Top five takeaways from Ravens Head Coach John Harbaugh’s most recent press conference

Baltimore Ravens Head Coach John Harbaugh had his weekly press conference and second since training camp opened up last week on Friday where he touched on several interesting and thought-provoking topics. Here are the top five takeaways from his nearly 15 minute presser:

Possible tweaks to offensive playbook-

Since the coronavirus forced teams to conduct their offseason programs remotely via virtual meetings, they weren’t able to hold any OTAs (organized team activities) where most new wrinkles and tweaks to offensive and defensive schemes are first introduced and practiced. The Ravens’ offense was the highest-scoring and most efficient in the league last season. Offensive Coordinator Greg Roman said back in June that the team would be judicious about adding to the playbook. Harbaugh compares their approach to modifying their playbook to a strategic battle.

“Schematically it’s a back and forth game of football, I guess the analogy is chess, but I’d say it’s even more complicated than chess,” said Harbaugh. “The pieces can actually move in all different directions, different personalities, mindsets, and skillsets whereas chess pieces they’re all the same. No matter where you have a chess piece, it does the same thing according to what he is.”

“There’s strategy and there’s counter-strategy and there’s strategy back again. We love playing that game and being a part of that. I think our offensive coaches are the best in the business at that part of it and we’ll be playing that game going forwards just like we always have.”

Ravens learned a lot from the playoff loss to the Tennessee Titans-

The Tennessee Titans shocked the football world when they came into Baltimore and beat the Ravens at their own game in their home stadium in the divisional round of the playoffs last season. Powered by yet another incredible effort on the ground by the regular-season rushing champion Derrick Henry and stout showing by their defense, the Titans were able to upset the Ravens 28-12.

Often times teams will put the pain from a soul-crushing or embarrassing playoff loss from the previous year in their rearview mirror and move on but sometimes they use that hurt to motivate them heading into the next season to ensure that they make sure they are prepared to not go out that way again. In the case of the Ravens, Harbaugh believes it’s a bit of both.

“Its history,” said Harbaugh. “You move on, you move forward, but it informs us. Shared experiences is a part of your culture and part of what we grow into going forward so we take it with us and it definitely motivates us and we learn from it.”

“You win or you learn. We learned a lot from that game.”

Challenge of evaluating young players without the preseason-

With no preseason this year the rookies, second-year, and roster bubble players aren’t the only ones at a disadvantage. It presents a challenge for the coaching staff as well in their evaluation of those players during training camp. Most of the established veterans loath and hardly patriciate in the exhibition games because their experience and respective bodies of work speak for themselves but not being able to have any real live-action until opening weekend of the regular season has created a unique challenge for Harbaugh and company.

“It’s a challenge,” said Harbaugh. “The veteran guys won’t be an issue; they’ve got a body of work. It’s the young guys, rookie and second-year players that haven’t played as much. We’re going to have to put those guys in those situations as much as we can.”

“It won’t be like a game, there’s nothing like a game but you could approximate football as a practice sport. We’ll put them in scrimmage situations probably, we’ll have periods that are live, we’ll have that for the young guys. Not too many but enough to get a good feel for where we’re at with those guys…There will be a lot more questions answered in the real games than ever before.”

Returner job is rookie James Proche’s to lose-

Even before veteran wide receiver and return specialist DeAnthony Thomas opted out of the 2020 season, rookie James Proche was considered the leading candidate to win the starting returner job and now that Thomas is no longer mix, his head coach believes it’s his to lose.

“It’s James’ role to win, and he has to go win it,” Harbaugh said. “We have Willie Snead [IV], I know Willie would like to do it, too. He’s back there all the time. Marquise [Brown] catches punts every day. We’ll see as we go, but I really like James. He’s a really dedicated, motivated guy.”

The sixth-round pick out of SMU returned punts in college and is a natural at tracking the ball in the air both as a receiver and when fielding punts according to special teams coordinator Chris Horton. Since there won’t be a preseason this year, Proche won’t see any live-action reps at returner until Week 1 but Harbaugh is still looking forward to seeing the rookie prove himself.

“It’s tough for a rookie to do it – a rookie doing it without preseason games. I think about that too, and that will be a challenge. I believe he’s up for the challenge; he’s the man for the job. But, he’s going to have to show us that he’s ready. I’m pretty sure that there will be some competition run at him as well, so we’ll see where that goes in the next few weeks.”

Harbaugh hears but is blocking out both the hype and doubt surrounding the Ravens-

Almost everything that is said about the two-time defending AFC North champion Ravens in the media and around the league comes across Harbaugh’s desk at some point. He’s been hearing all of the hype his team has been receiving this offseason from being ranked at the top of lists for their incredible roster talent and quality depth to popular sports talk show radio hosts like Fox Sport’s Colin Cowherd doubling down on his prediction that Baltimore will do what the 2007 New England Patriots failed to do and accomplish what no team has since the 1972 Miami Dolphins and complete a perfect season in 2020, capped off by a Superbowl.

“I’m provided with all those things,” said Harbaugh. “I’ve also seen where Pittsburgh is going to win the division, I saw Cleveland has been picked by some people to win the division because of the changes they’ve made there, that Lamar is going to regress, our defense is going to regress.”

“Everybody says a lot of things so it doesn’t matter. It’s all noise.”

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