John Harbaugh and Ravens must focus on being dominant team
The Ravens shouldn’t want to scratch and claw their way to a playoff seed. John Harbaugh needs to focus on dominating the competition, rather than winning with a thrilling finish:
John Harbaugh and his Baltimore Ravens are notorious for making things hard. In 2015, 13 Ravens games came down to eight points or less. For the 2016 season,12 of the Ravens 16 games were decided by eight points or less. In 2017, that number is a bit smaller because the Ravens either kicked butt or got their’s kicked into oblivion for the most part. Still the Ravens had six games where they either won or lost by eight points or less. You may be seeing a pattern.
The habit of just getting by or coming up just barely short goes back even further in the Harbaugh era. 8 points is a good measuring point here, because that means it’s technically a one score game (with a two point conversion). Let’s define close games as points where the teams finish eight points or less away from each other. In 2014 (which was a more fun season) the Ravens had eight close games. 2013 saw 11 close games. In 2012 (the year they won the Super Bowl) Baltimore had 12 close games, counting the playoffs.
This is on John Harbaugh. After a close loss you hear him say nothing but coach-speak. After a big win he praises the team too much, at least in the media. The Ravens could fall backwards into a win in the ugliest game of all-time (the 2012 game against the Chiefs comes to mind) and he’d tell a tale about how gritty the football team is.
It’s a mindset thing:
Going back further isn’t necessary because the point is easily made, that the Ravens don’t usually win convincingly. Maybe it has something to do with the entire “Play like a Raven” mentality. When this phrase comes to mind, toughness is what it is all about. Ravens football is proudly tough.
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In Baltimore it’s about grinding out a win. There’s nothing finesse or flashy about it, other than Ray Lewis’s dance. The culture coach Harbaugh has cultivated, one that has been very rewarding to the franchise, is about just finding a way to win. The downside of that is that the Ravens don’t go into a game thinking “Let’s blow these guys out of the water!”
Maybe if the Ravens decided they were going to try to dominate every single opponent, they wouldn’t have down games. They wouldn’t get up for the Steelers game and down for a battle with the Browns, but they would have a consistent effort. Maybe if the Ravens changed their psychology just a little, they wouldn’t be facing elimination as the regular season gets down to the end. With just a little tinkering, the purple and black could find themselves with a top seed in the AFC.
The Bottom Line:
When the bare minimum is okay, it tends to set the standards too low. The ability to win a game ugly is something every team needs. It isn’t always going to be pretty with touchdowns and glory and refusing to lose a tightly contested game is important.
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Harbaugh’s team plays their best against the great teams on their schedule and when they face their rivals. That’s because the team is desperate to get out of there with a win. If the Ravens took that extra drive for the Steelers games for the rest of their schedule they’d never have a slip up. They never would have lost to the Chicago Bears at home, in Mitchell Trubisky’s first start, for example. The Ravens need to focus on playing great week in and week out. Huddle up Ravens Flock, it’s “Dominate” on three.