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PITTSBURGH — A devastating 26-24 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday night thrust the Ravens into an offseason full of uncertainty.

Their 30th season ended with a dramatic missed kick but also featured erratic play from too many stars to go along with befuddling coaching decisions.

Big decisions will need to be made over the coming weeks — starting with one on the head coach who just completed his 18th season.

(Our questions after last season’s premature end feel, for whatever it’s worth, quaint now.)

Is John Harbaugh’s job safe?

When owner Steve Bisciotti hired Harbaugh in January 2008, the Ravens were not in a Super Bowl window. The top quarterbacks on their roster were Steve McNair, 34 and on the verge of retirement, and Kyle Boller, who’d thrown almost as many interceptions as touchdowns over five frustrating years in Baltimore. Joe Flacco was months from being drafted.

If this season, Harbaugh’s 18th as head coach, is ultimately his last, it will be because the Ravens are in a Super Bowl window and the status quo has become unacceptable to Bisciotti. The risk of doing nothing will have to be greater than the risk of doing something.

Harbaugh’s record in Baltimore — a Super Bowl title, six AFC North crowns, a .614 winning percentage, just three seasons under .500 — is a testament to his adaptability as a coach. Among active NFL coaches, only the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin has served one franchise longer. But how much faith does Bisciotti have in Harbaugh to evolve, to break through, when the Ravens have moved further and further away from the Lombardi Trophy in recent years?

Over Harbaugh’s six playoff seasons with quarterback Lamar Jackson, the Ravens entered the postseason with the NFL’s best team, according to FTN’s efficiency metrics, three times. In 2019, they were stunned in their divisional-round opener. In 2023, they fell in the AFC championship game. Last season, they lost in the divisional round.

The Ravens entered this season with a roster widely considered one of the NFL’s best. They were a popular Super Bowl pick. A historic three-peat in the AFC North seemed inevitable.

Instead, the NFL playoffs will begin next weekend with the Ravens’ season already tossed into the back alleys of franchise history, reeking of problems old and new. The familiar: another season with a star-studded, slow-starting defense. A running game abandoned at inopportune moments. An offensive line with questionable depth and development. A pass rush without a game-tilting force. Injuries at quarterback.

The unfamiliar: a team that wilted in prime time in Baltimore. Starting lineups with a handful of veteran starters regressing. A former Harbaugh disciple overseeing one of the NFL’s best turnarounds. A coach-quarterback relationship under heavy scrutiny.

These are not all problems of Harbaugh’s making, nor would he be the one expected to solve them all. General manager Eric DeCosta deserves blame for his roster construction. Coordinators Todd Monken and Zach Orr deserve blame for their play-calling. Jackson deserves blame for his up-and-down form. Teammates and coaches deserve blame for myriad shortcomings.

But the best coaches find edges, and the Ravens have lost theirs enough under Harbaugh that Bisciotti finds a fan base almost in open revolt. Harbaugh and the Ravens were booed off the field in October after a blowout loss to the Houston Texans, embarrassed on Thanksgiving Day by the Cincinnati Bengals and showered with chants of “M-V-P” from visiting New England Patriots fans reveling in Drake Maye’s fourth-quarter comeback. The optics have rarely been worse.

Bisciotti will not rush to make a decision. His patience in Harbaugh has been rewarded before. But, with Jackson perhaps starting to age out of his athletic prime, Bisciotti will have to consider a weighty calculus: The Ravens are 76-31 in the regular season with Jackson starting at quarterback. They’re also just 3-5 in the playoffs.

How important is a coach’s ceiling, how important is a coach’s floor, and how likely is Bisciotti to find a replacement who can find the right levels in Baltimore?

Bisciotti, who will turn 66 in April, won’t run the team forever. He values his relationships with Harbaugh and DeCosta. He knows the importance of the stability their partnership has lent to the franchise.

But Bisciotti’s also a businessman, and distressed assets must be accounted for. Harbaugh has almost never given Bisciotti reason to look for new blood in an offseason. This year, the question is unavoidable.

If Harbaugh does return, how much does his staff change?

Monken and Orr both started the season on watch lists for head coaching candidates. They’ll end the year on relatively warm seats.

Monken’s setbacks were more public and more surprising. Harbaugh criticized his play-calling and the offense’s operation after a Week 4 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. Harbaugh indicated his displeasure again in Week 16, after running back Derrick Henry was kept off the field in the Ravens’ two final drives against the Patriots.

