“If you ask me to give you three words to describe this team, I’ll use three that Ray Lewis used a few weeks ago: faith, hope and love. Those are biblical words, but those are probably the three most important words in the English language. Faith in each other and in whatever greater thing you believe. Always hopeful. You can be discouraged, but there is no such thing as being disheartened. Love is what holds the universe together. It’s a selflessness that you put others before yourself. That’s the ultimate team quality. We’ll need a lot of all three to get us where we want to go.”
– John Harbaugh (December 2012)
AFTER A THIRD CONSECUTIVE LOSS in the NFL, if there’s not some palpable tension in the air then you’ve probably got a football team that’s far too comfortable.
Head coach John Harbaugh’s tireless optimism and foundational principles would be tested with the New York Giants coming to town in Week 16 and the home crowd coming back to the stadium after booing and exiting early in the shellacking by the Denver Broncos.
Harbaugh’s core, old-fashioned philosophies about faith, hope and love were drilled into the team in this time of adversity. For the most part, the media didn’t believe. The fans were restless, and the team was that had been 9-2 with dreams of a bye and an AFC Championship home game was a mere shadow of its former self. Now they were just trying to make the playoffs at 9-5 while staring down the defending champs on Christmas weekend, knowing that Cincinnati would be playing to get into the playoffs the following weekend. The losing streak would’ve been four games had it not been for a 4th & 29 miracle in San Diego.
Make no mistake about it, the Ravens were not playing well, and they weren’t healthy.
Sure, Harbaugh used the “us vs. them” mentality and also said that people outside the building didn’t believe. But that only goes so far if the core philosophy isn’t grounded in self-belief and integrity in the work ethic that backs it up.
Harbaugh’s enthusiasm is tireless, and his optimism never ceases. In the first year, many players found it almost hokey, corny in many ways. But it’s what John Harbaugh believes and what his family has preached for his half century on the planet.
Let’s be honest: “Who’s got it better than us?” is implicit in its optimism, right?
His father’s famous refrain, which his brother Jim had adopted with the San Francisco 49ers, and made famous – “Who’s got it better than us?” – with the retort, “Nobody!” had almost become part of the NFL vernacular.
It assumes happiness and steadfastly conveys success and gratitude. And if you woke up and said it every morning – and more importantly, really believed it – you would also be eternally optimistic.
That’s the faith and hope part of the equation.
The love was probably the easiest sell on his players. It’s hard to find a John Harbaugh speech or press conference where he doesn’t convey the value of “team” and “sticking together” as core values. The friendships that had sprung from battling together through five years – or parts of five years for the players who came after the foundation was laid with Harbaugh-Flacco-Rice in 2008 – had blossomed, and guys cared about each other. They vacationed together, stayed in touch in the offseason, got together just to get together, stayed at the complex a little later and came in a little earlier. When the lockouts of the summer of 2011 occurred, players stepped up to run faux practices so they could have an advantage at the end of the labor battle.
Ray Rice and Ray Lewis were like brothers. Ed Reed had a pack of defensive backs that looked up to him like a big brother. Flacco and Pitta had become best friends. Justin Tucker fell right in with Morgan Cox and Sam Koch. They were in weddings together and had wives who babysat each others’ kids. Anquan Boldin did all he could to support Torrey Smith – on and off the field – after his brother died in September. There were deep bonds throughout the locker room.
For four years the players had watched John Harbaugh in the cafeteria say goodbye to Art Modell with a kiss on the cheek and the words, “I love you.”
For some reason, it wasn’t hard for players on the Ravens to express their emotions or to say “I love you” to each other.
“That’s a mandatory thing in our family,” Harbaugh said. “I don’t ever get off the phone with my parents or my sister and not say “I love you.’ That’s the way we end every phone call. I never call my brother, Jim, and end a call without “I love you.”
At a press conference before the Giants game, he reiterated his belief in the team. “You love every team you coach, but this team is different,” Harbaugh said. “I love the way they love each other, the way they treat each other. They compete, they have trust and faith in one another, and they’re not afraid to get after one another. I love being around them. I can’t wait to be in the meeting room to laugh and talk ball with them. It’s a great group, with great coaches and great leadership. It’s the best staff I’ve been around and the best leadership I’ve seen.”
Corey Graham spent five years in Chicago playing for Lovie Smith and came into the NFL on the roster of the defending NFC champions in 2007. He played on good teams and bad teams and understood that being close was important. It’s one of the reasons he was comfortable in Baltimore and playing exceedingly well six weeks after taking over the starting job.
“Any situation where you’ve got guys in your organization or your team that are going through trials and tribulations, it’s going to bring guys together.” Graham said. “We’re like brothers. We believe in each other. The guy next to you is the guy you lean on when you’re going through tough times. As a team and an organization we lean on each other and that’s what brings us together and makes us stronger.”
“When I signed here, that’s one thing that I was hoping for. In Chicago it’s like that, too. The teammates were very close. Everybody was close to each other. Everybody got along. I didn’t want to go to an organization that was the opposite. You hear some stuff on SportsCenter and some stuff on websites talking about how players are fighting each other and they don’t get along with their coaches. It’s the complete opposite here. It’s a family oriented organization. They treat their players well. It’s a first-class organization. There’s nothing more I could ask for.”
Pitta came to the team as a 4th round draft pick from BYU. He is a Mormon and a guy who missed two years of football to perform his mission in the Dominican Republic to help poor families. He was an Eagle Scout in Arizona whose core values were very in line with Harbaugh.
When Pitta asked by WNST.net at his radio show in December to define the characteristics of what makes the Ravens special, his first word was “family.”
“Family is number one,” Pitta said. “I haven’t been around any other teams in the NFL, but the people that come in and out of this building, they always make a comment about how this locker room is different, and our team gets along so well. We treat each other as family, and I think that’s what helps us to be successful on and off the field here. Another is leadership. We have great leadership in our locker room in veteran guys and in our coaches; that’s another big thing for us. Lastly would be relentless. That’s always a word that is stressed here – relentless in everything we do. We work hard as a team. Being relentless, you never give up.”
Defensive tackle Haloti Ngata noticed the changes because along with Ray Lewis, Terrell Suggs, Marshal Yanda and Sam Koch he was a holdover from the Brian Billick era. “Coach Harbaugh has done so many things for this team by the way he wanted this team to be and the way he wanted to run it,” Ngata said. “The first year or two, we definitely had some disagreements with him, but he definitely listened to some things that the players wanted. He was able to put his feelings down and let some things happen. This year has been totally where we’ve been able to communicate with Coach, and Coach has been able to communicate with the players. He’s done a phenomenal job this whole year of communicating with us, and I think that’s been the biggest change.”
