever.

But Tucker acknowledged something was off when he hooked his attempt to extend the Ravens’ lead in Los Angeles. He did not feel his feet were fully under him. Perhaps it was because, as Harbaugh explained Monday, the Ravens were rushing to beat a play clock that had started sooner than they anticipated.

With the miss, Tucker was no longer the most accurate kicker in history, falling behind the Atlanta Falcons’ Younghoe Koo. Fans fired off social media posts wondering if the greatest constant in recent Ravens history is suddenly diminished in his 12th season.

A bit of perspective is warranted. Tucker, 34, has worked through relative dips in the past. For example, he made just eight of 19 attempts from 50 yards or beyond in 2014 and 2015. He rebounded with his greatest statistical season (38 of 39 overall, 10 of 10 from 50 yards or beyond) in 2016. His leg has appeared as strong as ever in warmups and on his wayward attempts. He’s still as devoted a technician as you’ll find in any sport.

Harbaugh, who takes special teams as seriously as anyone in the NFL, did not sound concerned. “It’s just a miss,” he said. “He’s human, and I’m sure glad we have him. [I] always will be.”

The Ravens’ special teams lapses have not been limited to Tucker’s misses. Spotty punt coverage is the chief culprit for their unfamiliar No. 19 ranking in special teams DVOA. Nagging injuries have periodically robbed Pro Bowl returner Devin Duvernay of his explosiveness.

When they matched up with the league’s best teams in years past, the Ravens counted on a marginal advantage in special teams. Their emphasis on the sport’s third phase is a signature of Harbaugh’s tenure. Right now, that edge is missing.

Is there a gap in the armor of the league’s second-ranked defense?

When a story seems too good to be true, we look for the lie. It’s human nature.

That’s not to suggest there’s anything misleading about the Ravens’ exceptional defensive performance through 12 games. It’s simply remarkable that they’re leading the league in sacks and holding opponents to 4.2 yards per pass attempt when our greatest concerns coming into the season centered on their pass rush and their secondary.

Injuries have bitten them. Pro Bowl cornerback Marlon Humphrey missed the first four games with a foot injury and has missed the last two because of a calf strain. Their last line of defense, safety Marcus Williams, has also missed six games and essentially played with one arm in a few others because of the pectoral injury he suffered in the season opener. A bad ankle sprain kept their top young pass rusher, Odafe Oweh, on the shelf for four games.

None of these absences undid them.

That’s a tribute to the quality veterans — outside linebackers Jadeveon Clowney and Kyle Van Noy, cornerback Ronald Darby, nickel back Arthur Maulet — DeCosta added during training camp and the first month of the season. It’s a tribute to the absurd versatility of second-year safety Kyle Hamilton, to the unrelenting improvement of defensive tackle Justin Madubuike, to the unquenchable thirst for hits we see from linebackers Roquan Smith and Patrick Queen. It’s a tribute to coordinator Mike Macdonald’s ever-changing looks — 355-pound nose tackle Michael Pierce dropping into zone coverage while Maulet blitzes, why not? — that make it almost impossible for opposing play callers to pick on a specific Raven.

The other top defenses in the AFC North feature singular game wreckers in Myles Garrett and T.J. Watt. The Ravens present a more confounding puzzle because they attack with so many different faces doing so many different things. Their codependent rush designs and zone coverage schemes, designed to limit chunk plays, are constant but don’t hinge on a single man.

So where might they be vulnerable as they move into the most difficult part of their schedule, with road games against the Jacksonville Jaguars and San Francisco 49ers and a New Year’s Eve home date with the Miami Dolphins?

Well, we have seen the front seven go temporarily soft against teams that run right at them. The Ravens have allowed 4.3 yards per carry, 21st in the league, and they gave up 178 rushing yards in their loss to the Browns. Some of this is a natural concession as they gear their attack toward stifling quarterbacks, but how will that look against the 49ers’ Christian McCaffrey or the Dolphins’ Raheem Mostert?

We’ve also seen quarterbacks find success in the middle of the field, whether it was Cleveland’s Deshaun Watson identifying soft spots in the Ravens’ zone or Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow picking on their linebackers.

No defense can stop everything in the modern NFL, and to the Ravens’ credit, they rarely show the same vulnerability two weeks in a row.

How much can the Ravens ride Keaton Mitchell as they search for a consistent offensive identity?

The undrafted rookie from East Carolina has shocked the league’s top rushing attack to historic levels of efficiency since he joined the regular lineup in the Ravens’ Nov. 5 romp over the Seattle Seahawks. Mitchell is more than just a sprinter good for a few gimmicky plays to the outside. He runs through tackles, evidenced by his incredible average of 7.48 yards after contact per attempt, as charted by PFF. That’s an unsustainable pace but hints at the big-play element Mitchell has brought to Monken’s ground designs.

The Ravens have generally lived up to the lofty expectations fans set when the team hired Monken to replace beleaguered Greg Roman, ranking sixth in points per game, fourth in offensive DVOA and third in red zone efficiency. But they have fallen out of rhythm at times and failed to build on leads in the second half, creating lingering doubts about how they’ll look against elite opponents in December and January.

The surprise, perhaps, is that their efficiency still flows more from the run — with more spread and zone concepts built in under Monken — than the pass. Jackson remains a unique gravitational force, even when he’s handing the ball to someone else. Gus Edwards is the team’s best finisher near the goal line. But it’s Mitchell who has streaked onto the scene as an X factor.

If the Ravens are to avoid the fourth-quarter meltdowns that led to three defeats, this ground game — equal parts power, elusiveness and deception — will be their chief weapon.

Monken and his staff weren’t sure how much work to give Mitchell after he returned from a shoulder injury that sidelined him for the start of the season. How would he handle the subtler arts of pass protection? How productive could he be between the tackles?

Their faith in him, and the upside of an already-potent ground game, heightens weekly. Don’t be surprised if he touches the ball a dozen times a game going forward.

“As he gets more and more comfortable, we get more and more comfortable with him and certain personnel groupings when we get him in there,” Monken said Monday. “He’s certainly going to only continue to get better with reps, especially … in terms of the pass protections [and] some of the detail things. Handing the ball off to him is probably the least of that.”

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