Calls to fire Harbaugh are ridiculous (Merged)

[Josh Bell]

Long time lurker first time poster. I was always of the impression that this was all injuries and not Harbaughs fault. However I have completely changed my tune lately. Lets take a few things and look at them objectively.

1)This team is set up exactly like the Philadelphia eagles were when Reid took over. Great defense so-so offense that always used WR as a scape goat.
2)Terrible to AWFUL time management skills. (see last years AFC championship for proof)
3)QB was always considered avg by some and better than avg by others
4)NEVER won a superbowl and made it to one (ravens making superbowl has yet to come to fruition)
5)Harbaugh refuses to fire inept coordinators (cam, mattison (never would have left if not for dream michigan job). Reid has been the exact same way.

These things are all too similar. I ridicule my friends from philly all the time and now we have Andy Reids clone in Baltimore.

[ravenray]

Calling Harbaugh a top 5 coach is even more ridiculous.

[ActualSpamBot]

100% psu.

As for the calls from Boulder to bring in Rex.... What the actual fuck have you been watching? Madden? Because you sure as shit haven't been watching football.

[ActualSpamBot]

Calling Harbaugh a top 5 coach is even more ridiculous.

Yeah. He lucked into .700 winning percentage and 5 straight playoff appearances. Happens all the time.

[edtude]

Harbaugh is without question a top ten coach in this league, and is probably top five. Coughlin, Payton and Belichick are pretty unquestionably top three. After that there's a clump, but Harbaugh is undoubtedly in it. He's the only coach who's gone to and won a playoff game four straight years, and they're highly likely to at least go again (which they'll likely host) if not win one against one of the other weak-sister wild cards.

But this team has two big problems.

1) Cam. Duh. He obviously needs to go and I'm having trouble seeing a scenario that doesn't end in the Ravens in the Super Bowl where Cam comes back next year.

2) This team has a personnel deficit. Certainly the OL is awful. Oher and Birk almost have to be replaced. LG is a huge hole. Osemele needs to develop but he's not playing well right now. Yanda's the only decent OL and he may now be injured.

But defensively there are just huge, gaping holes. Reed has turned into a full-blown liability. Lewis wasn't playing great when he was in, but his absence certainly hurts. The entire LB corps is a disaster...Ellerbe is hurt. Suggs - the DPotY - has missed more of the season than he's played. Ngata doesn't look right and we know he's played hurt if not still playing hurt. Losing JJ to free agency was a big loss in run defense. Webb and Smith are both out at corner.

Today, we had half our start-of-season projected starting D miss the game due to injury. Say "Next man up" all you want, but that includes two future Hall of Famers and one of the better shut-down corners in the league...that's a lot to try to overcome.

So maybe not so much trying to lay this on Harbaugh. 24 teams in this league have more losses than the Ravens do. Hyperbole is unbecoming.

- C -

You are right San Fran does have one hell of a coach

[Ravens75]

Great job putting up some perspective in this time of sky falling nonsense, PSU.

Yes PSU has some points but when this roster was at full strength the last few years you saw some of the same disturbing trends.

That falls on Harbaugh and unless its corrected then the Ravens will continue to come up short.

[Whitty Hutton]

Harbaugh has his faults, but a coach of a team that's been contending for AFC championships 4 straight years IS NOT going to get fired. Especially in a year in which the team is riddled with injuries and still guaranteed to have a winning record.

[wickedsolo]

100% psu.

As for the calls from Boulder to bring in Rex.... What the actual fuck have you been watching? Madden? Because you sure as shit haven't been watching football.

Shhh...Willis McGahee told him that.

[Ravens75]

Harbaugh has his faults, but a coach of a team that's been contending for AFC championships 4 straight years IS NOT going to get fired. Especially in a year in which the team is riddled with injuries and still guaranteed to have a winning record.

Harbs isn't getting fired but some of his methods and ideology needs to be questioned.

