Tuesday night on his WBAL radio show, John Harbaugh responded to some of the nationwide criticism that the Ravens received after narrowly defeating the Houston Texans on Monday night.
Baltimore Sun columnist Mike Preston stirred the pot on Tuesday morning with an article entitled Ravens aren’t a championship-caliber team.
The Ravens are a playoff-contending team because there aren’t many good teams in the NFL.
At this point in the season, the good teams separate themselves from the bad teams and have established an identity heading into the playoffs. The Ravens are a team that can’t beat the good ones and feast on the average ones. Barely.
The Ravens head coach John Harbaugh responded saying, “”We don’t have to be a Super Bowl champion football team right now. We have to find a way to beat the Saints.” While that is true, there is no denying the Ravens inability to perform over a full four quarters of football.
Preston also wrote that last week John Harbaugh hinted at fixing the Ravens offense and returning to a “power-running team again.” They were unable to accomplish that against Houston with just 63 yards on the ground.
“I thought in the first half we kind of put everything together,” John Harbaugh responded. The coach is right, the Ravens were looking like they would blow out the Texans by taking advantage of their poor secondary with a strong arial attack. Unfortunately, the Ravens did not stick with it and allowed Houston to stay within reach.
Mike Milkening of Pro Football Weekly noted that the Ravens struggled in their pass protection this week.
Baltimore continues to struggle picking up the blitz off the edge. S Bernard Pollard had 1½ sacks of Flacco, who’s been brought down 32 times for a loss in 13 games and is on pace to be sacked more than he ever has been in his career.
Again, Harbaugh reacted saying that “there’s no reason” that the Ravens should have a problem with a safety blitz. However, in two straight weeks the Ravens have been unable to stop Troy Polamalu and Bernard Pollard.
All in all, the Ravens head coach was pleased with his team’s turn around and ability to pull through with the win. “I thought our players did a really good job of refocusing on the task at hand,” he said. “To come away with a victory is the bottom line.”
My concern for the Ravens is that they are good at a lot of things but they are not great on that one thing where they can hang their hat when it gets tough in the playoffs. The defense is somewhere in the neighborhood of average to good. Passing game is decent and had flash in the pan moments and the running game is kinda just average despite having Ray Rice. I do not know what this Ravens' team identity is.