Last week, it was clear Tom Brady was going against someone who had struggled to contain him in the past. This time around, Brady knows he’s in for more of a battle.

Admittedly, the bar is high when you are talking about the Patriots quarterback, so it might be best to redefine the term “struggle.” But there’s no denying the fact that when stacked against his performance against the rest of the league, Brady has had his issues with the Ravens. In seven career games against Baltimore (regular season and postseason), he has a 74.1 career rating, which includes last year’s AFC title game against Baltimore when he went 22-for-36 for 239 yards and two interceptions, prompting him to tell a national television audience after the game that, “I sucked pretty bad today, but our defense saved us.”

If you are a Patriots fan, you can certainly take solace in the fact that, despite his struggles, Brady still has a 5-2 career mark against Baltimore, including a 1-1 record in the playoffs. But more often than not, when facing the Ravens, he hasn’t been the savior. Instead, as he suggested last year, he’s been the one who’s needed saving. Here’s a look at how he’s done in his seven games against Baltimore.

• Nov. 28, 2004: 15-for-30, 172 yards, one sack (Patriots win, 24-3).

• Dec. 3, 2007: 18-for-38, 257 yards, two TDs, one INT, three sacks (Patriots win, 27-24).

• Oct. 4, 2009: 21-for-32, 258 yards, 1 TD, three sacks (Patriots win, 27-21).

• Jan. 10, 2010: 23-for-42, 154 yards, two TDs, three INTs, three sacks (Patriots lose wild card game, 33-14).

• Oct. 17, 2010: 27-for-44, 292 yards, one TD, two INTs, three sacks (Patriots win, 23-20, OT).

• Jan. 22, 2012: 22-for-36, 239 yards, two INTs, one sack (Patriots win AFC title game, 23-20).

• Sept. 23, 2012: 28-for-41, 355 yards, one TD, two sacks (Patriots lose, 31-30).

TOTALS: 154-for-263 (58.6 percent), 1,707 yards, 7 TDs, 8 INTs, 16 sacks, 74.1 passer rating.

That averages out to 22-for-38 for 244 yards, one touchdown, one interception and two sacks. (In those games, the Patriots have averaged 24 points, and in 2009, 2010 and 2011, Brady’s worst single-game passer rating each year was against Baltimore.) It’s not a colossal sample size -- and certainly not “struggling” in the, say, Mark Sanchez sense of the word -- but for a nondivisional opponent, it’s a good representation for a quarterback that has made a habit of lighting up the rest of the league.

“I don’t know,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said when asked if he could put a finger on why Brady had issues with the Ravens in the past. “We’ve had very competitive games against them. We’ve won some; we haven’t won all of them. It’s a game day battle out there. They’ve got a good team, we’ve got a good team, and those games have come down to the wire.”

When explaining why things have broken down for him against the Ravens, Brady said Wednesday that every time they face Baltimore, it’s never easy.

“It’s not like you beat this team 50-0 -- it’s always a tight game,” Brady said. “There’s tight coverage, there’s tight throws, there’s tough reads because schematically they do quite a few things. It’s never easy. There’s not an easy throw, there won’t be an easy throw this weekend. I think they really challenge you.

“That’s why they’re in this game,” he added. “There not just going to hand you the ball, hand you points, hand you easy scores. They’re great in the red area, they’re great on third down, they really make you earn it.”

When you go looking for commonalities in the Baltimore defense since 2004, there aren’t a whole lot of them. Brady has faced five different defensive coordinators (Mike Nolan in 2004, Rex Ryan in 2007, Greg Mattison in 2009 and 2010, Chuck Pagano in 2011 and Dean Pees in 2012).

When it comes to the Ravens, one thing Brady has faced on a consistent basis is good, consistent pressure from a team that loves to hit the quarterback -- the 16 sacks are the most the quarterback has suffered against any nondivisional opponent. And while personnel has come and gone over the years, the core of the Ravens’ defense -- safety Ed Reed, linebackers Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs and defensive lineman Haloti Ngata -- has been together for most of that stretch.

Both Lewis and Reed were the focus on Wednesday.

“He’s had fabulous production at whatever he’s done, including blocking kicks and returning kicks and things like that,” Belichick said of Reed. “His interceptions, his interception return yardages, his instinctiveness and his play-making ability, how consistent he’s been over time. He just does things that nobody else at that position does or I don’t know if they’ve ever done it. He’s special. He’s really special.”

“He doesn’t give up hardly any plays, makes a ton of tackles, great in the pass game, great in the run game,” Brady said of Lewis. “He blitzes well, like he did a few years ago. He’s really a playmaker for them, so they give him the opportunity to make those plays, and you see when he makes a play their whole sideline gets really amped up.

“You always have to know where 52’s at. He’s always right in the middle of the defense, but whether he’s blitzing or covering or he’s free in the middle of the field, you always have to take him into account.”