Most of the time, the best thing for a team owner to be is invisible — quietly lounging in a suite somewhere above the fray, swirling a fancy drink and signing all the checks.
Steve Bisciotti is mostly out of public sight, save for pregame sideline appearances or riding his golf cart around practices. When the Ravens owner takes center stage, it’s either really, really good — hoisting a Lombardi Trophy in New Orleans in 2013 — or really, really bad.
Even though this Ravens season is, technically, alive as of early Sunday morning, I think we all know which category it fits into.
A dominating 41-24 victory in Green Bay over the playoff-bound Packers was unavoidably frustrating to the Ravens’ faithful. The thrill of Derrick Henry ripping through green-and-yellow defenders for 216 yards and four touchdowns was dampened by the realization that he could have been doing this all along. It was just the fifth game when the Ravens had trusted him with 21 or more carries.
Coach John Harbaugh called it a “heart-defining win.” But for fans it was a heart-deflating win — at the moment when the Ravens might be eliminated from the postseason, suddenly the run game looked as dominant as the team’s fans always thought it could be.
“I’m built for it,” said Henry, shaking off the soreness of 36 carries. “This is what I’m trained for.”
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Yet his coaches seemed like the only ones who didn’t understand that before Week 17.
All of this is to say, it’s time to hear from Bisciotti. Assuming this team goes down in flames, as it deserves given how much it has underachieved, the relatively reclusive Ravens owner needs to face the fans.
He needs to tell them what he intends to do about it.
It has been a long time since Bisciotti has spoken publicly to any media except the ones he owns. His last press conference with outside media was in 2022. He appeared on the Ravens’ in-house podcast, “The Lounge,” this year in a back-slapping joint interview with Harbaugh as they celebrated the coach’s recently signed contract extension.
It was an extension that admittedly I advocated for in January. But January feels oh so long ago.
The coaches’ handling of Henry is only one of the sins of the season that you can second-guess. They also stuck with quarterback Cooper Rush too long, perhaps costing them a chance to compete with the Rams.
The Ravens have blown more double-digit fourth-quarter leads, the worst of which was the season opener in Buffalo. They haven’t developed adequately in the trenches, and inconsistent offensive and defensive line play is at the root of many of this team’s problems.
Off-field issues have not helped. From The Banner investigation of Justin Tucker that ultimately resulted in his dismissal from the team to Harbaugh’s offseason visit to the White House that riled up some of the fan base, 2025 has been a year to forget.
All of these things have, obviously, created a furor around Harbaugh — a Super Bowl-winning coach with a winning record who has been caught on his back foot all too often this season. Bisciotti is the one who will make the decision on whether he continues the 18-season tenure of the coach he extended just this spring — and he’s the only one who can explain why keeping or firing Harbaugh fits the standard he has for the franchise.
It’s true that injuries to Nnamdi Madubuike, Lamar Jackson and others have made the kind of success the team initially envisioned difficult. But it also defies explanation that a team with this much talent has its future hinging on whether the Cleveland Browns can beat the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday.
The Ravens had chances to beat the Bills, the Rams, the Steelers and the Patriots in close games — win any of those, and they would control their own playoff future going into the NFL’s final week.
If the sun hasn’t set on the Harbaugh Ravens era, it feels as though it is getting dark.
Harbaugh was once considered the template of the “CEO head coach,” but that label has come back to bite him. The CEO needs more answers to his squad’s problems than Harbaugh has produced for an offense that has regressed, a defense that has struggled to disrupt the league’s competent passers and a special teams unit that has been hit or miss.
It’s not a great sign when fans wonder online if Harbaugh carrying a play sheet is a new development (he said he has always had one, for the record).
While long-tenured coaches don’t always get enough credit for what they’ve accomplished in seasons past — after all, we are talking about a coach who helped the Ravens go to the playoffs in 12 of his previous 17 seasons — all eras come to an end. This is the eighth year of Jackson and Harbaugh together, and with more MVP trophies (2) than Super Bowl appearances (0), the ratio makes fans impatient for the championship success a player of Jackson’s caliber should have.
This moment requires leadership that comes from above Harbaugh. Bisciotti needs to recognize how much angst Baltimore fans are feeling — and the threat that represents to his bottom line.
For too many late-season games, M&T Bank Stadium has had empty patches at the top of the bowl. The Thanksgiving loss to the Bengals was a particularly low point that saw the stands emptying long before the final whistle.
Bisciotti needs to stand firmly behind the first coach he hired as the majority owner in 2008 or finally sweep in to take the reins away from his close friend. It’s not an easy decision, but he’s the only one who can make it. And he needs to be able to tell fans why.
Ravens fans probably hoped the next time they’d hear from Bisciotti would be on a Super Bowl podium, confetti swirling in the background. Barring the unlikeliest of miracles, that’s not going to happen next year.
But Bisciotti — and only Bisciotti — can tell Baltimore fans his plan to get back to the place they’ve been dreaming of all year long. However hard that moment might be for everyone at the Castle, the time has arrived.
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