Ravens’ Lamar Jackson and John Harbaugh no longer considered a top-5 duo

The Baltimore Ravens are getting hit hard in rankings this offseason — first, Lamar Jackson, now Jackson and John Harbaugh are sliding down a peg.

The Ravens’ franchise quarterback and head coach are two of the most recognizable faces of the franchise who form the core of the team’s consistent success.

Since being drafted in 2018, Jackson has changed the organization for the better and likely has his best football days ahead of him; Harbaugh is widely considered one of the NFL’s best head coaches and has had a steady hand on the steering wheel of the Ravens’ ship for over a decade.

So combined, the two should be one of the best duos in football, right?

Apparently not.

CBS Sports’ Jeff Kerr ranked the league’s best quarterback-head coach duos for 2022 and had Jackson and Harbaugh at sixth overall, one spot lower than where they were last year:

"“The Jackson-Harbaugh combination is one of the best in the NFL, regardless if the pair has just one playoff win together in their three-and-a-half seasons.Jackson is one of the most valuable players in the league, but Harbaugh deserves a ton of credit for finding his franchise quarterback. Harbaugh has an impressive resume as a head coach, going 137-88 (.609 win percentage) in his 14 seasons — the third-longest tenure in the league with one team.Last season was Harbaugh’s first losing campaign since 2015, but don’t bank on that again. With a healthy Jackson, the Ravens should be Super Bowl contenders. Jackson and Harbaugh need to take that next step.”"

But it wasn’t even their postseason disappointments that knocked them down the list. It was the emergence of another slightly younger quarterback-head coach duo in their division: Joe Burrow and Zac Taylor.

Ravens’ Lamar Jackson and John Harbaugh fall out of top-5 rankings in 2022

Kerr had Burrow and Taylor edging the Ravens out for the fifth overall spot, which seems a bit hasty. Joe Burrow deserves his title as a truly elite franchise quarterback after leading the Bengals to a Super Bowl run in 2021, and one could even argue Burrow currently stands as a more accurate passer than Lamar Jackson.

The 2020 first-rounder completed a league-high 70.4 percent of his passes for over 4,500 yards and threw 34 touchdowns against 14 interceptions — those numbers are comparable to what Jackson achieved in his 2019 MVP campaign, and Burrow got sacked a ridiculous 51 times in the regular season.

There’s no lack of respect between Burrow and Jackson. As for Zac Taylor and John Harbaugh, however, Harbaugh is the clear winner here.

Taylor has a losing record in three seasons as Bengals head coach, and though Kerr claims Taylor “deserves credit” for the Bengals most recent 10-7 record, he also deserves just as much criticism.

Taylor’s play-calling came into question throughout the season when Taylor chose to play conservative in key situations and more often than not lost games because of it.

Cincinnati’s losses to the Packers, 49ers, and even the Super Bowl game against the Rams saw Taylor making questionable late-game calls including one in which Taylor drew up a play for running back Samaje Perine on a crucial third down attempt rather than Joe Mixon.

Harbaugh also made his fair share of tricky calls such as the handful of two-point conversion attempts, but those were grounded in Harbaugh’s faith in his team and ongoing injury/ stamina concerns. Putting the ball in the hands of a backup running back in a game-deciding situation does not sound like a wise decision no matter how you spin it.

In 2022, the two QB-head coach duos will face each other twice to see who really deserves that top-5 spot. Burrow and Taylor may have taken advantage of the Ravens’ weaknesses last year, but Jackson and Harbaugh will be coming in with all the heat this upcoming season.