A Ravens Machine Rejuvenated With a Tweaked Cast of Characters

Baltimore coach John Harbaugh isn’t ready to make any declarative statements about his team’s dismantling of the Lions, except for one: ‘I really love these guys.’

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At one point in our conversation late Sunday afternoon, maybe a half hour after his Ravens had finished dismantling the Lions, John Harbaugh made a point that could’ve been taken as a cliché, a way of tamping down the hype from this sort of win.

“What is this? Week 7? Week 8?” he asks. “We’ve got a lot of football left to play.”

You’ve heard it before, I’m sure.

But, as Harbaugh kept talking, it became clearer and clearer how the point he was trying to make was more deeply rooted. That, in this case, the Ravens’ 38–6 rout of Detroit didn’t prove anything about his team’s toughness when measured against the similarly rugged Lions. That the way his team played Sunday wasn’t some culmination of anything. That Baltimore wasn’t trying to prove anything to the pundits ignoring its presence.

Jackson and the Ravens ran through the Lions for 146 yards on the ground

This was much simpler than that, and a story Harbaugh told about the waning moments of the game would illustrate where his Ravens are at perfectly.

Baltimore and Detroit were in the closing minutes of the fourth quarter, when Harbaugh noticed his defensive staff hadn’t gotten veteran corner Rock Ya-Sin into the game. So Harbaugh sought secondary coach and defensive pass-game coordinator Chris Hewitt out on the sideline.

What, you don’t like Rock? Harbaugh said, smirking at Hewitt. Is Rock in your doghouse?

Hewitt smiled back and sent Ya-Sin in with 3:08 left, and the final score already on the board. The Lions immediately threw at Ya-Sin, who knocked away a go-route to Jameson Williams, a deep out to Amon-Ra St. Brown, and he tackled St. Brown short of the sticks on third down. It gave Harbaugh more ammo for later. It also, in a roundabout way, illustrated what’s happening in Baltimore.

“We’re able to kind of get after each other in a good way, that nobody takes personally,” Harbaugh says. “And everybody knows that we love each other. When you know where you stand with one another, you can just be so much more honest and real in the relationships.”

In turn, Harbaugh believes, with players and coaches able to critique and criticize, and playfully poke each other, too, a team can get better faster.

That, truthfully, is what Harbaugh sees in his 2023 Ravens. He knows, of course, the team’s thorough trashing of Detroit—as well as the Lions were playing coming in—will turn heads and draw headlines. But this one was different from the Ravens outlasting the Bengals in Cincinnati in Week 2, or blasting the Browns in Week 4, because the team is different now.

And that’s the whole thing here—the Ravens are getting better, and getting better fast. So Harbaugh wasn’t going to use Week 7 to make any declarative statements.

But surely, he can see where his team is going. Now, the rest of us can, too.

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Week 7 is nearly in the books, and we’ve got a lot to get to through what was a sloppy, weird, flag-filled Sunday of football. This week, we’ve got …

• A dive into Myles Garrett’s huge Sunday in Indianapolis.

• A look at the future, both near and distant, of how you’ll watch games.

• A resilient Steelers team, and a whole lot more, in the Ten Takeaways.

But we’re starting our AFC North–heavy Week 7 with a peek under the hood of a Ravens machine that’s been rejuvenated and restarted with a tweaked cast of characters.

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Goff was sacked five times by the Ravens, including this one by Arthur Maulet :: Mitch Stringer/USA TODAY Sports

This Ravens team resembles so many of the 15 teams previous to it that Harbaugh’s had in Baltimore. This group’s edgy and tough on both sides of the ball, able to run it old school on one side, and create havoc on the other in the franchise’s best versions.

But the group of people here is not the same, with the past two years representing a pretty significant changing of the guard.