Denny Green won a lot of games and his teams got in the playoffs something like 8 or 9 years in a row. After he was fired from the Vikes and hired by the Cards he never really adjusted. I think Andy Reid will be the same way. John needs to change if he ever hopes to get to the big dance. Playing not to lose and having unwavering faith in his coaches isn't going to get it done.

Trust your players and let them win it for you.

[HoustonRaven]

Shhh...Willis McGahee told him that.

Lol.

[StingerNLG]

Harbaugh has his faults, but a coach of a team that's been contending for AFC championships 4 straight years IS NOT going to get fired. Especially in a year in which the team is riddled with injuries and still guaranteed to have a winning record.

Exactly.

You know, everytime the Steelers lose a game with giddiness someone always posts a link to their forums and laugh at how they are all melting down over there. Or the Bengals, or the Browns, or whatever team we beat this year. Yet here we are with an entire page dedicated to how shitty our team is, and how we are going to lose the rest of our games, and how we WANT them to lose to get better draft picks, and everyone sucks. It's quite amazing to see that we aren't any different from the very other town's fans that have a team that hits a bad patch. Just an observation.

[AirFlacco]

Huh? Michael Oher should not be in the NFL.

LOL - He dropped to us for a reason and it all wasn't the book with the word stupid
plastered all over it.

Kiper said he'd be beat but gave that draft a B based on getting Webb.

It only hurts when I laugh.

[rlh445]

LOL Rex Ryan? Really? Ahahahaha. Man. It feels downright shameful to be a Ravens fan sometimes. So Harbs has just 'lucked' into all these wins and accolades despite coming onto this team as a rookie head coach of a team that went 5-11, had his two starting QBs go down with injuries before the start of his first season and having to start a rookie QB from the freaking Fightin Blue Hens only to take them to the AFCCG (one of two appearances overall) but he lucked into all of that. Boy, guess he used up all his magic juice the last four years, eh guys?

[PerpetuallyBored74]

Calls to fire Cam, however, make perfect sense

[psuasskicker]

He took over an already good team that was entirely injured the previous season.

It's laughable to suggest that team was more injured than this one. And while the prior year's team was 13-3, the one before that was 6-10. When Harbaugh came in, the Ravens were coming off a three-year stretch of 24-24 football with one playoff home loss, putting up six points on a team which gave up fewer than 14 points once that season, and that one time they gave up thirteen.

Cam's weakness isn't necessarily his offensive system, it's the fact that the talent on this offense is built to succeed doing things Cam's system doesn't call for. Yes, Harbaugh's biggest weakness as a coach is his inability to get Cam out of town. But unless everyone here basically forgot Caldwell's hire as sending a clear message that Cam better get it done this year or else, I'm not even close to ready to say a change won't be made. If not, yes, that falls on Harbs. However, lest we all forget what exactly Cam and Harbaugh have done offensively, the last five years we've ranked 11th and 17th in pts/yds, while for five years before that we ranked 18th and 23rd.

Harbaugh could lose out this season and would have 53 regular season wins. That's five wins more than Billick's best five-year stretch with this team. In fact, if you take Billick's five BEST seasons with the Ravens, it totals 54 wins.

This whole argument is shockingly stupid to me. Like, it's hard to imagine it's actually happening. We're 9-4 despite having virtually every one of our best players on defense injured or falling off the age cliff, not to mention a bunch of other starters injured. At least half the other NFL teams would KILL to have our coaching "problems." Teams like the Browns, Bills, Chiefs, Panthers, etc who have barely sniffed the playoffs in the past ten years are drooling over the thought of going to the playoffs five years in a row.

Seven of the other 31 franchises have won the Super Bowl since our Lombardy. You can count on one hand the number of teams with more playoff wins or regular season wins than the Ravens over the last five years. But please, by all means, go on trying to convince us how we're really an amazeballs team with shitty coaching which has been holding the Ravens back these five years and we would be better off scrapping it all and going a different direction.

- C -

[ActualSpamBot]

Actually I'm pretty sure that a guy with no arms has enough fingers to count up the teams with more wins than us since 2008. But I'm sure that's luck.

