Harbaugh took a gamble in Week 14 by firing a decorated offensive coordinator heading into back-to-back games in Baltimore with the Manning brothers. He replaced Cameron with Peyton Manning’s longtime quarterbacks coach, Jim Caldwell.
“My charge – our responsibility as a coaching staff – is to maximize the opportunities for our team to win, and we can still reach all of our goals for this season,” Harbaugh said. “We have a motto we follow on this team: W.I.N. – What’s Important Now – and what’s important now is to find ways to get better, win the AFC North and advance to the playoffs. With our coaches and players, the solution is in the building. We are going to make the most of our opportunities going forward, and this change gives us a better possibility to achieve our goals.”
Caldwell was a 35-year coaching veteran. In his first year as head coach in Indianapolis in 2009, he led the Colts to the AFC Championship and a berth in Super Bowl XLIV. He earned a Super Bowl ring in 2006 and spent six seasons as the quarterbacks coach. Before that Caldwell spent eight years as the head coach at Wake Forest.
“The reason why I coach and the reason why I’m involved in [football] is because I have a great passion for the game,” Caldwell said. “I love a challenge. There is nothing about professional football that’s easy. It’s going to require everything you have and then just a little bit more. That’s what makes me excited about what we are doing. I get a chance to step in. The situation is tough. You hate to see a colleague lose his job. When you’ve been around as long as I have … I’ve been fired a few times as well. That’s the tough part of it. But nevertheless, I certainly am excited about having an opportunity to work with some outstanding men in a great organization with outstanding people surrounding me. Let’s see what we can do.”
It’s amazing that three days earlier if David Reed had fallen on a loose ball at Fed Ex Field, the Ravens would’ve won and Cam might still be with the Ravens. Or if Kirk Cousins didn’t pull off a miracle? Or if someone could have made a tackle on the last punt?
But the Ravens lost to the Redskins and the offense changed.
Instead, Jim Caldwell was calling plays now. And Cam Cameron was gone.
o o o
By the time the players met with the media on Wednesday, the firing of Cameron was old news to some degree, but inside the building it forced everyone to rally around Caldwell and Flacco.
The team was still 9-4 and there was plenty of belief that the team was not only making the playoffs but stood to be a major factor in January if they could get their best players healthy and create synergy on offense.
No matter the excuses or breakdown or scapegoats in the Redskins loss, the bottom line was that Terrell Suggs and Ray Lewis weren’t on the field. It was important to get those guys ready for January, and it was still quite important to win one more game and qualify for the tournament.
But firing an offensive coordinator in Week 14 is the kind of controversy that rarely ends well. It was hard to find evidence of any NFL team that had fired a coordinator in December and prospered from it in January. That’s not a formula for winning Super Bowls.
In retrospect, John Harbaugh showed massive courage and vision making a move that certainly could’ve been perceived as a sign of desperation at the time. His brother, Jim, had just switched quarterbacks on a 9-2-1 team two weeks earlier in San Francisco moving from incumbent Alex Smith to rookie Colin Kaepernick in the hopes of jump-starting the offense and giving the 49ers the best chance to get to the Super Bowl.
The Harbaugh boys were risk takers.
No guts, no glory.
Just like Joe Flacco, when he left Pittsburgh…or trusted that Anquan Boldin would win a battle in the air for a jump ball…or when he looked Steve Bisciotti in the eyes and turned down a $90 million contract because he thought he’d get more.
Just like Ed Reed when he’d gamble on the backside or when he’d pitch the ball after an interception.
And just like Steve Bisciotti when he opened his own business in a garage back in 1981.
No risk, no reward. That’s the Ravens way.
Besides, Harbaugh had just turned the play calling of the offense over to an offensive coordinator who had never called a play in the NFL.
The national media descended upon Baltimore on Wednesday and Harbaugh took the usual questions, but near the end veteran NFL writer Jason Cole from Yahoo! Sports asked the head coach a question that made him burr up: “Coach, some would say that you’re dancing very close to the edge of chaos?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Harbaugh responded.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a desperate move,” wide receiver Torrey Smith said. “We only lost four games. We’re coming off a game where we scored 21 points in the first half. I wouldn’t call it desperate.”
Matt Birk, who’d been around for 15 years, had seen plenty of bold moves in the NFL and realized the only real way to prove it was the right move was to win. “People can look at it however they want, but it’s how we feel about it in here,” the Harvard grad said. “We’re not worried about how this looks, or how it’s framed or what anybody is saying. We’re focused on the Denver Broncos.”
