John Harbaugh discusses the devastating AFC Championship loss and what happened to cause there to be no rushing attempts.
The head coach of the Ravens gave a thorough response to a query that perplexed both their supporters and the football community at large.
On Friday, the Baltimore Ravens conducted their yearly press conference to wrap up the season.
Naturally, the initial inquiries focused on the team’s shockingly low number of running attempts in their 17-10 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, the defending champions, which prevented them from making it to the Super Bowl for the first time in eleven years.
The Ravens’ running backs only carried the ball six times as a group, and they only had eight designed runs, two of which involved quarterback Lamar Jackson and resulted in both a short and a long gain.
This was one of the weakest run defenses in the league, ranking near the bottom in both DVOA and EPA. Jackson scrambled six times and finished with a team-leading 54 running yards, more than half of their pitiful total of 81.
Ravens Head Coach John Harbaugh stated, “It was that kind of a game” and “That’s the way the game went” during his postgame press conference, but on Friday, he provided a far more thorough explanation of why the game unfolded as it did and why the Ravens finished with the fewest yards rushing since Week 1 of 2022.
“That’s not the number you want to have,” Harbaugh said. “When it’s all said and done and you look back on it, that’s not really going to win us an AFC Championship game, for sure. It’s more than just calling plays.”
A big part of the Ravens’ and Offensive Coordinator Todd Monken’s plan of attack heading into the game was to call run-pass options. From there, Jackson had the authority to call “cans” and “check with me” plays, which allowed him to read what the defense showed and get into a passing or running play to counter it both pre- and post-snap.
We should take a close look at the 49ers’ desperate need for another game-winning play.
“A lot of what we were doing was directed at the line of scrimmage by what the defense gave us. And the defense was lined up to take away the run, “Harbaugh said. “The next thing would be to bring it in tight and run the ball out of heavy formations and wide receivers blocking the edge and protecting the edge that way. We could have done it that way, but we were down. We wanted to keep the formations open and give ourselves the best chance to try to move the ball and score points.”
Veteran Gus Edwards broke off for a 15-yard run on his first carry of the game, one of the few plays in which the Ravens did not go into and run out of their heavy formations with a running back receiving the ball.
“I think you can understand it from a football perspective when you look at how the game played out,” Harbaugh remarked. After overcoming all of that, you return and want to run the ball against the Chiefs. Without a question, we intended to run the ball against the Chiefs. We were unable to access it.
In major games when they had to play from behind, the Ravens have been accused of panicking and being too ready to either obstinately stick to their initial game plan or entirely abandon it.
In response to a question about whether the Chiefs’ two lengthy touchdown drives to start the game affected their game plan going forward, Harbaugh acknowledged that it had a slight effect.
“We were still determined to stick to our plan. We desired to run the ball nonetheless. Unbelievably, running the ball was a key component of our strategy, according to Harbaugh. In the first half, we had the ball for nine minutes. We were therefore deprived of the chance to call any kind of play because of those two extended drives [by the Chiefs]. We didn’t convert then. We made errors. We were stopped by [The Chiefs]. They performed plays. After that initial drive, we were off the field immediately. I believe that all of those factors were involved.
A further point of contention arising from this game concerning Jackson’s decision-making abilities was his reluctance to utilize his divinely endowed legs and sprint when wide or even narrow rushing lanes appeared. As a result, he took excessive sacks and missed opportunities to pick up drive-extending first downs. He also married too often and/or moved around behind the line of scrimmage in an attempt to buy more time to throw the ball downfield.
Running man coverage against the Ravens is extremely risky because, in the event that no one is open downfield and the defense turns its back on Jackson, the quarterback in the league can outrun them with greater speed and agility than any other in the game.
