2x Super Bowl Winner Urges Ravens “To Get Rid” of John Harbaugh After 44–10 Loss: “You Got to Try to Lose That Bad”

With the Baltimore Ravens’ 44-10 drubbing at the hands of the Houston Texans in Week 5, this edition of Edgar Allen Poe’s Birds hit a new low. The result, which came after Baltimore’s 37-20 defeat at the hands of the Kansas City Chiefs the week before, means they are the first Ravens team to lose consecutive games by 17+ points (or 3+ scores) since 2015. Yes, a full decade.

Now, the Ravens have about as many injuries to as many impact players as you can imagine. Even if you just start and end the list with QB Lamar Jackson, who’s currently sidelined with a hamstring injury, it would still be devastating. But the list is long, especially on the defensive side.

But then the Ravens have experienced injuries before, surely within the last 10 years. And they have not been beaten so soundly in back-to-back weeks in all that time. Injuries aside, are there larger questions to be asked and bigger decisions to be made by the Baltimore brass?

Could the message of Super Bowl winner John Harbaugh, the second-longest tenured coach in the league with one team (18 years, second to Mike Tomlin at 19), be falling on deaf ears? Former six-time Pro Bowl RB LeSean McCoy, for one, believes we need to start being harsher when evaluating established and proven head coaches.

“With 44-10, you gotta try to lose that bad. Where [is] the fight at? You’re the type of coach that’s well-respected in this league… You can’t go out like this. We gotta start re-evaluating these coaches the same way we do with these players,” said McCoy.

“When a player can’t get it done, you know what they do? They trade him or get rid of him,” he added on Speakeasy.

Coaches — and referees, if we’re on the topic — should be evaluated and fined, and punished the same way as players. However, when you have won a Super Bowl for a franchise, you can expect a certain amount of respect.

Harbaugh was booed off the field last weekend, and the video is hard to watch even for a fan of a division rival. It would be hard to imagine something like this happening to a Chuck Noll or a Tom Landry or a Don Shula, even though they all overstayed their welcome as well.

While the booing is in poor taste, it does seem like the 63-year-old head coach no longer has the belief or trust of his locker room. Even his veterans have been reluctant to praise anything about his approach this season.

And, as Emmanuel Acho said, if they’re not listening to him, he doesn’t really need to be there. “So if the players aren’t changing their behavior, and the players are a reflection of the coach, then the coaching has to be bad,” he said.

“It’s not to say that Harbaugh’s bad, but it’s to say that his message is falling on deaf ears. The players are no longer listening to what Harbaugh’s saying. So, if you’re not listening to what Harbaugh’s saying, then he might as well not be saying it… Then he might as well not be there,” added Acho.

At this point, it seems that things have boiled down to a question of allowing a revered and legendary coach for the Baltimore Ravens franchise to go out in a respectable way. Let him go out on his sword.

Harbaugh has put in nearly two decades with this city and this team. He deserves some grace in a rocky final season.

And let’s not forget, if Jackson was not hurt, despite all the other issues, we likely would not be having this conversation. There is some level of unluckiness mixed in here for Harbaugh, too. And that should be considered as well.

This may be Harbaugh’s last year, but as long as Jackson is out, it wasn’t going to be a year where the Ravens accomplished much anyway. So no need to disrespect a franchise legend on his way out the door here.