Welcome to the Ravens Press Pass podcast. It is Monday, October twenty eighth. The Ravens fell to the Cleveland Browns twenty nine to twenty four on Sunday, and the Ravens are now five and three on the season. Today we heard from head coach John Harbaught during his standard Monday afternoon presser.
Okay, appreciate everybody being here, getting ready for Denver, looking hard at that team. A team has been playing really well, been hot, and we're gonna have a hands full, but we're looking forward to the challenge. You can't wait to get back at it this week. So what question do you.
Have, John, You have made changes for a long defense, adding Dean and Thelman personnel with Marcus. Do you foresee making any other kind of changes to help the defense alone?
Well, I mean it depends what kind of changes are available to us. We're going to continue to turn over every stone with our defense and with every other part of our team too, you know, to to get as good as we can get it during the course of a long season, ups and downs, challenges, you know, good plays and not good plays. So it's a lot of things we can improve on. We'll do whatever we can do.
You press confidence after the game, marks players and would go on to player in football in years. Do you anticipate when happen necessarily being a one game thing, and do you expect him to play against enders?
Yeah? I mean, I'm not going to probably try to get in too much about who's going to play, who's not going to play in the game. But I'll just reiterate what I said before. Marcus is a heck of a player. I have the utmost confidence in him as a player, as a person, as a pro. He's a great person. He's a hard worker, plays hard, practice is hard, does everything at the highest level. And I anticipate in playing great football for us, you know, all season and very soon.
Is there any any thogal him not being active yesterday?
Yeah, I think we don't ever really probably getting too much of the thought process and that kind of stuff. It just it goes the way it goes. We make the decisions that we make based on the best judgment we can make, try to do our best to try to do what we can go.
You gotta spend a lot of time with defensive facts, catch the balls or practice one.
Why isn't this sort of was it translating the games and what else can you possibly do?
That's a great question, you know, that's a really great question, Todd.
Uh.
There's probably a lot of factors that are pretty hard to measure on that, but yeah, there's no doubt. I mean, you know, we lead the league in those drops. They are interception wise, that's it's no secret. And those are those are huge plays. Man, there's a huge opportunity plays I'm gonna choose to look at like those players are going to get made, you know, and that's the upside for us. Man, That's that's low hanging fruit way I see it going forward. That's where you can make a
huge difference in your play. I mean, how many fewer plays you have to play, how many fewer scoring opportunities they have? The difference in points, it's massive, you know, making those plays. So we'll make those plays. We'll work hard at it, and we'll continue to work even harder at it, you know, because because it's something that we want our guys to have confidence. And you know, we get guys with good hands, you know, they can catch the ball. So I'm pretty I'm very confident that we're
going to do it. Going forward, but I'd like to see it happen real soon.
On that slant.
Touchdown, Ropemont Smith is screaming the whole way to come back across a lot of screwed.
He's still in motion getting with the ball a snap.
And are not ready.
Yeah, no, they weren't.
What's happening there.
Yeah, it just that's what happened. It's every one of those are different, and uh, you know, we've had a few of those this year. I mean, if I watch defenses around the league, I can tell you it happens a lot. It's not unusual with all the no huddle and all the different things you get. But we didn't do a good job with that. You know, We've got to do a much better job with that. That's not good.
Especially don't want to happen in the red zone, you know, because that's when you have it in the red zone, that's going to be a score a lot of times. So it's it's it's what defenses face nowadays in the NFL. There's a lot of moving parts to the offenses, and when you're trying to match personnel and match formations, you got to be on point, you know, And we're not on point with that play.
John, I mean, I know that's something you're continuously trying to improve it. But is it frustrated that it seems that it seems like communication issues blar up pretty often, it seems like to this point.
Yeah, I mean, you know, like I said, I watch a lot of tape and I see it all around the league, and so I'm not gonna single out our guys, but I'm gonna we're gonna coach our guys. You know, our guys are our concerned. So yeah, we're concerned with our guys and our guys being the very best they can be. So we'll chase that. We're gonna get it better and better and better. And uh, I don't know if we'll get it perfect, but we're gonna try, and we're gonna.
Any Reds. Looking back at the fourth down decision, or wasn't the lack of execution when.