Several unnamed players criticized Monken in October, too, after growing confused and frustrated by his play-calling. Entering Week 18, the offense ranked 12th in DVOA, according to FTN, a big step down from its first-place finish last year.

Orr’s shortcomings were more familiar. A year after the Ravens opened the season with one of the NFL’s worst pass defenses, they began this year with one of its worst run defenses. Both times, Orr steered his way out of the skid. Both times, an accommodating schedule (and a new position for safety Kyle Hamilton) helped. The defense ranked 15th in DVOA entering Week 18, a smaller step down from last year (sixth), Orr’s first as play-caller.

Monken’s track record is more distinguished. He oversaw one of college football’s best offenses at Georgia before Harbaugh lured him to Baltimore, where Monken helped modernize the Ravens’ offense and built on former coordinator Greg Roman’s running game. Jackson won his second NFL Most Valuable Player award in their first season together, in 2023, and was even better last season.

Orr’s defenses, relying on many of the same contributors who made Mike Macdonald’s 2023 unit a fire-breathing dragon, have found similar success only in fits and starts. Last year, with a largely healthy front and many pass rush-friendly game scripts, the Ravens finished second in the league in sacks. This year, with a struggling offense, defensive lineman Nnamdi Madubuike sidelined in September by a neck injury and outside linebacker Odafe Oweh traded away after early-season struggles, the Ravens had 30 sacks, only three more than the franchise record for fewest in a single season (27 in 16 games in 2010).

The defense’s failures in prime time and against playoff-level offenses were especially notable. The Ravens finished the season by allowed season highs in passing yards to New England’s Maye, the Green Bay Packers’ Malik Willis and the Steelers’ Aaron Rodgers — twice. Despite the absence of star wide receiver DK Metcalf, Rodgers finished 31-for-47 for 294 yards and a touchdown Sunday, the engine of an offense that scored 23 second-half points.

Regression hit both units hard. On offense, wide receiver Rashod Bateman, tight end Isaiah Likely and right guard Daniel Faalele entered training camp primed for potential breakthrough seasons, only to stagnate for a range of reasons.

On defense, outside linebacker Kyle Van Noy and cornerback Marlon Humphrey disappointed after Pro Bowl seasons, while young pieces like Oweh and cornerback Nate Wiggins struggled to make the leap.

Jaire Alexander was one of the NFL’s worst cornerbacks when active. Ravens senior secondary coach Chuck Pagano, lauded as one of the team’s best offseason moves, helped improve the pass defense’s communication, but big plays remained a thorn in its side.

Both coordinator positions would make for attractive openings. Pro Bowl players dot both sides of the ball, led by a superstar on offense (Jackson) and a high-IQ signal-caller on defense (inside linebacker Roquan Smith). But candidates could also be wary of joining Harbaugh; another poor start next year would turn him into a lame-duck coach.

With tight ends coach George Godsey reportedly headed to Georgia Tech, his alma mater, to serve as the offensive coordinator, Harbaugh’s staff has already started to change.

Turnover elsewhere is likely. If Harbaugh returns, he would be under pressure to find a new offensive line coach, after a year of questionable development under George Warhop.

Pass rush coach Chuck Smith, who was promoted to his current title only last offseason, has also been criticized. The Ravens ranked 28th in ESPN’s pass rush win rate after finishing 26th last year. Jackson’s surprising struggles, and Cooper Rush’s disastrous run of starts, could also lead Harbaugh to consider moving on from quarterbacks coach Tee Martin.

How committed are the Ravens and Lamar Jackson to each other?

Jackson is under contract through 2027, but the Ravens will need to rework his deal sooner rather than later, either with an extension or a contract restructuring that would convert part of his 2026 salary into prorated signing bonuses.

Under the current framework of Jackson’s five-year, $260 million contract, which he signed in 2023, his 2026 salary cap hit is set to jump from $43.5 million to $74.5 million. Only the Cleveland Browns’ Deshaun Watson ($80.7 million) and Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes ($78.2 million) have bigger hits on the books for next year.

Jackson declined during the offseason to comment on contract negotiations (and did so again after the loss to Pittsburgh). But Harbaugh said in March that Jackson would reset the market whenever he re-signs.

