John Harbaugh won the 2019 NFL Coach of the Year award. Let’s look at his entire run with the Baltimore Ravens and assess his strengths and weaknesses:
Strengths:
John Harbaugh is a great leader. He’s the perfect front man of the Baltimore Ravens organization. He’s an energetic and self motivated coach who blends seriousness and toughness very well with charisma and magnetism. He’s poised and sometimes stoic but more than anything he’s passionate. In other words, he’s a Harbaugh. In a family of coaches, he happens to be the best one.
Harbaugh’s biggest strength is keeping the train from falling completely off the tracks. The Baltimore Ravens have had one losing season during his tenure. That losing season came in 2015 when a freakishly long list of injuries prevented Harbaugh from making things work. The Ravens have had to battle back from some tough times during Harbaugh’s run as their coach yet he never loses the locker room.
When the 2012 season spun out of control, Harbaugh managed to stop the bleeding. He fired Cam Cameron as the offensive coordinator and righted the ship for a playoff run. The Ravens managed to get hot at the right moment for a trip to Super Bowl glory. Not many coaches can finish the regular season losing four of their last five games and then lead the team on one of the most dramatic trips to the Super Bowl in NFL history.
Harbaugh doesn’t always help his team avoid slumps but he never allows a slump to take the season from the team. He’s a player’s coach which is something most current and former Ravens would confirm. The fact that Bernard Pollard stands alone on an island of feuding with Harbaugh says a lot. You can’t please everybody but Harbaugh obviously meshes well with his teams. Ray Lewis and Ed Reed may have built the core principles of the Ravens way yet Harbaugh has kept the winning culture alive.
The ultimate example of him being a player’s coach is evidenced by what Lamar Jackson has done since being drafted in 2018. The Ravens drafted Jackson with Harbaugh completely on board with making him the next franchise quarterback. Harbaugh had to go with Jackson much quicker than he intended to and he made it work.
With a make-shift offensive system the 2018 Ravens won six out of seven games to make the playoffs with a rookie quarterback. In 2019, Harbaugh changed everything and went all in on making the ideal team for Jackson. Building an entirely new team identity after more than 10 years with one team is an impressive showing of perspective and vision.
That’s why Harbaugh won the 2019 NFL Coach of the year award. He didn’t get in the way of his team trying something new. He actively worked on and encouraged the entire team to be different than the rest of the league. Jackson is a player who has the ability to change the way we look at the quarterback position; and the Ravens offense could change the way of the NFL forever. Greg Roman has a lot to do with this however Harbaugh deserves a lot of credit.
Harbaugh’s Weaknesses:
One problem Harbaugh has is that he places a great amount of the work on his offensive and defensive coordinators. Harbaugh is loyal to a fault when it comes to his coaching staff and his struggle to find the right offensive coordinator has been an issue more than once. The Ravens have either fired or replaced the following coordinators since 2008: Cam Cameron, Jim Caldwell, Gary Kubiak, Marc Trestman and Marty Mornhinweg.
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The defensive coordinator position has been tricky for him as well. Greg Mattison was promoted from within to become the defensive coordinator that replaced Chuck Pagano. It didn’t go well. Dean Pees had a habit of letting quarterbacks steal games from him at the end. It led to a lot of heartbreak and Harbaugh stuck with Pees for six seasons. It got old.
When Andy Dalton ended the 2017 Ravens season with a last second touchdown, it felt like it might be time for a change. Sure, Pees had to go, yet that wasn’t the only change the franchise was forced to think about. Harbaugh had a stretch where he was legitimately on the hot seat.
He had a stretch where his teams were too competent to get the Ravens a high draft pick and too frustrating to get to the playoffs. Harbaugh has rebounded from this. We can throw away the hot seat, we just can’t forget that it was there. It was there for a reason.
Harbaugh is a good game planner but he is a horrible in game adjuster. That was painfully obvious during the Ravens’ loss to the Titans that ended a magical 2019 season. When his coordinators need to be reeled in he gives them too much room to operate. When he finally decides to change course, it’s often too late. He believes in his guys. He stubbornly believes in the game plan and doesn’t improvise until it becomes painfully obvious that something is not working.
Harbaugh is also known to mismanage situational football. His decision to become more aggressive in general on fourth down situations may be in part to make this easier on him. There are times when the clock is managed poorly at the end of a half or in the fourth quarter. How many times has he called a timeout, decided to challenge a play just to lose the challenge? That’s a serious question for you because it feels like it’s been a decent number of times.
Putting it all together and ranking John Harbaugh:
John Harbaugh has 12 seasons in the book as the Ravens head coach. He’s taken the Ravens to the playoffs eight times and has won a Super Bowl. When you put it all together you have a good coach. He’s always going to find a way to make the Ravens competitive and his ability to connect with his players and reinvent as necessary, will make sure he never loses the locker room. Harbaugh will certainly find ways to frustrate the Ravens Flock over the course of each season but they are in good hands. No coach is perfect and the 2019 Coach of the Year is no exception.
Harbaugh has to be in the conversation of the best NFL coaches. Personally, I would rank Harbaugh as the third best coach in the NFL behind Bill Belichick and Andy Reid. With Reid, you can accuse me or recency bias, but the newly crowned Super Bowl champion has always been a great coach. Belichick has six Super Bowl rings and has been the most consistent coach in the NFL over the years. Belichick has been coaching the New England Patriots since 2000.
Harbaugh isn’t a play-calling mastermind but he’s a good boss. He’s an effective communicator who builds deep and powerful relationships with his players and his coaching staff. If you watch the Ravens on a weekly basis you almost feel like you know exactly what their head coach is all about because his Harbaugh energy permeates the whole team. As long as he’s in your top five, your NFL coach rankings are on point. However, he really belongs in the top three.