You looked at the top, Uh, Well, I think if you look that, that's a pretty clear cut go you know, most of the time around the league, especially at the plus ten yard line, and I have confidence in our guys to get that, plus the ability to to keep them backed up, you know, is probably a real plus there at the ten. That's why, That's why it's a clear cut go. I think most of the time we're going to get that. Look at last week, we got one. It was more than that. It scored a touchdown on it.
So my only regret, if you want to call it a regret, is that we didn't make it. You know, I'm not in love with the fact that we didn't get it. I hate the fact that we didn't get it. So that's the disappointment there, John can I I just want to clarify something on Marcus Williams.
You said yesterday it was a personnel decision, but you also said it was an internal type of situation.
I want to make sure I don't I.
Think I have anything else to say about that. You know, it's what we do. It's what there's a lot of there's a lot of things going on all the time, you know, and a lot of it's kind of our business, you know, it kind of belongs in house. It's between us, and it's not something that we need to tell everybody everything about. I don't think you're telling everybody about your family business. I don't think everybody's asking about everybody's kind
of things. There's some things that we can just choose to kind of keep to ourselves, and that's going to be one of them. And you know, you know, I never get up here and talk about why we put guys up or put guys down. You know, I never had, so probably not gonna start doing that. Now.
You're fishing depth concern on the defensive line this coming weekend with peerside the injury yesterea Travis is hurting or Benson PROTOCOLO.
I mean, is a tough, tough situation right.
Now, Yeah, tough situation we have to be. You know, we've got guys I would like to have those guys out there, but we also have guys that can step up and play, and got guys on a practice squad, and we're gonna have guys that are gonna be ready to go and stopping the run. This this game is gonna be really important, Chiles. It's gonna be huge. This is the running team, you know, and they run it really well and they run it a lot, so it's gonna be a big, big part of the game plan.
Here's here's possibly a longer term thing.
Or do you yeah, just like I don't know it's Monday, we'll see.
That was your question along those lines, just in terms of the personnel, and I know you can't get into specific players and so with other players, but that's something you and Eric will will look out to trade deadline approaching that you guys will look hard at whether it's an drusher or another position and things like that.
Yeah, I don't. I think that we definitely will because that's what Eric does, you know, Eric, and as guys do that, I'm not, you know, I like, I love our guys. I love our roster. I feel like our roster is really good, and I think every one of our guys is going to play really well down the stretch to the best of their ability. You know. I mean, I know we lost the game. It's disappointing, it's tough, and uh and we hate it, you know, we all hate it. And we didn't play well enough to win.
We didn't make the plays we needed to make, we didn't make the calls we needed to make to win the game. But that doesn't mean I don't love our players. I mean our players and our coaches. Uh, they're they're they're great. They're great players, and we're gonna play great football.
John here, Yesterday was kind of a unique circumstance with your numbers on the he doesn't live with the injuries. What the pass u In the second half, you guys did blitz a little more than you typically have blitzed this year.
Do you think that it's more mornings we got from.
The scheme standpoint as the guys with the World One matchups.
I know it's never just one thing, but.
What are you Yeah, I'm happy with it a lot of times. I think if you look at the stats and all that kind of what you're referring to, it's it's not as consistently there as you're gonna want it to be. And I think some of that is the fact that we played some really mobile quarterbacks. We've had the kind of cage rush a little bit. That wasn't the case yesterday. You know, that's one I would have liked. You've gotten him off the spot a little more, a
little quicker. So we did blitz, and they were getting the ball out fast most of the time when we did.
But there's also times on play action, especially on first down, where he held it, and that's because you're stopping the run first and we weren't stopping the run as well as we have, you know, so we're playing run defense and you've got a transition and you've got the bigger guys on the field, and I think that's when the time really kind of stacked up in terms of him being able to throw the ball in some of those
deep windows, some of those chunk throws. So you know, maybe that's somewhere we've got to do more blitzing, you know. And first and second down we did something you know, is that called a couple edge blitzeres that got there. So we'll be looking real hard at.
That giving the decision on Marcus would what's your takeaways? Are theirs Washington's task to do a lot? And what was your assessmental Key in Eddie Jackson.
