Yanda also acknowledged the morphing of the styles and the maturation of the entire system. “Things were a lot different when he first got here, as far as, he didn’t have all his [assistant coaches] that he wanted,” Yanda said regarding Harbaugh. “There were some guys that gave him fits, and he was a lot more uptight, but also, you didn’t have your relationships built. Just like anything, your first year in, you really don’t know a person. Now, we’ve got five years with him – so it’s all the relationships on the team have built up over five years with the guys that have been here. You’re more comfortable with him, you trust him, you’ve had tough losses with him, great wins, a lot of just going at it together, pretty much going to battle.”
Center Matt Birk, who had played 11 seasons in a somewhat turbulent Minnesota franchise and for five different head coaches in the NFL, saw the maturation of Harbaugh’s philosophies and Newsome’s process of selection at work and respected it.
“Being here with these guys, this is a special group,” Birk said. “That was obvious when I got to Baltimore. Being here for four years, it’s just a tight-knit group and we really are a team and that come from Coach Harbaugh. If you’re not about the team you’re not going to play for the Ravens. Obviously we have great players, Hall of Fame players, guys that their impact isn’t measured only on the field, but off the field as well. It’s just a blessing to able to play with those guys.”
Words like “blessing” and “faith” take on a new meaning to a group of men who were largely Christian and mostly extremely religious and full of God-driven or biblical principles.
Harbaugh extolled the virtues of “Christ-centered values” in a TV commercial for the local Catholic schools. Ray Lewis was pictured on the cover of Sports Illustrated in a gold blazer in the prayer position and wore his faith on his sleeve. The team’s pre-game chapel was routinely well attended. The team had faith in each other, in some way, because the leaders had faith in a higher power as well.
“There’s a common understanding, a theology of some kind,” Harbaugh said. “We can all have different beliefs and talk about it openly. And when I make a point about religion it’s really about principles and values. And nobody can deny that humility or integrity. It’s honest. The message is always the same: best your best self! Those are New Testament principles.”
“We have a lot of guys on this team that believe in God,” Graham said. “A lot. They have a lot of faith. We have faith in each other. Every time we step out on the field we believe in what each other can do. We believe in the guy next to us. We believe in holding everybody accountable. We couldn’t do it if we didn’t have faith. We continue to believe in each other, and it’s gotten us this far. Your faith is always going to help you because you have to believe. Sometimes you’re going to be in tough situations where things might not be going your way, but it’s all types of trials and tribulations. For me, it was in college when I broke my ankle in the fifth game of my senior year. I didn’t know if I was ever going to play football again. I didn’t know if I was going to get drafted or to get picked up as a free agent or anything. At the time of my pro day, I didn’t think I was going to be able to run, but I was able to do it because I believed in myself and believed in God and he pushed me through it. I was fortunate to get an opportunity to play in this league.”
Flacco liked that Newsome and Harbaugh were standing at the front gates only letting quality people into the building. It’s been that standard, that quality of dealing with adversity and not quitting that defines the Baltimore Ravens.
“We have good really good people in our locker room and we’ve been through so much together,” Flacco said. “That breeds that kind of love for each other and respect for each other. We respect what we go and do together. And, I guess that feels like love sometimes. We have good people in that locker room. That’s the reason guys are in church, chapel, mass. There’s a lot faith and belief built into the room naturally.”
With a three-game losing streak and the world champion New York Giants coming to town, as Flacco had promised on Sunday after the game, their leadership and resolve would be given a stern test.
During the week, Flacco was getting annihilated in the national media, taking the brunt of the criticism for the three-game losing streak, which was natural after throwing such an awful pass before halftime in such a big game.
But he’d thrown awful passes before, shook them off and moved on. He did against Albany in his first year at Delaware when his coach considered benching him. He’d done it at Richmond in his senior year when he first impressed Ravens scouts Joe Douglas and Andy Weidl while chasing other scouts out of the stadium. And he believed he’d do it again after the Denver incident.
“Shit happens,” Flacco said. “That’s my mindset. I think I’m a good quarterback. Why let one bad throw affect the whole game? My job is to not let it affect me. To make sure no one knows just how unhappy I am. None of us go through the season without throwing a bad interception. You can go back and see what you did or saw, and then not do it again. It’s what goes into being mentally tough. There’s just no way you’d be at this level playing in the NFL if you can’t handle it and rebound. You’d have been weeded out by now.”
Flacco was asked during the week if this kind of criticism brought out the best in him or inspired him in any way. “I don’t think being competitive is hating to lose,” he said. “I think being competitive is your will to win. Part of playing and part of doing what we do is losing and losing in very tough situations and losing very tough games. Being competitive is saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got to get back up, and we’ve got to do it all over again, and it’s going to take a lot of work, but we should be able to do it.’”
Harbaugh made the team aware of their still-very-bright prospects as a 9-5 team. If you took a poll of 32 NFL coaches in April and promised, “You’ll be 9-5 heading into Christmas week,” every one of them would jump at that chance. Plus, in recent years there have been teams like 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers and 2010 Green Bay Packers that seemingly stumbled to the finish line to make the playoffs as a wild card entrant only to win the Super Bowl. The New York Giants won the division in the last NFL game of 2011 and then become World Champions five weeks later.
No matter how bad the recent past had been, the Ravens were one win away from a division title and a home playoff game. There was plenty of precedent to keep hope alive. There was a real reason to keep fighting.
“We do give history lessons quite often; sometimes it’s National Football League history and sometimes it’s real history,” Harbaugh said. “But it depends where you want to dwell, what you want to dwell on. You can dwell on those things that aren’t so helpful, or you can choose to dwell on hope. And that’s what we do. You can’t do it any other way when you’ve got to line up and play next week against another team that’s contending for the playoffs and for a division championship. How many games has it been in a row that we’ve been in dogfights with teams that have everything at stake when we play them? We’ve played overtime games; we’ve played overtime games that have gone almost the whole overtime; we’ve been in physical games; we’ve been in heartbreaking losses; and we’ve been in exhilarating victories at the end.
“We’ve seen it all this year. We’ve had injuries, we’ve had adversity, we’ve had exhilaration, and we’ve had great moments. So, that’s what a season is made of, and the team that navigates all these things the best in the end will be the one true champion. That’s in front of us. That’s what we’re looking to accomplish. So, make no mistake about it; we’re not backing down from that. And all the other stuff? It’s just noise to us. It doesn’t mean much. We know what our goals are.”
