Comes a time in the life of all coaches when it’s simply time to move on. Maybe that time has arrived for John Harbaugh, who once coached the Baltimore Ravens to a Super Bowl win but now finds his team not only losing but lifeless.
This is not the voice of panic speaking – just the voice of experience. Harbaugh’s the same smart coach he’s always been, but his Ravens, once a terror of the league, have become an afterthought.
They were beaten by a rookie quarterback a week ago, and a backup quarterback on Sunday, and with four losses in their last five games they’ve got to prepare for a Thursday night game with their own quarterback, Joe Flacco, looking like a fellow who’s not quite the fellow he used to be.
It happens. Even the best football players wear out. And Flacco’s had his share of physical troubles, and his offensive line isn’t protecting him the way it once did, and his running game has slowed to a walk.
Coaches wear out, also. Over the years, Harbaugh’s shown he’s a quality tactician. But football’s a game of emotion and not just tactics. Ballplayers grow weary of the same spiel. Their brains are on automatic pilot when they ought to be focusing. They’ve heard the same lectures too many times and find themselves going through the motions.
Coaches do, too.
When the old ways don’t work, they’re reluctant to try something new. They ask themselves: “Why should I? The old ways worked so well, why should I have to change?”
History offers us a local lesson. In the glory years of the Baltimore Colts, they won a couple of championships under Weeb Ewbank. In two years, 1958 and ’59, they were kings of the world. They might have won it again in ’60, had they not been obliterated late in the year by injuries.
Two years later, it was still the same Ewbank but a different team mentality. They were dull, they were lifeless, and they were going through the motions. They weren’t as hungry as they’d been, or as inspired. Ewbank, previously regarded as a genius, was terminated.
And the guy who replaced him, Don Shula, went on to become one of football’s greatest coaches, and the Colts, across the rest of the 1960s, were almost unbeatable.
Football’s a game of edges and, after a while, edges get smoothed out. Maybe Harbaugh’s lost his edge. The Ravens certainly have. If it could happen to Weeb Ewbank, it could happen to Harbaugh.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” has just been re-issued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Photo: At training camp in Westminster in 2008, the Ravens’ Brandon Carr (left) goes up against Fabian Washington. (Photo by Sabina Moran)
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