I thought they played solid football. You know, they were in the right spot doing the right things, uh the vast majority of time. UH. And I thought they played hard, Uh, made some good tackles and and made you know, we're in solid position at the times, and I think for all of us, I mean, we all want to just make a few more plays, you know, get a few more get a few more pressures, get a few more sacks, Get a few more batted balls, Get a few more PBUs you know that'd be good. Get get in a
couple of catch the ball in their receptions. You know those are that's the big one from this game. You know they you know, everybody wants to make plays. So I just think we got to keep chasing that.
How was Kyle doing after the game, you got a chance to talk, Come on now, he was obviously frustrated to not being able to make that play.
Before the touchdown as far as what.
His mood, his mood, and he.
Was really disappointed out the loss, you know, really disappointed, Like that's we all were. We were not we were not real happy about it. As you can imagine that no team would be. So no team is. And this is a tough league, man, I mean, you put so much into these games. You fight so hard out there, you stay on that sideline. Uh, you go to a game, you watch in person, you see what gets put into trying to win these games. So it's tough. It's disappointing. And then what you have to do is you can't
live in it. You know, you gotta you gotta bounce back, and you gotta get going for the next week.
Defense has been in the right spots majority of the time, were just failed to execute on plays. They've been credited with eight dropped interception, so they've had opportunities.
But do you feel that.
They are I do.
I mean, you know, it's we're we're we're contesting. You know, we we have one of the highest coverage tight coverage rates in the league right now. You know it's uh, we're in the right place the vast majority of time. When you compare it to the league, I mean there's a lot of there's a lot of tough things. There's a lot of good passing games in this league, and
they give you a lot of tough stuff. I think we're the fourth ranked team in that sense in the league right now coverage wise, yet completion wise, they're completing. I think we might be around nineteen or twenty in terms of contested completions against us. So that's where it's happening, and we've we're getting thrown on a lot. You know, it's because the run defense has been good and people have been behind you get a lot of two minute
passes and all those kind of things. So all that kind of stuff is adds up to the ranking overall. But you know, we we were there, and I think we can make more plays. I know we can think and I believe our guys are gonna do it.
Yeah, along those lines, on third downs, you know haven't been probably successful as you would have liked. And Yestery Cleveland was pretty successful there. And to that point about coverage and so forth, is it. What do you guys need to do better to close teams out on third downs?
Yeah, and defense, we one thing we need to do better is keep them get them in longer situations because it's a little tougher to really bring the heat when it's third and three, third and four, third and five, because you're overload, and then you leave run gaps and scramble gaps available, screens become more more more evident. So we just gotta I think, start off with you know, let's keep him from running it down the third one, third and two, third and three, even third and four.
Let's get him in third and third and eight, thirty nine, third and ten plus more often. You know, that'd probably be the first thing that we can get after people a little more with the pass rush, and I think that'll help our third down quite a bit.
John during the second quarter, I think you wanted to use the challenge flag for a first down when you hear from your guys that the Cleveland Broughs did did make the first down or does it look like it was pretty close like they were, you know from television like he was, shoot, yeah, he was.
About I think I went back and watch the tape today. He's about six inches short, and we we talked about it. But I'll tell you that they're looking at those upstairs now. So they look at that replay pretty close. And I walked down and I said, are you looking at it? You're looking at it, and they said they were looking at it. So when they don't weigh in, that's a sign to me that they're not going to overturn it.
So I don't want to ruin. I don't want to throw that challenge flag and waste that time out when I got a pretty good indication because I know the replay officials looking at it upstairs already, that they're probably not going to overturn it, especially for like six inches on a fourth down and plus territory when they're probably gonna sneak it. And that's a real tough stop, So it seemed to me the better the more the prudent move is not to challenge that right there?
Or does the team have an apprehension to use Lamar Jackson and sneak situations. You've seen that you use trying to Cohler over the last couple of years, and there's been different variations of using quarterback sneaks with Jackson when it was doing so yet running in certain gaps and situations just.
What's yeah, that's probably it. I mean, we're not we run the markets gets nobody, nobody gives up more than Lamar and terms of doing everything he can to win the game. And we feel like if we're going to run a sneak, we can do it with somebody else. You know, you've got a bigger body and they're doing it a little bit, and we'll take that off of Lamar. That's really our thinking on it. We can still we can still turn around and hand off a jet sweep.
