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Following the Ravens’ 37-20 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, coach John Harbaugh was blunt in saying he felt the offensive play calling was not up to par.
In his first comments since the loss, offensive coordinator Todd Monken agreed.
“There’s not one thing that John said that we didn’t already talk about,” Monken said. “Not one thing.”
Harbaugh first noticed the communication was off when the Ravens took two delay-of-game penalties in the same series. He said they were trying to check out of plays, and they’re normally good at snapping the ball right before the clock runs out.
“Those were aberrations for us,” Harbaugh said. “I thought we would get them off, in both of those occasions, with the communication we had, and we just didn’t get [the plays] off.”
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Next, Harbaugh went through the second, third and fourth offensive series of the first half, ones he said dictated the game.
Quarterback Lamar Jackson threw an interception on the second series when he tried to get the ball to tight end Mark Andrews.
“It wasn’t a good play call,” Harbaugh said. “It wasn’t a play where we put our guys in the right position in that situation. I’m not happy with it at all. None of us are.
“They ran a double-backer kind of blitz inside where they were right in Lamar’s face, and we had downfield routes with no check-downs. We were chipping our way out, trying to take care of the edges, and they ran an inside blitz, and it’s not picked up, it’s not going to be picked up. [And then] Lamar throws it and it’s a tough throw, and the guy makes a nice play.”
The third series featured the delay-of-game penalties that Harbaugh blamed on the coaches and not the players.
“We just have to look at it, honestly, as a coaching staff and just say that was not good and we put ourselves in that situation,” Harbaugh said.
The fourth series, which featured a tipped ball, was the only one that was more about execution than game planning, Harbaugh said.
He explained his issues with how they handled short-yardage plays.

“And then later you’re going to be aggressive, you’re going to go for it,” Harbaugh said. “You go for it, and you don’t have a good plan. You just don’t. You don’t have a good plan. We didn’t do a good job at all. We all know it. We all agree with it. We came up short.
“We didn’t put our players in the position we needed to put them in to execute and convert on third-and-short and fourth-and-short in the first half and throughout the course of the game. Those are just like turnovers. It’s no different than turnovers, because you put your defense on a short field.”
Harbaugh said the rhythm on offense is not where they want it to be. When he was asked about the struggle to protect Jackson against the blitz, he said they strayed from their game plan.
“I don’t think our approach was good,” Harbaugh said. “I think we didn’t stick to the plan that we had.”
These thoughts weren’t just conveyed to the media and thus the public. Monken said he was well aware of how Harbaugh felt. And he took ownership of how the game went.
“One thing that I’ve done throughout my career is that you got to look at what you do,” Monken said. “And that’s what I’ve done my whole career is, OK, how did we scheme it? How did we coach it? How did we execute it? How was our plan? All of those things, we can go into. And, when it’s below the line, you got to own it and fix it.”
He said he’s gone through this process his whole career. He knows the expectations are that the team should be elite and that he needs to do better. He also added that Harbaugh communicates what he’s thinking — the good and the bad — throughout the game and after the game.
“To me, that’s winning football,” Monken said. “That’s what I love about Coach Harbaugh. One thing, he is going to confront anything that gets in the way of winning football. That’s a fact. Everybody needs that.”
Looking at the most recent loss, Monken said, the Ravens need to call run plays more often, a sentiment he shared multiple times.
He also said they need to run more plays in general. The Ravens have been beaten in time of possession and have run fewer plays than the opponent in every game this season.
Now that the issues have been identified and thoughts have been shared, what’s the next step?
“You fight like hell to fix it,” Monken said. “That’s what you do when it’s damn important.”
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