Join the huddle. Sign up here for Ravens updates in your inbox.

PITTSBURGH — How long does it take to make sense of the most disappointing season in Ravens history? Roquan Smith tried to do it in 3 minutes, 15 seconds Sunday night.

In a state-of-the-franchise address at his postgame news conference, the Pro Bowl inside linebacker confronted the grim reality of another year’s heartbreaking end, the latest a last-second 26-24 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers that will keep the Ravens out of the playoffs for the first time since 2021. Smith acknowledged the January “hump” the team cannot seem to clear. He blamed himself. He criticized the Ravens’ execution. He covered for his coaches.

Over a pained, discursive, nearly 700-word response inside Acrisure Stadium, Smith reckoned with the gap between potential and production. He seemed to realize that at the heart of the Ravens’ Sisyphean struggles — three playoff wins over the past eight seasons for one of the NFL’s most consistent winners — was a disconnect. Something was getting in the way, something ineffable.

“Why can’t you do this, play in and play out?” Smith asked at one point.

“You can’t keep saying the same thing, year in and year out — ‘Oh, use this motivation for next year’ — because next year is not promised,” Smith said. “Tomorrow’s not promised, so what are you going to do with now? Who knows where everyone will be next year? I don’t know. No one knows. That’s the unknown, and that’s just something you have to deal with in life.”

When Ravens officials perform an autopsy on this 2025 season, one that started with Super Bowl dreams and ended with more losses than wins, almost no one and nothing will be spared. But owner Steve Bisciotti’s most important evaluation will have to be at the franchise’s tippy-top.

John Harbaugh has coached in Baltimore for 18 years. He has won almost 200 games, including the franchise’s second Super Bowl. He has helped establish a culture that develops Pro Bowl talents and rising-star coaches. He has worked, along with general managers Ozzie Newsome and Eric DeCosta, to make the Ravens one of the NFL’s most respected organizations.

And yet: John Harbaugh has coached in Baltimore for 18 years. Coaches are afforded only so much time, only so many evolutions, before ideas go bad, messages get tuned out, disconnects develop. There is always an expiration date, even with Lamar Jackson at quarterback.

The challenge for Bisciotti this offseason is that there’s plenty here that stinks. Will he throw Harbaugh out one year after he signed him to an extension through 2028? Will he demand changes to a coaching staff that oversaw widespread regression on a team hailed as one of the NFL’s deepest? Will he sign off on massive personnel changes, believing the core of the roster has mostly outlived its usefulness?

Not even Bisciotti may know yet. But something will have to change.

“There could be a lot of change,” said cornerback Marlon Humprey, one of several Ravens to fall off steeply after impressive 2024 seasons. “Obviously, this is a business. They’ll do their meetings, and they’ll figure out who needs to stay, who needs to go. I can really only speak for myself; I just wait and see if I’m part of the plans going forward or if I’m not.”

As the Ravens discover new levels of late-season hell with each passing year, Harbaugh moves closer and closer to the center of the fan base’s crosshairs. After Sunday night, his face might already be the bull’s-eye. These are the risks unique to a CEO-style coach like Harbaugh; when the little things go wrong in a loss, and then they go wrong again, and again and again, the little things can often point to a big problem.

In 2019, when the Ravens entered the playoffs as Super Bowl favorites, they lost their playoff opener because they were not equipped to play from behind. In 2023, when the Ravens entered the playoffs as Super Bowl favorites, they lost in the AFC championship game because they could not run the ball or hold on to it late.

Last season, when the Ravens entered the playoffs as maybe the NFL’s most well-rounded team, their normally reliable run defense was pushed around, their normally reliable quarterback became turnover-prone, and their normally reliable tight end dropped a pass he had to catch.

On Sunday, the Ravens’ failures were largely unsurprising, if only because the previous 17 weeks had calibrated expectations appropriately. Their secondary, chock-full of first-round picks facing one of the NFL’s worst wide receiver lineups, collapsed without safety Kyle Hamilton. Their pass rush, lacking any difference makers, went missing. Their offensive line, finally facing an elite defensive front, couldn’t create holes regularly for running back Derrick Henry. Todd Monken and Zach Orr’s play-calling was, again, highly questionable at times.

But there was a cruel irony to what decided the game in its dying seconds. It was the Ravens’ special teams, for so long a strength under Harbaugh. Such was his trust in Loop to make a 44-yard field goal that, rather than try for a closer setup with 14 seconds and one timeout remaining, Harbaugh had the offense center the ball instead.

Loop had struggled with long-range field goals in pregame warmups. He’d struggled with his kickoffs in the fourth quarter. Acrisure Stadium is never an easy place to kick. Harbaugh believed in the rookie anyway. The season ended on Loop’s right foot.

“Football’s like life,” tight end Mark Andrews said. “It doesn’t always work the way you want it to. We were right there — right there. Had a chance to be a [No.] 4 seed and host a playoff game.”

Instead, the Ravens will return to Owings Mills on Monday without a game to plan for. Harbaugh will address the team before it scatters for the offseason. In the audience will be Jackson, who on Thursday said he had a “good relationship” with Harbaugh, the only NFL head coach he’s ever known.

Harbaugh’s future in Baltimore could depend as much on Bisciotti’s patience as it could on Jackson’s buy-in. Asked Sunday night whether he wanted Harbaugh to return as coach, Jackson could not say.

“You’re asking me about next year,” he said. “I’m so caught up in what just happened tonight. I can’t focus on that right now. … Like he asked me, ‘Are you stunned?’ I’m stunned right now, and I’m still trying to process what’s going on.”

It will take some time. This season was supposed to end differently for Jackson, for Harbaugh, for DeCosta, for Bisciotti. The Ravens will need more than 3 minutes, 15 seconds to understand why it did not.