“The value is the top,” he said. “When Lamar gets paid, he’s going to be the highest-paid player in football, just like he was last time. I think every contract he signs, probably until he decides to hang up his cleats, he’s going to be that guy.”

Jackson’s disappointing 2025 is unlikely to change his market value. Less accomplished quarterbacks — the Dallas Cowboys’ Dak Prescott, the Jacksonville Jaguars’ Trevor Lawrence — have signed extensions in recent years that made them the league’s highest-paid player.

The biggest variable in Jackson’s negotiations is, again, Jackson himself. It’s believed he still does not have a certified agent. He issued a trade request months before he signed his extension in 2023. He has leveraged his power in the organization to influence the Ravens’ free agent plans in previous offseasons.

It’s in the Ravens’ best interests to get an extension done in the coming months, freeing cap space they could allocate to other homegrown pieces. It remains unclear what Jackson believes is in his own best interests.

He said Thursday that he “absolutely” wants to return to Baltimore next year and that he has a good relationship with Harbaugh, but recent reports on their partnership could make him hesitant to engage in good-faith negotiations.

Asked Sunday night whether he wanted Harbaugh to return as head coach, Jackson said he was “so caught up” in the emotions of the defeat that he couldn’t answer.

“I can’t focus on that right now,” he said. “I’m stunned right now, and I’m still trying to process what’s going on. I know we lost, but what the ... you know?”

An extension would help keep Jackson’s Super Bowl window wide open; starting over somewhere else would likely narrow that opening. As long as the Ravens have a healthy Jackson in or near his athletic prime, they will have championship hopes, even if their offense this year was not championship caliber.

An underperforming offensive line was their biggest undoing, struggling to open holes for running back Derrick Henry and limit interior pressure. The Ravens’ wide receiver and tight end rooms, meanwhile, both of which were billed before the season as among the best Jackson would ever enjoy, struggled against man coverage.

But Jackson had his own issues, too. His limited production and usage as a runner can be owed in part to a string of lower-body injuries that sapped him of some explosiveness. So can his surging sack total (36 sacks).

Still, Jackson’s accuracy dipped for long stretches. Entering Week 18, his on-target rate on unpressured drop-backs was 72.3%, which ranked 35th of the 41 quarterbacks with at least 100 such attempts this year, according to Sports Info Solutions. Last year, Jackson finished at 78.5%.

That downturn likely won’t be disqualifying as the Ravens figure out their next steps with Jackson. But it could inform how they want to build around him.

What is the future of Nnamdi Madubuike and the Ravens’ pass rush?

The Ravens were under no delusions about how indispensable Jackson is to their offensive success. They’ve had to learn the hard way about how foundational Madubuike is to their defense, too.

The two-time Pro Bowl selection suffered a season-ending neck injury in Week 2, yet he entered Week 18 tied for sixth on the team in sacks (two). The Ravens patched their early-season run defense woes in his absence; fixing their pass rush proved more difficult.

From Week 3 to Week 17, the Ravens ranked 29th in the NFL in sack rate (4.6%), 27th in pressure rate (34.2%) and 29th in pressure rate with four or fewer pass rushers (30.1%), according to SIS. In that span, the Ravens recorded just 3.5 sacks from pass rushers aligned anywhere between the three-technique (over a guard’s outside shoulder) and the zero-technique (directly over the center).

On paper, the Ravens built a pass rush this past offseason that should’ve withstood key injuries. Van Noy was coming off a Pro Bowl season (12.5 sacks). Harbaugh had Pro Bowl hopes for Oweh (10 sacks in 2024). Coaches hailed the offseason growth of outside linebacker Tavius Robinson and defensive lineman Travis Jones. Rookie outside linebacker Mike Green, a first-round talent who fell to the second round of the draft because of off-field concerns, was one of the standouts of training camp.

But, even with the midseason arrival of outside linebacker Dre’Mont Jones, few players demanded extra attention. The Ravens’ rate of plays in which a pass rusher was chipped or double-teamed was one of the lowest in the NFL. Heavy blitzes, when unable to get home, left the secondary shorthanded too often. David Ojabo and the injury-prone Adisa Isaac, two Day 2 picks on cheap rookie contracts, combined for half a sack.

The Ravens are optimistic about Green’s potential as a potential ace pass rusher, but Madubuike’s health will loom large over their offseason plans. Out of deference to Madubuike, Harbaugh has declined to share his long-term prognosis.