In 2022, Mike Macdonald returned from Michigan, where he was for a year as a first-time play-caller, taking over for longtime defensive coordinator Wink Martindale. This year, it was Todd Monken plucked from Georgia to replace Greg Roman—once responsible for building an offense for Lamar Jackson, just as he built one for Colin Kaepernick for Harbaugh’s brother, Jim, in San Francisco—as offensive coordinator. On the roster, big-name vets such as Roquan Smith and Odell Beckham Jr. were added, as a new contract affirmed Jackson as the face of the franchise.

As always, John Harbaugh and GM Eric DeCosta carefully picked the people they thought were right for the culture that’s been cultivated since Brian Billick and Ozzie Newsome sat in their seats decades ago. And as Harbaugh sees it now, the result is what he sees when he arrives at work every day in suburban Maryland.

“When you drive into the parking lot, you know, in some jobs, you see the cars of the people and you’re like, Oh, jeez, I have to see that person. Oh no,” Harbaugh says. “Their car makes you mad and sometimes makes your stomach churn. With this team, you see the car in the lot—and there’s some nice cars in this lot, by the way—you see the car and you’re like, Oh man, I can’t wait to see that guy. I can’t wait to see that person, that player, that coach, that scout.

“It’s really incredible. You got to enjoy it while you can. Because sometimes …”

Harbaugh then paused, and says, “You don’t always have that.”

And, as Harbaugh says, the relationship building has allowed for the seismic change in the upper reaches of the coach’s staff to take faster than they otherwise might have. Which, to be sure, was on display Sunday in a very big way.

On offense, perhaps the best example came at the start of the second half, with the Ravens at their own 9-yard line in second-and-7 after Macdonald’s defense had forced a turnover on downs in a goal-to-go situation. On the play, Monken dialed up a call that had 311-pound fullback Pat Ricard motioning from the left side of the formation to the right, Jackson carrying out a play fake to Gus Edwards to that side, then rolling right with the backs slipping out, before popping the ball over the front seven to Edwards.

“It was kind of a three-pronged type of run-pass-option type play,” Harbaugh says. “It was really cool. You watch that play; you might get something out of that.”

What I got out of it was how well it was carried out. Ricard picked up Aidan Hutchinson, who was coming hard toward Jackson. Jackson waited for the defense to come toward him to get Edwards behind the linebackers. Edwards caught the ball in stride and ran—and ran and ran and ran until he had 80 yards, and Baltimore had first-and-10 at the Lions’ 11.

“There’s been stretches in games where you see what the vision is,” Harbaugh says. “Todd’s a great coach. I watch him every day; he does a great job teaching and coaching. So do the other guys. We have a really good offensive staff. Really top to bottom, all the coaches do a good job. I think they game-plan together. What you see in terms of personnel groupings, motions and the types of plays that we’re running, that was all part of the plan, the vision for it.

“You’ve just been working on it every day. I think he’s a great teacher, and he deserves a ton of credit. Got a game ball for that this game. He deserved it, on behalf of the whole staff. I just think it was fun to watch that thing work today.”

The end result was staggering. Against a red-hot Lions defense, the Ravens’ offense produced 503 yards. They rushed for 146 and averaged 5.4 yards per carry. Jackson had a near-perfect passer rating—155.8—while throwing for 357 yards. They had scoring drives of 75, 68, 92 and 80 yards in the first half alone.

And speaking of that first half, as impressive as Monken’s offense was in piling up 366 yards and 28 points through 30 minutes, Macdonald’s defense was its equal. At one point in the second quarter, the Ravens had those 28 points, and the Lions had just 13 yards. Baltimore, in fact, had the four touchdowns before Detroit could muster a single first down, with Macdonald creatively unleashing a fast, versatile, deep mix of veterans and young guys that took Detroit out of its element completely.

It was to the point where the Lions had only four called runs in the first half. Four!

“Just tremendous,” Harbaugh says of Macdonald. “He’s doing a great job. He’s a thoughtful guy, a great teacher. He’s really like almost a wonk—a football wonk. You get some of the political wonks. He’s a football wonk. He really studies every detail, and I think the players really appreciate the detail with which he organizes it and teaches it. Him and the rest of the guys, I’m proud of them. I’m proud of what we’ve been doing on defense.”

