The unrelenting Super Bowl chase will ultimately crush even the best of teams. From the front office to the head coach and the quarterback, no one is immune to the yearning for the ultimate prize. The closer a team gets to a championship, the more devastating failure feels.
That ever-squeezing, ever-twisting pressure of trying to maintain championship-level play undid the Baltimore Ravens this season, and yet another year without a Super Bowl ultimately cost head coach John Harbaugh his job. Team owner Steve Bisciotti fired Harbaugh on Tuesday, two days after their disappointing season ended on a final-second missed field goal in Pittsburgh. In a statement, Bisciotti said that the team’s goal “has always been and will always be to win championships.”
But this wasn’t simply about the Ravens' failure to make the playoffs this season. The downward spiral traces back to when the Ravens watched the Chiefs kneel away the final moments of the AFC championship game in Baltimore nearly two years ago. The Ravens squandered the no. 1 seed in the conference, an MVP campaign from quarterback Lamar Jackson, and the best opportunity the franchise had to win a title since 2012.
Since then, Harbaugh and his team had seemingly spent every waking moment white-knuckling it through each season—trying to right the wrongs of that 2023 postseason and hoping to recapture old magic. The Ravens were talented enough that Harbaugh’s tactics worked more often than not, but there was a palpable tension when this team played on the biggest stages. That tension was there when the Ravens (literally) fumbled away their divisional-round playoff matchup against the Bills last January. You could feel it when Baltimore blew second-half leads in two of the first three games of this season, and then again when it came up short in prime-time games against division rivals Cincinnati on Thanksgiving and Pittsburgh in the season finale.
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Injuries, bad turnover luck, and a difficult early-season schedule all conspired to make Baltimore miss the playoffs for the first time since the 2021 season, but this team never looked right. Something needed to change. Even when quarterback Lamar Jackson returned around midseason from a hamstring injury that had kept him out of three games, he wasn’t totally back to playing like himself. He missed throws and turned down easy rushing opportunities, and whatever limitations he had from that injury (and other ailments—he was constantly on the team’s injury report) created a disjointed offense. Jackson did not look like the player he was last season, when he finished second in MVP voting.
By the time he got his game together in the regular-season finale against Pittsburgh, the rest of his team seemed like they’d run out of gas. Baltimore threw its final punch against Green Bay the week before, and on Sunday night they looked too exhausted to pull away from the Steelers, who were less talented but more focused. As kicker Tyler Loop’s field goal attempt veered right, it felt like a fitting end for this era of Ravens football.
Jackson’s arrival in 2018 and breakout season in 2019 saved Harbaugh’s job once and reinvigorated this franchise. But it was clear that Harbaugh’s message had grown stagnant, and his quarterback couldn’t save him any longer.
It doesn’t matter that Harbaugh didn’t directly cause key offensive turnovers or defensive lapses in recent years. It doesn’t matter that he and Jackson have routinely faced off in the playoffs against quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid, one of the best quarterback and head coach pairings ever. Coming up short this often meant that there was nothing left for Harbaugh to hide behind or explain away.
Turning the page to the next era will be perilous for Bisciotti and GM Eric DeCosta. They can’t afford to mess up the team’s first coaching search since 2008, and they have to replace a potential Hall of Fame coach, who, for all his recent flaws, had consistent success. The Ravens job immediately became the best one available—and arguably the most tantalizing vacancy in years. Whoever steps into this gig will inherit both a franchise-altering talent at quarterback and the same crushing expectations to win that just ended Harbaugh’s tenure.
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Mike McCarthy is the only available coach in this year’s hiring pool who’s won a championship as a head coach, but I can’t imagine that Baltimore would fire Harbaugh for someone who lost his last two jobs because things went stale from both a leadership and a schematic perspective. I would expect former Ravens assistants Jesse Minter and Anthony Weaver to get a call from DeCosta and Bisciotti. Both Minter and Weaver are up-and-comers who know the way things already work in Baltimore, but they’re young enough to make necessary changes. Current NFL defensive coordinators Robert Saleh and Brian Flores could be a fit; they’re both aggressive play callers who could do better in their second head coaching opportunities and in an organization with an elite quarterback. And offensive coordinators Joe Brady (who currently works with Josh Allen in Buffalo) and Kliff Kingsbury (who was fired by the Commanders on Tuesday but has had success with Jayden Daniels and Kyler Murray) could be top names if Baltimore’s only priority is building a different style of offense for Jackson.
But whether the next coach the helm is a retread or a young hotshot getting their first opportunity, there's only one man left who'll be held responsible for the team's future disappointments: Jackson, the two time-MVP who signed a $260 million contract in 2023. He’s DeCosta’s guy, and according to reporting from The Athletic, one of the things that led to Harbaugh’s firing on Tuesday was Harbaugh’s insistence on keeping offensive coordinator Todd Monken. If there was truly any sort of power struggle, Jackson is ultimately the one who remains. And now, he’s the one who's tasked with lifting this franchise to a championship.
Recently, there were questions floating around about Jackson’s work ethic, his relationships with coaches and peers, and how he conducts himself when he’s away from the team. After he suffered a back contusion late in the season, people were asking whether he was fighting to get back on the field—and whether the Ravens would be better off benching him with the season on the line. I bristle at the idea that Baltimore should ever consider moving on from Jackson, but there’s clearly a perception in Baltimore that his incredible talent may not be combined with the requisite obsession with winning we’ve seen from other all-time greats. There’s nothing Jackson can do to quiet that noise but win in the playoffs.
After the Ravens hit rock bottom this season, Jackson won't find vindication just by returning to his 2023 form—he'll have to shepherd in a championship-winning era for the Ravens. This is where Peyton Manning’s career was two decades ago. It’s where John Elway and Dan Marino and Warren Moon were before that. Manning and Elway got their rings. Marino and Moon did not. Everyone who watches football knows that Jackson is on pace to be one of the greatest players of all time, and it’s time for him to stamp his résumé with a championship. Another MVP award won’t be enough; neither will the top seed in the AFC or winning games in the wild-card round.
When Jackson broke out in 2019, he spoke proudly about his “Nobody cares. Work harder.” mantra. That sentiment has never been more vital than it’ll be from here on out. The Ravens are his show now, and every result from here on will be examined with his legacy on the line. No matter whom the Ravens ultimately hire to replace Harbaugh, it’s on Jackson to bring the Lombardi Trophy back to Baltimore.
