Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh admitted Friday what everyone has been saying all week — the team made a mistake by abandoning their running game in the AFC Championship.
But he said the team had no choice.
The favored Ravens lost to the Kansas City Chiefs, 17-10. Baltimore, which led the NFL in rushing yards this season by a wide margin, gave their running backs only six carries (for 23 yards). Even more perplexing, Gus Edwards ripped off 15 of those yards on one run early in the game, yet the team stopped running the ball.
In his season-ending media session, Harbaugh said limited possessions, and playing from behind, led to fewer rushing attempts. But he admitted “sometimes you need to be willing to get big and run the ball” because the way things played out is “not going to win us an AFC Championship Game.”
“When you look at the way the game played out, you can understand it from a football perspective but once you get through all that you come back — you want to run the ball against the Chiefs,” Harbaugh said. “There’s no doubt about it and we did want to run the ball against the Chiefs. We weren’t able get to it.”
Harbaugh said the Chiefs’ defense set up to defend the run, forcing the team to pass.
“The defense was lined up to take away the run,” Harbaugh said. “The next thing would be to bring it in tight and just run the ball in heavy formations … we could have done that, but we were down.”
Ravens HC John Harbaugh acknowledges lack of run game in AFC Championship
“The defense was lined up to take away the run. The next thing would be to bring it in tight and just run the ball in heavy formations…we could have done that, but we were down” pic.twitter.com/aoJgZxM8ze
— Kevin Oestreicher (@koestreicher34) February 2, 2024
Critics have savaged the Ravens’ offensive game plan. ESPN’s Rex Ryan called out Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken Monday, saying, “This is the stupidest game plan I’ve ever seen. … This is a team that led the NFL in rushing attempts. They had six whopping rushing attempts to their running backs.”
Rex Ryan all-out torches Todd Monken:
"This is the stupidest game plan I've ever seen, and you know what Greg Roman? Every single person needs to apologize to you. Because you got blamed for everything about what was wrong in Baltimore, and it wasn't you."
via @GetUpESPN pic.twitter.com/cN2sEUUnHc
— Bobby Trosset (@bobbybaltim0re) January 29, 2024
[Kevin Oestreicher]
