“The expectations are a good thing, and you hold yourself to a really high standard. You have a chance to fulfill your purpose. Super Bowl or bust, all this kind of stuff, it’s just so phony.”
Those are the words of John Harbaugh before his Baltimore Ravens began their 2025 season, dubbed by fans as “Super Bowl or bust” based on a roster the team, coaches and executives touted as among the best in franchise history.
As it turned out, Harbaugh was wrong, and following another gut-wrenching season-ending loss — a 26-24 defeat to the Steelers on a missed field goal by Tyler Loop — he was relieved of his duties Tuesday by owner Steve Bisciotti, the man who hired the then-defensive backs coach of the Eagles some 18 years ago.
The National Football League world is shocked, but if you’ve followed the Baltimore Ravens as closely as I and other fans have over his tenure, you knew it was time.
Not just because of Sunday’s defensive meltdown against 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers and his cast of wideouts the Steelers found on Craigslist, Loop’s miss or an 8-9, playoff-less finish for the AFC’s preseason Super Bowl favorite.
Or Baltimore’s habit of late-game implosions in the biggest moments, whether it’s Tyler Huntley’s goal line fumble in the 2022 Wild Card round against the Bengals, Zay Flowers’ goal line fumble versus the Chiefs in the 2023 AFC championship game or Mark Andrews’ fumble and dropped two-point conversion pass in last year’s divisional round in Buffalo.
It’s because the Baltimore Ravens are in serious danger of wasting the career of one of the greatest talents to ever walk on a football field: Lamar Jackson.
Moving on from Harbaugh could end horribly. In fact, the most likely scenario is the Ravens continue to be consistently good in the regular season and come up short in the postseason.
But you have to try something.
Does Bisciotti want to wake up after Harbaugh and the Ravens lose a heartbreaker in the divisional round in 2030, and a soon-to-be 33-year-old Jackson is clearly in his final years?
We know after Tuesday, that answer is no.
The marriage between Jackson and Harbaugh simply wasn’t working, and miss me with the “a dozen teams are dying to have him” nonsense.
In an actual divorce or a breakup, do you hang on to a partner just because other people might want them? No, sometimes you have to make tough decisions for yourself.
Jackson is a two-time MVP, and Harbaugh averaged 10 wins per season over his 18-year tenure and is a likely Hall of Famer with another successful stop.
Harbaugh’s Ravens have also lost 14 games leading by 10 or more points since 2020. In games decided by five points or less, Baltimore was 45-61 under Harbaugh since he took over in 2008 — the most losses by any team during that span.
It was just time.
At the beginning of Jackson’s career, his play in the postseason clearly didn’t match his exceptional regular seasons.
But in the Ravens’ last two season-enders in Buffalo in 2024 and in Pittsburgh Sunday, Jackson played at an MVP level in the fourth quarter to put his team in positions to win, and his teammates failed him.
If it’s not one thing, it’s another.
When the offense went stale, the Ravens fired Greg Roman after the 2022 season and Todd Monken unlocked Jackson’s potential as a passer.
Monken then abandoned the run in the 2023 AFC championship game, so the Ravens signed Derrick Henry.
“Now they have to hand off the ball in the fourth quarter. Henry is one of the greatest backs in NFL history!” we celebrated.
Two years later, Henry wasn’t on the field over the final 12-plus minutes in a loss to the Patriots on Dec. 21.
Harbaugh blamed a rotation with Henry and change-of-pace back Keaton Mitchell, orchestrated by running backs coach Willie Taggart, as if it was out of his hands.
This is the same Keaton Mitchell, mind you, who Harbaugh kept inactive for the first month of the season because he wasn’t good enough on special teams.
Yeah, he looked really shaky when his 41-yard kickoff return in the final minute in Pittsburgh on Sunday helped set up what should have been the winning field goal.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the strange decision-making and talent evaluation that have gone on in Baltimore in recent years, and it’s unacceptable.
Harbaugh is a CEO-style coach, meaning he isn’t married to one side of the ball. That’s in contrast to someone like Mike Macdonald in Seattle, who is a defensive mind and calls the team’s defense.
Harbaugh’s skill is delegating, something he’s accomplished by assembling superstar staffs and trusting his coordinators and position coaches.
When it’s worked it’s worked, and it produced playoff wins in five straight seasons to begin his tenure, culminating with the 2012 Super Bowl.
But Harbaugh made a fatal decision that proved to be his undoing prior to the 2024 season when he promoted one of his former players, Zach Orr, to defensive coordinator after Macdonald left to take the Seahawks job.
Macdonald’s 2023 defense was statistically one of the best in NFL history, achieving a “triple crown” season where it led the league in points per game, takeaways and sacks.
A year later, the Ravens had the 31st ranked passing defense. It improved this year, all the way up to No. 30.
Harbaugh banked on one of his guys rising to the occasion, something that’s worked more often than not over his 18-year tenure, and it just didn’t work out.
Harbaugh also banked on his offensive guards, Daniel Faalele and Andrew Vorhees, being good enough despite film and metrics showing otherwise, refusing to bring in real competition in camp in favor of, again, trusting his guys.
It was an abject failure, promising young linemen in Pro Bowl center Tyler Linderbaum and right tackle Roger Rosengarten both regressed significantly surrounded by the circus, and it played a role in Jackson missing a third of the season with injury.
It was never more apparent than in the massacre levied by Cam Heyward, TJ Watt and the rest of the Steelers’ defensive line after the first quarter on Sunday.
If you don’t believe me, watch that vintage Jackson touchdown pass to Flowers again where he evaded two free rushers. Left tackle Ronnie Stanley and Faalele were still looking for their assignment as the ball zipped past their heads.
We’re in Week 18, and half of a four-man rush is getting to the quarterback unblocked.
That’s what Jackson has overcome in recent years. He’s masked glaring deficiencies on a roster with play that at times seemed superhuman.
When Jackson was out this year, Harbaugh made the head-scratching decision of playing Cooper Rush at quarterback over Huntley for nearly two full games, a pro-style quarterback who didn’t fit the offense.
If Harbaugh hadn’t been so stubborn, hellbent on proving his provably incorrect decisions right, Baltimore’s season would never have come down to the final game.
Now that Harbaugh is out, Jackson and General Manager Eric DeCosta enter the forefront.
DeCosta is the one who signed Rush to be the NFL’s highest-paid backup, didn’t bring in veteran guards, and didn’t address Baltimore’s glaring pass rush issues.
DeCosta also has a history of drafting injured players because they have more “value” in later rounds, and his playing Moneyball with the line due to Jackson’s evasiveness is nothing new.
He deserves as much blame as Harbaugh for this season’s failures, but his track record of assembling championship caliber rosters in 2023 and ‘24, for the moment, keeps his seat cool.
But if things go sour going forward, Jackson and his general manager will no longer have a buffer for a fanbase that has blamed Harbaugh and his staff at every wrong turn over the past few seasons.
I trust Jackson to return to his MVP level when healthy, and I hope DeCosta is motivated, much like Orioles GM Mike Elias after a failure of his own, to be aggressive this offseason.
Baltimore is the most attractive job opening in a decade, and it can get any coach it wants within reason. I say you get a defensive specialist to fix a defense that has become an embarrassment and hire some hot-shot offensive coordinator.
You make Marcus Freeman (who spent time in the Ravens’ building before the season) say no, and you go from there.
It’s an exciting time to be a Ravens fan, and there will no longer be any room for excuses.
As Jackson progresses through the back-half of his career, every year is Super Bowl or bust.