Who Holds John Harbaugh Accountable?

The Ravens game at Orchard Park on Sunday night was reminiscent of their road game during Week 3 of 2024 against the Dallas Cowboys. You may recall how the team got conservative both offensively and defensively after they jumped in front by the score of 28-6 through three quarters. And then the fourth quarter collapse kicked in. The Cowboys scored three touchdowns in the final frame, producing 211 yards of offense in the fourth quarter alone.

Eventually, the Ravens held off the Cowboys, winning the game 28-25 to advance to (1-2) on the season.

Sunday night in northwest New York was a little different. The Ravens could not survive the Bills onslaught because simply put, the Bills and Josh Allen aren’t the Dallas Cowboys.

But clearly there’s a disturbing pattern here with fourth quarter collapses. And it’s not as if the Ravens lack talent. They field five first-round picks in the secondary. An All Pro first rounder at inside linebacker in the form of Roquan Smith. They have Pro Bowlers and first-rounders aplenty across the defensive front. Yet they can’t protect double-digit leads repeatedly in the fourth quarter?

Seven teams have had 20 or more two-score leads (9-16 points) in fourth quarters since 2022#Ravens have six of the 13 losses among those teams pic.twitter.com/ntsUwe6faD

— Mike Sando (@SandoNFL) September 8, 2025

This is malpractice!

It’s as if Defensive Coordinator Zach Orr is an Executive Chef at a 5-star restaurant and has access to the finest meats and quality ingredients yet he serves Salisbury Steak for dinner.

Let’s be honest. The Ravens defense lacks an identity. Cris Collinsworth went on and on about the Ravens physicality and how opponents’ bodies feel the game the next day due to Baltimore’s physical nature. Collinsworth obviously covered too many Ravens games during the Ray Lewis-Ed Reed-Terrell Suggs-Haloti Ngata days. He’s living in the past. Today’s Ravens are nothing like those teams.

Is the Ravens defense physical? Are they fast? Do they pressure quarterbacks? Are they stifling against the run? Do they force turnovers?

The Ravens’ defense is NONE of the above. They are simply a collection of potential that under the Ravens’ coaching guidance has morphed into a melting mess of homogenized nothingness. Who is being held responsible? Where is the accountability?

Hall of Fame WR Cris Carter with a SCATHING statement on John Harbaugh and the Ravens

“Harbaugh has been absent on the sideline the last 4-5 years…They are just a shadow of themselves…I’m concerned about their whole defensive system” pic.twitter.com/V3vjm3H1BF

— Kevin Oestreicher (@koestreicher34) September 8, 2025

Eric DeCosta must be losing his ish. He works tirelessly to put together the best roster possible. And the embarrassment that took place on a national stage is all that massive collection of talent can muster?

The thing is, John Harbaugh doesn’t report to EDC. He reports to owner Steve Bisciotti. Now Bisciotti at one time, communicated with Harbaugh regularly, particularly after games. I assume that dialogue continues to this day, but I have to wonder what exactly is being said. Does Harbaugh feed Bisciotti the same load of shit that he shells out to the media during his Monday pressers? Rhetorical question. Bisciotti would never accept these answers. What Harbaugh’s answers are, is anyone’s guess but when these fourth quarter failures keep piling up despite the level of talent and the money spent on said talent, Bisciotti must be pounding his head with his 4-iron.

Now Steve is a proponent of continuity. We’ve all heard that repeatedly over the years. But when these regular meltdowns during the game’s most crucial moments keep happening time and time again, we must wonder if the line between continuity and complacency has completely blurred.

Check out some of these questions asked of and responded to by Harbaugh during yesterday’s session with the media. The questions are in bold letters:

Back to what you were saying about the secondary, in terms of if guys were supposed to be a little more physical and man coverage and weren’t in terms of where they were lining up, was that more of a communication issue, or are they just not doing it? (Cordell Woodland)