“Those are questions that would be best answered by him going forward,” Harbaugh said in September.

Madubuike has two years remaining on a four-year, $98 million extension. His 2026 base salary of $22 million is fully guaranteed, and his cap hit is $31 million. Because of void years the Ravens included in his contract to help lower his cap hit, the remaining $29.9 million in prorated bonus money is spread out through 2029, a bill that will come due at some point.

If Madubuike retires medically this offseason, he would forfeit his 2026 salary, dropping his 2026 cap hit to $9 million and the dead-money charge to $29.9 million, according to Russell Street Report. But Madubuike could also spend next season on injured reserve, earn his $22 million in guaranteed salary and count for $31 million against the cap. Madubuike’s $18.5 million salary in 2027 and $4 million roster bonus are not guaranteed.

One way or another, the Ravens will have to make the math work. If Madubuike can’t play again, there are no easy ways out.

Who will general manager Eric DeCosta add and lose this offseason?

The Ravens are projected to have $31.4 million in cap space this offseason, according to Over the Cap, but that’s an inexact gauge of their spending power. Although a new deal for Jackson would open considerable cap space, DeCosta must also set aside millions for the draft class and other future expenses, from practice squad elevations to in-season signings.

He’ll also have to decide on which pending free agents he can keep. It’s a long and talented list of contributors:

• Quarterback: Tyler Huntley
• Running back: Keaton Mitchell (restricted)
• Wide receiver: DeAndre Hopkins
• Tight end/fullback: Isaiah Likely, Charlie Kolar, Patrick Ricard
• Offensive line: Tyler Linderbaum, Daniel Faalele, Joseph Noteboom, Corey Bullock (restricted)
• Defensive line: C.J. Okoye (exclusive rights), Brent Urban
• Outside linebacker: Dre’Mont Jones, Kyle Van Noy, David Ojabo
• Inside linebacker: Jake Hummel, Chandler Martin
• Cornerback: Chidobe Awuzie
• Safety: Alohi Gilman, Ar’Darius Washington
• Specialist: Jordan Stout

Quarterback Cooper Rush, who struggled mightily in his two starts, and defensive lineman Broderick Washington, who missed most of the season with ankle and Achilles tendon injuries, are potential cut candidates. Rush’s 2026 base salary and roster bonus are worth a combined $2 million, while Washington has a $4 million salary.

Linderbaum will be DeCosta’s top free agent target. A three-time Pro Bowl selection and team leader, the 25-year-old was the Ravens’ lone reliable interior lineman this season. A new deal would likely make him the NFL’s highest-paid center and one of the league’s highest-paid interior linemen.

Stout, a Pro Bowl selection, is another likely extension candidate. Stout entered Week 17 leading the NFL in net punting average and ranked fifth in gross average.

The Ravens could keep Mitchell from free agency by designating him with a right-of-first-refusal tender worth an estimated $3.5 million. He had 341 rushing yards and a touchdown this season, along with nine catches for 63 yards and 22 kickoff returns.

Huntley’s play likely raised his price. He was 2-0 as a starter and completed a career-high 77.6% of his passes for a career-high 6.4 yards per attempt. Huntley started the season on the Ravens’ practice squad before joining the active roster in late October.

Tight end Mark Andrews’ extension seemingly closed the door on a new deal for Likely, but the Ravens will need to keep one of their in-line pieces. Kolar has improved his blocking every year, and the 31-year-old Ricard is a six-time Pro Bowl selection who’s key to their run game and play-action attack.

Jones, who had a career-high seven sacks, could be in line for a deal similar to the one-year, $8.5 million contract he got from the Tennessee Titans last offseason. Would that be within the Ravens’ price range?

Faalele, Hopkins and Gilman will likely look for new homes. Awuzie’s strong 2025 could make a reunion difficult to afford. Other pending free agents — Bullock, Okoye, Urban, Hummel and Washington — could come back on one-year deals.

With homegrown deals likely to account for much of the Ravens’ offseason spending, DeCosta will have to make a splash in the draft or with a trade. The Ravens will pick No. 14 overall in April’s first round and are expected to have 11 selections overall. Will they take more swings at some of the sport’s highest-value positions — wide receiver, pass rusher, cornerback — with Day 1 and Day 2 picks, or could they trade them for a proven veteran like Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby?

It will be another long offseason in Baltimore. No one thought it would start this early.