OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Almost a week later the loss still hurts.
"I’m heartbroken," said Ravens head coach John Harbaugh. "I’m heartbroken - the fact that we didn’t win that game at home in front of our crowd for the first time in all these years and get a chance to play in the Super Bowl."
Harbaugh and general manager Eric DeCosta held their end-of-the-season press conference on Friday. They said you have to move on following thatAFC title game defeat at the hands of Kansas City even though the sting won’t go away.
"It was a great season. [It was] disappointing at the end, of course. It always is for most teams," said DeCosta.
"We could have won that game," added Harbaugh. "If we would have finished a couple plays we would have won the game."
If the Ravens had a greater emphasis on the run game they would have been a better representation of the team that earned the No. 1 seed in the AFC. They only had six carries by running backs in the contest.
"That’s not the number you want to have. When it is all said and done, and you look back on it, that’s not really going to win us an AFC championship game," said Harbaugh.
Harbaugh said they had planned to run more but the way the game played out dictated a more pass-heavy attack.
"It’s more than just calling plays. In that game, a big part of our gameplan were RPOs – which are run-pass options, based on what the defense gives you – cans and ‘check with me's’ – which are run-pass options a lot of the times. Sometimes, they’re pass-to-pass, which we had. Sometimes, they’re run-to-run, but a lot of what we were doing was directed at the line of scrimmage by what the defense gave us. The defense was lined up to take away the run, so the next thing would be to bring [the formation] in tight and just run the ball in heavy formations and wide receivers blocking the edge and protecting the edge that way. We could’ve done that, but we were down [in the score of the game]. We wanted to keep the formations open and give ourselves the best chance to try to move the ball and score points. Two-minute offense at the end of the half, two-minute offense mostly throughout the whole fourth quarter we were in. That’s going to take away rushing attempts. It’s not an excuse. You want to run the ball more. Sometimes, you have to be willing to get big and run the ball that way. We just didn’t want to do it that way in the game. It cost us the opportunity to run the ball more.
"You want to run the ball against the Chiefs. There is no doubt about it. We did want to run the ball against the Chiefs and we weren’t able to get to it."
Now they must look ahead where there could be more responsibility for quarterback Lamar Jackson going forward.
"I’m excited about the future; I’m excited about taking this offense to the next level next year," said Harbaugh. "You say Lamar has the keys to the offense. Now you build the offense. It’s like setting up a car. We have to build a car. We have to set the car up. If Lamar’s the driver, he has to be involved in the setup of the car even more."
Who will be riding shotgun is up in the air. More than 20 players are set to hit free agency.
"We’ll be busy," said DeCosta.
The shakeup has already started off the field. Director of player personnel Joe Hortiz is now the GM of the Chargers. Harbaugh’s defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald is now the head coach in Seattle. Zach Orr has been promoted to defensive coordinator. Defensive backs coach Dennard Wilson is now defensive coordinator in Tennessee while assistant head coach/defensive line coach Anthony Weaver is interviewing for defensive coordinator jobs.
That’s the kind of shuffling success brings.
"These are good things," said Harbaugh. "These are good problems to have because you know you are doing well."
Just not well enough to avoid the heartbreak.
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