“We played a lot of great plays, too. We had a lot of really well-played plays, too, so it’s just [about] consistent execution and the ability to continue to execute consistently. It’s [about] who you’re going against and all those different kinds of things. It’s a long journey. You pass judgment on the game. That’s what we do. We go back; we grade it; we look at it; we look at each play exactly for what it stands for. We’ll study it with the guys tomorrow, and we’ll learn from it, and we’ll understand that we’ve got to carry our lessons into the next game. That’s what you do. That’s what you do in football, and that’s what you do probably in any action for anything, and we’ll do that. So, that’s why you’re willing to say, ‘Hey, you know what? We can do that better. We have to do that better.’ Then, the other thing is, to your point, it’s like, ‘Why did it happen?’ There’s no general [reason] why it happened. Communication? Yes, there’s a couple of plays [where] it might be communication. Maybe it’s communication in the meeting room. We didn’t quite make it clear enough, or maybe it got confused with some other defense that we’re running. Could it have been confusion with another call that he’s tying together in his mind? As a coach, you look at all those little aspects of it to try to get to the point where there’s a shared understanding, and the guys have a really good vision of what you’re doing, and we have that. We have a lot of really good things going. It’s just the start of the season, so we’ll keep chasing that. Like I said last night, that’s how you become the team that you’re going to be over the course of the season.”

What a load of crow dung!

And there’s more…

When you reviewed the film, both offensively and defensively, down the stretch … When there’s a blown lead, people always want to say, “Well, things got too conservative.” When you reviewed the plays offensively and defensively, do you think you guys were aggressive enough down the stretch? (Jeff Zrebiec)

“[Both] offensively and defensively, generally speaking, we tried to be as aggressive as we could be. Did we call the right plays? Well, in hindsight, no, [because] they didn’t work. And I’m not just saying that to blow it off. Maybe we could have had some sort of a naked boot, I would’ve liked, maybe, if we’d have done that – hindsight being 20/20. I’m not sure I want a drop-back pass against [Cover] Zero right there, necessarily, but it’s not to say we couldn’t have popped it, because our guys are good man [-coverage] route runners. Maybe we’d get the ball off, and we get a catch-and-run, but that ball can get batted down, too. So that’s one that you say, ‘Would that have been a little more aggressive? That would’ve been,’ but the ball gets batted down there, and it’s like, ‘Oh, why don’t you just give it to Derrick [Henry] or just put it in Lamar [Jackson]’s hands and let him run it.’ So, I think that’s the catch-22 of the whole conversation. Defensively? Well, we tried everything. We tried everything. We were playing, man [coverage], we were playing zone [coverage], we were blitzing, we were coming off the edge, we were showing and dropping out of there. So, we just didn’t really get them stopped in the last two drives at all. And you know the plays that happened, so we didn’t execute a couple times. We let them sneak out of there with a running back sneak play that should have been covered. We have the means to cover that in that defensive call. The sideline play at the end of the half, that should be covered. That’s supposed to be defended there at that depth right there, that’s the way the defense is built. I think that’s part of what I was saying before. Early in the season, you do find some things out. Especially when you’re playing a really good offense, you get exposed a little bit. We learned where we have to get better, too.”

Afraid of Cover 0?

The best quarterbacks in the world welcome that defensive alignment, they invite it, particularly an offense equipped with route runners like Zay Flowers, Rashod Bateman and DeAndre Hopkins. And let’s not forget the Ravens have a two-time MVP quarterback who destroys blitzes. The Ravens shouldn’t fear such acts of desperation from opposing defenses. They should welcome them and use the aggression from opponents to put the game away.

The Bills blitzed Lamar Jackson on 10 of his 22 dropbacks in Week 1, but the extra rusher hardly fazed him

Jackson when the Bills blitzed:

7/9, 140 yards
1 TD/0 INT
155.8 rating
0.83 EPA per dropback
11.8 air yards per attempt pic.twitter.com/iaDC80hY3u

— The 33rd Team (@The33rdTeamFB) September 8, 2025

But instead of putting teams away, Harbaugh-led teams unleash their inner roly poly bug and wait for the danger to pass. That approach might work against weaker opponents, but it isn’t going to do the job against more formidable foes, and it certainly won’t work during the postseason.

I don’t know. Maybe Zach Orr needs another consultant to take over for Dean Pees. Maybe John Harbaugh needs a right-hand guy — a Jerry Rosburg type, to stand beside him on the sidelines and snap him out of that deer-in-headlights coma. Or maybe Steve Bisciotti needs to take his driver and draw a firm line in the proverbial sand, and hold his head coach accountable for fielding a team that fails to play to the level of their talent.

After all, self-made billionaires don’t typically accept such failures. They aren’t usually wired that way.

Unless of course they may have already checked out…

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