John Harbaugh Shares Ravens' Bye Week Plans

The Baltimore Ravens finally get some much-needed rest.

Nov 25, 2024; Inglewood, California, USA; Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh reacts against the Los Angeles Chargers in the second half at SoFi Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

For the second year in a row, the Baltimore Ravens have one of the latest bye weeks of any team in the NFL. This time, though, they're limping into the break.

After Sunday's 24-19 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, the Ravens have now lost two of their past three games in brutal fashion. The defense seems to be improving, but the offense has definitely come back to Earth over the past few weeks. Then there's the special teams unit, which has simply cratered this season and was especially bad against Philadelphia.

There's a lot of problems to clean up, and rest assured, the Ravens will work on them throughout the bye week. Of course, getting healthy and taking some time to rest and regroup is also a top priority.

"Guys will come in, [and] we'll watch the tape [and] do different rehab and make sure everybody's healthy or not healthy or wherever we're at – kind of assess where we're at, medically," head coach John Harbaugh said postgame. "We'll have a team meeting. We'll watch the tape and kind of go back through it and make our corrections tomorrow, and then I'll meet with the leaders, and we'll kind of decide what to do from there, but they'll get most of the week off. They won't get tomorrow off, but they'll get most of the week off.

"They need it, [and] they've earned it, and we'll come back on Monday ready to go [and] ready to go to work."

The Ravens are indeeed quite banged-up right now. Kyle Van Noy missed Sunday's game with neck and hamstring injuries and Rashod Bateman suffered a knee injury during it, just to name two examples. Every team is dealing with injuries at this point in the season, but most of them have already had their bye to rest up and heal. Baltimore is one of the few teams that hasn't had that chance until now.

"We started earlier than a lot of teams in the league and had the latest bye week in the league," defensive tackle Nnamdi Madubuike said. "Everybody's a little banged up. If you're not banged up, you haven't played football. So, we just have to get ready, see your family, do what you've got to do, and get right in the mind. We have a four-game stretch coming up and we have to win every game."

The Ravens will have to get back up to speed fast coming out of the bye, as their next three games are in a 10-day span from Dec. 15-25. With the season now in its final stretch, time is running out to fix any lingering problems.

"That bye [week] is crucial at this point in the season, just knowing what we are as a team and the mindset that we have, knowing that we want to make a push, and we will make a push," linebacker Roquan Smith said. "Having that reset button ... Obviously, we won't have the first-round bye, as we did last year, but just having this bye right now and just knowing it's going to be down the stretch and that these four games are going to be very important."

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