Since John Harbaugh arrived in Baltimore in 2008, he’s never been 1-5. That makes what’s happening now both foreign territory for the coach AND the fan base. This is really the first occasion for anyone who claims to be anti-Harbaugh to have a legitimate gripe against his performance as the Ravens’ head coach.
Oh, sure, there are always nitwits who complain even when the team is winning and the coach is doing his job. I once had a guy on my radio show call in AFTER the Ravens beat Houston in the playoffs who said, “I know we won and all, but there was a lot of stuff about that Texans game I didn’t like. I sure hope we go to New England and do something different this weekend.”
To which I deadpanned, “Like what? Get our asses kicked?”
I do, though, understand the current situation involving the Ravens and how some of it does, quite clearly, indict the head coach. It also indicts his staff, the scouts and the guys involved in drafting the players. Everyone who touched the 2015 team and the procurement of the players has a pimple that needs popping. It’s there for all of us to see; the guys you chose aren’t all that good.
I remember back in 1998 when I was running the local indoor soccer team in town and my coach, Mike Stankovic, insisted he had found a good Yugoslavian player during a summer scouting tour in Europe. We signed him. A month later, with more games missed than goals scored, we shipped him back home. Stankovic came to me the following week and said he wanted to bring another young player over from his home country. This one, he insisted, was one of Yugoslavia’s top talents and would make an impact with us. He showed up, ran around with no idea what he was doing, and within a month he, too, was flying back home.
We’d go on to add one more of those guys by Christmas. I thought “maybe the third time’s the charm”. Nope. He stunk as well. When Stankovic came into my office to address the kid’s play, he said, “He’s not tough enough for this league. He has skill, but no heart. He doesn’t really want to play defense, either.”
I was finished with the Yugoslavian experiment, saying, “Mike, you picked these guys. Every time we send one of them back home, it’s looking more and more like you don’t know how to pick players.”
It also looked more and more like I might have picked the wrong coach. See? Everyone has their fingerprints on the on-field product.
Now before I go on, let me remind everyone that if not for some kid named Bryn Renner who threw a TD pass on the last play of the pre-season opener against New Orleans — and if not for Mike Tomlin forgetting how to coach in Pittsburgh a few Thursday nights ago, the Ravens would be 0-10 in football games since August 1st. Yes, of course, I know pre-season games don’t mean squat, but that’s just a little fact to chew on this morning. The Ravens could quite easily be 0-for-10. And, sure, they could also be 4-2 or 5-1 in this regular season, too, but they’re not. They’re 1-5 for a reason. They don’t have nearly enough good players.
I visited RSR yesterday and was surprised to find a thread titled “Fire Harbaugh”. Then again, I wasn’t surprised. It would be easy for me to say that I expected more from a website like this, the best of all forums dedicated to “covering” the Ravens, but the reality is I probably DID expect to see a “Fire Harbaugh” thread once the team got to 1-5. I didn’t want to see it here, but it’s part and parcel of being a bad team and having a coach who defiantly keeps promising things are going to improve.
At my charity golf outing this past Tuesday at Eagle’s Nest Country Club, a friend expressed his frustration at how Harbaugh never openly criticizes or calls out the players.
“Just once, “ my friend said, arms waving in the air for emphasis. “I’d like to see him grab a guy and demand more from him.”
You’ll have to excuse my buddy. He lives in Baltimore part of the year and Fantasyland the other half. No coach – these days – goes after players on the sidelines or in view of the people in attendance or the TV cameras catching it all. The days of Bobby Knight and Pat Summit acting like raving lunatics are long gone, I told my friend. There’s a new way to do it now. We’re in 2015, not 1985.
That said, Harbs DID give Shareece Wright an earful on Sunday afternoon after he again played out of position in the second quarter of the 25-20 loss to the woeful 49ers. You don’t see John do that much during the game. Perhaps he had enough of players in his secondary not being familiar with the scheme (something Terrence Brooks has admitted to on a couple of occasions this year) or maybe there was something in particular they had worked on in practice that Wright didn’t grasp. Whatever the reason, Harbaugh confronted him on the sidelines, a rarity to say the least.