Those are things that we work on. Let our opponents know that we work on those in those situations and we might be using them coming up here real soon, which is probably pretty good in case that we won't. You know, if I'm saying it. But yeah, that's basically our thinking.
On it limits your abilities on the third down to not have Jackson in there to.
Like six inches or foot you know, I think if we want to sneak it, if that's what we've decided we want to do, look at the Eagles and the sneak teams. You know they're not really doing too much on those plays. So when you sneak it, you're basically telegraphing what you're going to do. Anyway. Now, when if we want to tap sneak in some of those where we're coming to the line and like some teams do you see the Bengals and teams do that, We can
do that with Lamar. Lamar has that ability to do that head and come up this year, but he can you know, tap sneak in an open gap if you want.
I think you guys are still you know, near the top of the league and like disguising coverage shells before the snat the use of parimularly pressures for past pressure, has there been a learning curve at all, either with the players or with the coaches and getting.
All that executed well, And has any of that I think.
Led to some of the coverage busts and some of the other plays we've seen.
Yeah, I mean sure, I mean it's absolutely, I mean it's it's part of it. You know, when you do more and we've played you know, we've played how many top quarterbacks have we played? You know, in top passing games have we played? So I think we played a lot of the better quarterbacks so far. So you really want to have the ability to change the picture. You know, you can't just really line up against these guys too often, just show them what you're in. You know, you do
that with the Burrows and those guys. It's tough. So that's always been what we've done. We've been a big disguise team. We've been a big sim team. We've we've blitzed from both sides. We've we've shown blitzeres one way and blitz the other way. Run out of it. We've shown one way and come that way. You know, we've shown shown edge and come come to the middle. We try to keep it moving, we try to keep people guessing.
It's a big part of our defense. And you know, the execution part of it, for the most part, has been good. But there's been plenty of times where it hasn't been good now. I think it's part of the learning curve. Yes, I do think it's part of the learning curve, and I do believe the curve is going to keep it, you know, getting better as we go forward.
It seem seemed frustrated by the kick return penalties.
Yes, say they set you back in long situations.
Do you do those returners have a green light to bring it out of the end zone?
Do you get the sense they lose tracking where they are on the field.
Yes, I think that's right. Think you nailed, but it's they do not have it. You know, we we we not that we can't have a green light, but we haven't had a green light yet this year. It doesn't make sense to us if they're gonna give us a ball at the thirty yard line, and the way the angles work, it's really tough to block that. You know that this new, this new style. When the balls kicked in the end zone, sou and I do think they lose a sense of where they're at sometimes, especially a
young guy. You know, it's part of it for sure. And I also think that we didn't we didn't. We made some we made some bad blocking decisions on that, and I was really unhappy with that too. So those penalties we were were not not okay. And uh and even even you know, I mean Thyland Tiland plays great. I love Tayland, but he lost track of where he was going back and catching that punt too. He'll he'll tell you that, you know, and and he's he'll be back out there and he'll learn from that too, So
that that hurt our offense for sure. Field position was a problem in the game.
Did you see justin Tucker miss I mean, I know that's not an easy place to kick, you know, just that stadium in general.
Yeah, just I think he probably he could explain it better than I could. It just didn't look like, you know, a great hit you know on the ball. Uh, from what I could tell. I watched it, I saw the technique, and I know what I think about it as as a former special teams coach. But uh, tuck, tuck and take way better than I can. So he went tough yesterday too. There was starting to tell the TV bos we were limited. We didn't think we could kick anything.
We didn't want to kick much outside from you know, the thirty getting it to the thirty five. That was kind of our target line there. I think that was probably their target line just about right too, because there's always a crosswind going sideways there and it's hard to sometimes keep it between the uprights. From you get out past fifty, it's tough to make kicks there.
I know that's an injured question, but was it illness that that kept Nate from being able to travel with you guys? Or was it something or was it the shoulder?
There was no there was a there was an illness issue. There was an illness issue, and I don't think I'm allowed to really disclose it. But he's doing okay, you know, and hope to see him at practice this week.
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