Then, having talked about and appreciated the group, Harbaugh slyly adds, “We got to go to Arizona this week. That’s really what we’re thinking about.”

They’ll take a quarterback with them who’s playing as well as he ever has, too.

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Jackson threw three touchdown passes and ran for another against the Lions :: Tommy Gilligan/USA TODAY Sports

Harbaugh didn’t raise it, but it’s been hard in recent years to talk about Jackson without bringing up the contract. And after the Ravens got that win in Week 2 in Cincinnati, he did allow himself to go there with me, referencing the five-year, $260 million he (finally) landed this offseason, as we talked over the phone.

“I’m very comfortable,” Jackson says. “We got the contract situation behind us. It’s nice to know that the organization believes in me; my teammates believe in me. I just got to stay focused and just keep doing what we’re doing, keep building, keep winning.”

And Jackson, with Monken in, and a totally revamped group of receivers around him, has done just that.

With a few ups and downs, he and the offense have steadily worked the kinks out, and it all came together Sunday. The numbers, indeed, paint a vivid picture of how Jackson played against the Lions: He completed 21-of-27 throws, three for touchdowns, for the 357 yards we mentioned earlier.

But more than just that, Jackson’s progress in the offense was brought to life by the way he was able to threaten the Lions at every level of the defense by completing passes to nine different receivers. Edwards had the one catch for 80 yards, and no one else had more than 75 yards on the day, indicative of how Jackson was moving the ball around. And two of the three most prominent targets were new ones—Beckham and rookie Zay Flowers—which, again, shows how the offense’s shifting identity is coming together.

It’s also a sign of Jackson improving as a passer.

“That’s what you want” Harbaugh says. “You want to force people to have to defend everybody and every part of the field as much as you can. We have a lot of talented guys. I think we have a lot of skilled, playmaking guys. Heck, I want to get them all involved more. That’s the goal.”

That goal was achieved, because Jackson, now in Year 6, looks like a player capable of pulling so many different levers to beat a defense, and the four touchdowns he had a hand in were a full manifestation of it.

“I just think that’s Lamar,” Harbaugh says. “That’s what he’s capable of. He works hard. He’s been playing in the league for five years now, and you see that kind of stuff from him for five years. And he’s like any quarterback, if you work hard and you’re locked in with what you’re doing and you care, you improve. You get better.

“Next’s week’s a new week, and he’ll be looking to do his best just like he did this week.”

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Near the end of our talk, I mentioned to Harbaugh how his dad, Jack, probably liked this one, watching back in Ann Arbor—I’d referenced Jack Harbaugh in my Week 2 story after the Bengals game, in how the Ravens were starting to play the family patriarch’s style of game.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure he did,” Harbaugh says. “He had a good back-to-back; he got Michigan last night and this one today.”

I responded that, given the nature of both games the sons gave him, Dad could’ve turned off either in the third quarter, and gone on with his day.

“But you know he didn’t,” John Harbaugh says, laughing.

John, of course, knows his old football-coaching dad would love the team he’s got. And that he’s referenced his dad a few times in explaining how he sees the group, from the coaches to the players, right on down through the staff and roster, to me is the ultimate compliment.

“I don’t know how to put it into words exactly, but I do—I really love these guys,” Harbaugh says. “I just love them because they are just genuine. They care about us, the team. They care about each other. They come to work every day and they’re locked in. They want to do football stuff. They’re into it. They treat each other well, treat coaches well. They treat cafeteria staff well. They work their butts off in practice. They work in meetings.

“They have fun.”

As a result, Harbaugh is having fun, too, and as moments like the one he had with Hewitt on Sunday pile up, it sure seems like he’s trying not to reflect much on where his team is at.

Maybe because, with how this is all going, he’s got a pretty good idea of where it can go.