I tried to explain this simple concept to my friend. “What you see or don’t see on the sidelines has no connection at all to what goes on or doesn’t go on in team meetings and/or in the locker room.” Harbaugh can say, “I wasn’t upset with the way the team walked to the line of scrimmage late in the game” to the media and then head into the locker room and put his foot up everyone’s butt for that late-game stroll. It’s not really any of our business at all what Harbaugh says to his team within the confines of their locker room. None.
Coaches will not – unless the situation is extreme – berate their players in front of other players while the game is going on. It’s just not how you do it these days at the pro level. Remember that scene in the movie “Training Day” when Ethan Hawke says to Denzel Washington, “Hey man, are you gonna teach me some of that rock ‘em, sock ‘em, Bruce Lee s**t that I can use out here?” Denzel points to his head in a “think about it” sign and says, “No, no, no dawg. We don’t do that anymore. We use this up here now.” That’s NFL coaching, 2015. You’re not going to openly embarrass a player in front of his peers and his family on national TV and get the best out of him. There’s a new way to do it and that’s not it.
Now, I will say this about what we saw in San Francisco in the game’s final minute: If Harbaugh DIDN’T address the unprofessional sauntering of the likes of Monroe, Zuttah and Osemele in private, he’s not doing his job. In fact, if the team had any offensive line depth at all – and no, James Hurst isn’t “offensive line depth” – Harbs should have brought the three of them in and said, simply, “You will NEVER do that again while you play for me…I don’t care what the circumstances are, when we trail by five points with one minute left and you walk to the line of scrimmage, you’re done in Baltimore. And to make sure you three have that message loud and clear, you’ll be watching next Monday’s game from the bench. Bring your clipboards.”
Alas, Harbaugh can’t do that. I assume he addressed it with them privately, but I’m now the one living in Fantasyland if I think it’s realistic that Monroe, Zuttah and Osemele could be benched for next Monday’s anticipated shellacking in Glendale. Without depth to replace them, it would be silly for the coach to sit any of those three guys out. That said, they each deserve to sit. They played that final minute on Sunday as if they didn’t care one way or the other what happened on that final drive.
This, now, is why Harbaugh makes the big bucks. It’s one thing to start the season at 1-5. It happens. The club has been wrecked with injuries, bad luck, dropped passes from veteran players and a couple of missed kicks from a usually ultra-reliable kicker. Now, though, is the time for the coach to shine. I’m not expecting them to rebound and go 10-6. Not hardly. But I am expecting the Ravens to continue to work hard, give their maximum, professional effort, and, if they’re going to lose, do it with dignity. Most of that starts with the head coach. As he goes, they’ll go.
I giggled a little during the post-game press conference on Sunday when Harbs took a swipe at “the scorners and the mockers”. That was soooooo John Harbaugh, and not at all uncalled for, by the way. He has to initiate and carry out the “us vs. them” mentality now. It’s just about all he has left. And while most of us just assume the club is heading in the direction of a 4-12 or 5-11 season, Harbaugh has to use our lack of respect to his advantage if he can. In this case, I’m not sure anything’s going to stop the Ravens from a 5-11 campaign, but I completely respect John’s attempt to keep it from happening.
It’s not time to fire the coach. It’s time to see if the coach plays a part in solving this crappy situation in Baltimore. Eight years in, he deserves the opportunity to do that in the same way Ozzie deserves a chance to re-stock this roster he’s had a hand in dismantling.
Everyone has their fingerprints on the 2015 Ravens, including the players. They haven’t necessarily done their job, either. And all of them, from the general manager down to the 53rd guy on the roster, gets a chance to be part of the solution.
You can read Drew’s thoughts on the Ravens and the rest of the sports world at his daily blog, “Drew’s Morning Dish” at www.drewsmorningdish.com
