Ravens John Harbaugh disagrees with Lamar Jackson’s comments on playoff loss to Titans
Last week Baltimore Ravens’ franchise quarterback and reigning league MVP Lamar Jackson was officially revealed as the EA Madden 21 cover athlete and on the same day he appeared on the Complex Load Management podcast and said that he and the team were looking past the Tennessee Titans in the opening round of the 2019 postseason and were caught by surprise in their stunning 28-12 defeat at home.
In a video conference call with NFL media members on Monday, his head coach, John Harbaugh, expressed that he respectfully disagrees with his star signal caller’s comments and that his team did not overlook the Titans. He remained the same stance that he had immediately following the loss in that the Ravens plainly played bad and the Titans played better than them on that Saturday evening in mid-January.
“I respect his opinion on it and if he views it that way, that’s how he views it,” Harbaugh said to Kirk McEwen of 98 Rock Baltimore. “I don’t think we took them lightly personally. We just didn’t play well.”
The Ravens rolled into the postseason riding a league-high and franchise-record 12 game winning streak and finished the year with the best regular-season record in the league and in team history with 14-2. They already had their division, the AFC’s top seed, a first-round bye and home-field advantage locked up before the last week of the regular season.
Despite having all of that momentum heading into the playoffs, being widely viewed as the best team in the league, the Ravens were vanquished in the opening round for the second straight year and just the second time during Harbaugh’s tenure. The Superbowl winning head coach heading into this 13th year at the helm doesn’t want to make a habit out of it. He believes the team needs to continue to improve at the end of the season as they did during the season when they started the year 2-2 before rattling off 12 straight victories.
“We’re going to try to become a better team in that circumstance at the end of the season just like we try to become a better team throughout the season, and we were very successful at that.”
His team is too good to not make a deep run and the time to capitalize on their wide-open championship window while they’re paying Jackson pennies on the dollar thanks to his rookie contract is now.
The playoffs are a whole different animal than the regular season because the NFL isn’t like the NBA or the MLB, its single elimination and there are no do-overs. That means that they need to be a whole different beast when it comes to the postseason because records and accolades achieved in the regular season mean nothing.
