Ravens Determined to Cut Down on Injuries

Baltimore had several key players miss time.

OWINGS MILLS, Md. — The Ravens were devastated with injuries this past season and found themselves undermanned in several games.

Baltimore finished with 19 players on IR, including several key players such as running backs J.K. Dobbins and Gus Edwards, cornerbacks Marcus Peters and Marlon Humphrey, safety DeShon Elliott and left tackle Ronnie Stanley. 

Coach John Harbaugh wants to ensure that does not happen again.

"This year, we just got smashed with [injuries]," Harbaugh said. "You can say it’s bad luck. You can say it’s a fluke. I get that, but I don’t feel like we have the luxury to live there. That’s not something that we can say that’s it. We have to turn over every stone. We have to look at every possible avenue to do the best we can to make sure this doesn’t happen again."

Harbaugh confirmed that he will retain strength and conditioning coach Steve Saunders. However, he is working closely with his staff to put the proper protocols in place to avoid injures. 

"I had a meeting two weeks ago with our performance people," Harbaugh said. "We sat in there for four hours and went over every aspect of what we’re doing and what we can do on the football side to try to improve that – from practice schedules, from training camp schedules, from OTAs, from how we train, from how we condition, even how we do our team, all of our modeling in terms of loads and things like that in our team periods and in our individual periods."

The Ravens are also looking at their practice schedule to see if what changes they can make to ensure the health of the players. 

The season might depend on it. 

"I’m already drawing up practice schedules, and we’re putting them into models for loads and things like that to do everything we can do to make sure that we come through as strong as we can be and ready to attack the season when the season starts," Harbaugh said. "So, we’re not going to just take it and say it’s OK. Something has to be fixed.”