If the Baltimore Ravens win their final two games of the season, they will reach the postseason for the first time since 2014. For a team that looked like it was headed for yet another rebuilding year two months ago, that comes as somewhat of a surprise.
Not to John Harbaugh.
Harbaugh, whose team started out 3-4 and has dealt with a rash of injuries, said Thursday that he is proud of the way his players have continued to fight.
“I do appreciate the character of our team and the resilience of our team and the mental toughness and the focus and the ability to get right at the task at hand and push aside the stuff that is not important and get right at what is important and deal with adversity when it happens, with the different injuries,” Harbaugh said, per Jamison Hensley of ESPN.com. “You are right; it is all around the league. Every team deals with it to one degree or another. We dealt with it quite a bit early and then middle of season. Our guys handled it, and they kept fighting through it. The reports of our demise, I guess, were greatly exaggerated.”
The Ravens are 8-6 on the year. While it’s easy for Harbaugh to say now that people were overreacting, it’s not like this is a team that finished 12-4 the past two seasons and got off to a slow start. Baltimore went 5-11 in 2015 and 8-8 last year. Joe Flacco dealt with a back injury in training camp, and he looked horrible throughout most of the first half of the season.
Flacco acknowledged that the way the Ravens have gotten to the verge of the postseason has not been pretty, but results are all that matters.
“We have dealt with a lot of stuff this year, and we could be in a better position than we are right now. But the bottom line is, we still control our own destiny, and we are an 8-6 football team,” the quarterback said. “A lot of people wish they were in our position, so you can’t argue with the fact that we are in position to be a playoff football team, and we are ready to do it.”
With a home game against the Indianapolis Colts on Saturday and a matchup vs. the Cincinnati Bengals to close out the season, the Ravens are in great shape. A lot of their injuries came early in the year, so they have been able to weather the storm. One thing they won’t lack in the playoffs is experience, at least from the quarterback and head coach.
