The Baltimore Ravens’ ‘Severance’ Spoof Is Not That Funny

I’ve been writing a lot lately about my lengthy Zoom with The Naked Gun! and Airplane! creator David Zucker. Our interview was ostensibly set up to discuss his upcoming web series MasterCrash, a more-sincere-than-usual sendup of MasterClass, and to provide space for him to gripe about being left out of Seth MacFarlane and Akiva Schaffer’s new Naked Gun movie — a classic win-win media & PR collab! The residual impact has been how much I’ve since thought about parody, and how not everybody knows how to do it right.

Time will tell if MacFarlane and Schaffer’s take starring Liam Neeson as the new Lt. Frank Drebin, son of the old one (Leslie Nielsen), strikes the right tone. Considering the IP and talent attached — and even factoring in the talent not attached — Naked Gun (August 1, 2025) has a shot. The big Baltimore Ravens short film released this week, on the other hand, never gave itself much of a chance.

NFL schedule-reveals have officially become a thing. Major streamers, broadcasters and media companies (think: Netflix, Fox, Disney, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video) got to announce a game or two of theirs to television advertisers in attendance at their respective upfront events earlier this week, and the team-by-team schedule-reveals (brought to you by Seat Geek!) are turning into major Hollywood productions, often borrowing from major Hollywood productions.

This year, the Kansas City Chiefs played Cash Cab, at least two teams did Minecraft, the Houston Texans parodied Scary Movie, the Los Angeles Rams went the Daily Show route and the New York Giants spoofed Love Island. The results are a mixed bag — but this story isn’t about those videos.

The first mistake the Ravens made was in the selection process. Baltimore went big for their reveal with a parody of Apple TV+ drama Severance — it’s always ambitious to try to spoof the best show on television, especially when your cast is comprised of offensive linemen, football coaches and front-office personnel. While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, not all imitations flatter equally. When you come for the king of TV, you best not miss.

There are some good elements in the execution of the video. Certain production elements, like the cinematography, are great. The baby goats as the team’s draft picks who are are “not ready yet” was a clever choice. And it’s OK that the players can’t act — they shouldn’t be able to. Where the video went wrong was in the writing phase.

The actual Severance premise here is unclear. Are the players severed so they don’t leak the schedule? Maybe, or maybe I just retroactively invented an intention. Though there are maybe a handful of decent jokes, the video is seven minutes of setups and few punchlines. It’s not enough to think “it’d be funny to have our players and staff read these Severance lines.” A shot-for-shot remake is not comedy — unless, ironically, it’s the ones Severance lead Adam Scott did with Paul Rudd.

Perhaps the Ravens should have brought on actual Severance writer/creator Dan Erickson and/or his partner on the project Ben Stiller as free agents.

Stiller seemed to appreciate the effort — Ravens Productions shot more than 200 hours and spent days editing — enough to retweet the video, at least. (And even if he didn’t dig it, the only professional sports team that could possibly draw Stiller’s ire this week is the Boston Celtics, who tonight will attempt to push the New York Knicks to an Eastern Conference Semifinals Game 7; Stiller will almost certainly be courtside for Game 6 at Madison Square Garden.)