[Tspot-D-Ravenator]

It falls on John not Cam. If John is too stupid to see it then he should be the first to go. However, I'm still not convinced that slow Joe is the answer either. When catastrophe hits Joe is almost always in the picture.

Yup!! Joe gave up that drive to tie the game and go into overtime! BAD JOE!! SIT

[Tspot-D-Ravenator]

Look their are things that Harbaugh could do differently or should do that he has not IMO. None of those things are egregious enough to consider firing him for IMO. Bottom line is that considering we lost JJ, Redding, Webb, Smith, Ellerbe, Suggs, and Ray Lewis for a good bit or key parts of the year has to be considered. You have to have horses in order to race...the Ravens horses are gimpy at best and not in racing shape. The fact that despite these losses and an offense that is inconsistent at best we are 9-4 .....thats a credit to Harbaugh. A lot of teams might have just collapsed.

The whole Cam thing is my main beef with Harbaugh. If he fires him, well I am just fine with Harbs. If he keeps him however....well at that point his fate will be tied to Cam moving forward. He will not have the "one dropped pass from the Super Bowl" excuse to keep Cam around this year while distancing himself from the results of keeping him.

THIS!!!

[darb72]

It's laughable to suggest that team was more injured than this one. And while the prior year's team was 13-3, the one before that was 6-10. When Harbaugh came in, the Ravens were coming off a three-year stretch of 24-24 football with one playoff home loss, putting up six points on a team which gave up fewer than 14 points once that season, and that one time they gave up thirteen.

Cam's weakness isn't necessarily his offensive system, it's the fact that the talent on this offense is built to succeed doing things Cam's system doesn't call for. Yes, Harbaugh's biggest weakness as a coach is his inability to get Cam out of town. But unless everyone here basically forgot Caldwell's hire as sending a clear message that Cam better get it done this year or else, I'm not even close to ready to say a change won't be made. If not, yes, that falls on Harbs. However, lest we all forget what exactly Cam and Harbaugh have done offensively, the last five years we've ranked 11th and 17th in pts/yds, while for five years before that we ranked 18th and 23rd.

Harbaugh could lose out this season and would have 53 regular season wins. That's five wins more than Billick's best five-year stretch with this team. In fact, if you take Billick's five BEST seasons with the Ravens, it totals 54 wins.

This whole argument is shockingly stupid to me. Like, it's hard to imagine it's actually happening. We're 9-4 despite having virtually every one of our best players on defense injured or falling off the age cliff, not to mention a bunch of other starters injured. At least half the other NFL teams would KILL to have our coaching "problems." Teams like the Browns, Bills, Chiefs, Panthers, etc who have barely sniffed the playoffs in the past ten years are drooling over the thought of going to the playoffs five years in a row.

Seven of the other 31 franchises have won the Super Bowl since our Lombardy. You can count on one hand the number of teams with more playoff wins or regular season wins than the Ravens over the last five years. But please, by all means, go on trying to convince us how we're really an amazeballs team with shitty coaching which has been holding the Ravens back these five years and we would be better off scrapping it all and going a different direction.

- C -

Why is it that every time you post I want to grab the nearest lighter and hold it up while swaying gently back and forth? Seriously man, your post rock like an 80's power ballad.

Cam sucks. Our offensive line is questionable when it comes to pass blocking. Our defense has become horrible, both due to injury and coaching.

Yet we're still 9-4 and on pace for a home play-off game.

[Kevlar]

But unless everyone here basically forgot Caldwell's hire as sending a clear message that Cam better get it done this year or else, I'm not even close to ready to say a change won't be made. If not, yes, that falls on Harbs. However, lest we all forget what exactly Cam and Harbaugh have done offensively, the last five years we've ranked 11th and 17th in pts/yds, while for five years before that we ranked 18th and 23rd.

Some of us thought the same thing when they brought Zorn in. How did that work out?

And yes the offensive numbers have improved. Slightly. With most of the high dollar free agent and high round draft picks going to the offense. I'd expect a little bit more of a bump. At least as high a bump as the defense has been de-bumped. But it isn't even close.