Quote Originally Posted by landspeed View Post
Jim Harbaugh was the ravens quarterback in 1998. John Harbaugh is currently the ravens head coach(2008-present). But why? How? After all, hes a special teams coach. How does a special teams coach get a head coaching position with no experience on offense or defense? Simple, his brother was once a player for the team.
Ok, I just want to be sure here. I want to be 100% I am reading this correctly. Ozzie Newsome and Steve Bischotti interviewed a number of candidates for the head coaching job. And in the end, instead of listening to what they had to say, or looking at their skills/strengths/etc:, they chose John Harbaugh as the head coach because 14 years ago his brother Jim spent two years as the QB?

Now, I consider myself a reasonable man. I have gone a long way in my life as a forum poster, going back almost a decade among multiple places. And I have strived in the last couple years to allow people to express their opinions and let them go. But I am only human.

This has to be in almost a decade, the most rediculous......ludicris........I'm really attempting not to be a hypocrite on my own modding so I will stop there.........thing I have ever heard. There is no shred of evidence that the owner and general manager of a multi-million dollar professional sports franchise could possibly be so inept and so bass-ackwards that they would only hire a head coach of a winning and want-to-be-champion team because his brother spent a little bit of time playing for the team.

I have actually heard it all, and I've lived through the "great Boller wars" of 2003-2007. This tops everything.

I wanted to stop reading here. But I just could not stop myself.

John seems to be a very likeable/nice person. And on paper he looks like a very good head coach. But what does he do for this team?
Besides the playoffs every year since arriving? Since the AFC Championship game in 2008? Besides not posting a single losing season yet?

Now lets look at offense
Joe Flacco
Ray Rice
Anquan Boldin
Marshal Yanda
Ben Grubbs

2 of them are from Billick, Q is a FA, Ray rice was an excellent pick and Joe Flacco still has not panned out(albeit a very good quarterback. Consistency though...)

Our drafts have sucked since he has been here.


38-19 in the regular season
4-3 in the playoffs

Regular season, he seems to be great. But how much credit can he take for those wins? Our defense wins our games. Without it, we are nothing.
For starters, someone else please remind me who hands the draft card into Roger? I'm pretty sure that is Ozzie. I'm fairly sure while the head coach has some input into who he'd like to have, the final say goes with the man in charge of personell.

Second, so if our defense was nothing who would you be blaming? I have a feeling you'd be blaming Harbaugh no matter what. So that's a lost cause.

And not that it matters, explain how Flacco hasn't "panned out". Other than a winning record, career 60% passing %, 68TD's to 39INT's, and more wins than losses. Oh, he hasn't won a Superbowl yet. Gotcha. All QB's should have a ring by year 3, right. Yes, Tom Brady and Ben Rothlisberger do. So that means if Joe Flacco doesn't he hasn't "panned out"? Wow, someone better inform Peyton and Drew that they didn't pan out for YEARS then! In fact, that guy Dan Marino? He's never going to pan out either.


2008: We went to the playoffs because: Willis McGahee, LeRon McClain and Lorenzo Neal
2009: We went to the playoffs because: Ray Rice had a monster year
2010: We went to the playoffs because: Ray Rice and Joe Flacco was limiting his turnovers
2011: ?
Wait, didn't you just say we won because of our defense? But now we got to the playoffs because of offensive players?

And still, no credit to Harbaugh for anything. Ok.

Again, I wanted to stop reading. It's bedtime for me, but I can't stop now!

Lets just analyze the wins and losses of this year.
Oh, lets......

Week 1: Pittsburgh at Baltimore
Baltimore wins 35-7
Defense forces 7 turnovers. This is the key stat. Not Joe Flacco's 3 TD's, not ray rices 2 TD's. I dont care how good or bad your offense may be, if you force 7 turnovers, you will win the game. No matter how you look at it, that is 7 offensive drives that the opponent was unable to score on. You only get so many chances in 60 minutes. Ray Rice had 19 rushing attempts.
Again, I'm tired, so I don't want to misread. The 35 points put up by the Ravens offense was not a factor here. Just throw those away, this was all defense here. Right?

Week 2: Baltimore at Tennessee
Tennessee wins 26-13
Kenny Britt and Matt Hasslebeck torches our secondary for 300+ yards and a couple of TD's. Our offense is stagnant. Ray Rice runs the ball 13 times. The ravens lack any pass rush. I am OK with calling this a letdown game and pinning it on the team as a whole. The coach can only do so much to motivate.
What?? And I thought our defense wins games.

Week 3: Baltimore at St. Louis
Baltimore wins 37-7
Torrey Smiths first 3 receptions as a pro are for TD's(all over 20 yards). Why could he do this may you ask? Not being in the gameplan. The ravens lucked out here, because how can you gameplan for something you have never seen the opposition use before? Regardless it was fun to watch but we will never see anything like that again. Ray Rice had 9 rushing attempts
Torrey threw those 3 TD's to himself huh? That's right, Joe was on the sideline not "panning out".

But no. This was all "luck". It's was like being in Vegas baby!! The good luck Ravens!!! With Torrey "Snake-eyes" Smith. Gameplan? How on earth does an opposing coach possibly gameplan for a rookie WR with almost no NFL experience? Why it's unheard of!


Week 4: NYJ at Baltimore
Baltimore wins 34-17
10/31 163 Yards 1 INT
Thats the statline for ravens QB Joe Flacco. Pathetic. Completely pathetic. This game was won solely on defense. 3 Defensive touchdowns in one game. Not much else to discuss about this game. Ray Rice had 25 rushing attempts.
K, The Jets game I'd give you.

Week 5: Bye
Week 6: Houston at Baltimore
Baltimore wins 29-14
Baltimore had a pretty good day offensively and Ray Rice set the tone with a 100+ yard rushing performance on 23 carries. Joe Flacco made plays when he had to and the defense did its usual job.
This is impossible. Joe Flacco hasn't "panned out". He should not be doing this.

I'm going to stop there. So far you haven't made a case at all for why Harbaugh is not a HC. Despite of course the wins, and the playoffs, and all that was mentioned before.

Oh wait, you are getting there. Sorry, I'll press on.

John Harbaugh is not a HC. He doesnt have the balls to make the hard decisions(tell Cam to fuck off), he always wastes TO's(I cannot recall the last time the ravens had 3 TO's in the 2 minute offense)
I'll give you Cam. But the TO's aren't always called by him. In fact, they are rarely called by him. It's usually the players calling the TO's. But ok. 50% is ok to argue with I guess.

and he has a knack for calling wrong challenges or not challenging at all.
Except of course this year when he has won all but one challenge (which was the one Sunday). But who's counting THIS year?


Like said in another thread, Bisciotti gave Billick his approval 2 weeks before he was canned.
And Billick had multiple losing seasons and a 5-11 season to lead up to that. Explain again how you have been able to draw the comparison?


I must say I enjoyed reading this. It reminds me that while I am in a crossroads of questioning the Raven's ability to play a home game in the playoffs this year, I am at least still rational enough to know my team's head coach didn't win his job because a relative far removed from his playing days led the team to a 6-10 record and lost his job to Eric Zeier.....so his brother had the inside track on all the other candidates for the position. Thank you for this post. It is just what I needed.