Dear Steve:
As you know, all real change begins with honesty.
It’s hardly ever heard around Owings Mills but on Tuesday you finally did the thing you almost never do: you got honest with John Harbaugh and yourself and realized the current model and “partnership” was broken irreparably.
And, given the three years of guaranteed money of in excess of $50 million owed him, you didn’t even hide behind the usual “mutually agreed to part ways” euphemism. You “decided to make a change” and told John Harbaugh he’d been “relieved of his duties.” Clean. Direct. And quite sudden.
Now comes the part you can’t press-release your way through via the empty suit of that handsome spokesman Chad Steele:
This wasn’t about rookie Tyler Loop’s kick sailing wide right. This wasn’t about one bad beat Sunday night in Pittsburgh with the AFC North on the line. This wasn’t even just about an 8-9 season and missing the playoffs.
This is about the culture you’ve allowed to rot in Owings Mills — the bully culture, the paranoia culture, the “we’re secretive because we’re smarter than you” culture — and the fact that, by the end, John Harbaugh had not only lost the locker room and the media, he lost the whole city, fan base and (most importantly) even Lamar Jackson.
8
You can praise John all you want. He earned plenty of it: Super Bowl XLVII, 12 playoff appearances, six division titles, franchise wins stacked like his hero Trump’s lawsuits.
But you didn’t fire him because the résumé got shorter. You fired him because the trust got thinner and both of your other options became far more attractive to a pair of headstrong, macho bullies who no longer needed each other.
And that’s why I’m writing you again, Steve: because this isn’t only about John.
It’s about the people around John. Starting with you…
The people above John, next to him and “below” him in your shiny, corporate binder.
The people who hid behind John. And the ones who ran blocker for the cowardly, obnoxious bully in him and the smallish side of his prickly personality that led to the “Harbs Doghouse,” which he refused to acknowledge but like every other glaringly weak tell was clearly existent through his exhaustive paranoia, control and fragile ego.
The people in the social media department who made “Ravens culture” into a flimsy slogan instead of being truly supported by the integrity and character standards that win Super Bowls – on and off the field.
8And before you clutch pearls at that word — culture — understand I’m not using it as a buzzword. I’m using it the way fans use it when they stop buying tickets. I’m using it the way players use it when they stop talking. I’m using it the way grown-ups use it when they watch an organization weaponize “integrity” and “faith” and “leadership” as slogans – and quote God and Jesus and Biblical scripture when it’s laughably convenient – all while behaving in a polar opposite fashion when the cameras aren’t pointed their way. And especially when the lights are off and they think no one’s looking.
Harbaugh was reportedly extended through 2028 not that long ago — and then shown the door anyway. This wasn’t an “end of an era” retirement tour. This was a break-glass moment on Tuesday afternoon. Abrupt. Unexpected. He thought he had a job for life; we thought you had a coach for life.
John Harbaugh has $150 million in the bank and you owe him another $50-plus million. He’ll be working in the NFL for more money (and getting you off the hook for all of it) by the middle of next week.
So spare me with the soft-focus montage. I’m not here for the violins; as one of the last real journalists left in Baltimore, I’m here for the autopsy.
The culture is now about you, Steve.
And I remember the Modell standard. David Modell sat in his office and explained to me why he was hiring Brian Billick 27 years ago this week. (I’ll be sharing that community-first standard here from when he was selling your PSLs and how much your “org chart” and ethos has deteriorated over the years.)
David faced the city. He faced the questions. He treated the media like a necessary piece of accountability — not an enemy army to be managed by sleazy PR directives, outright lies and weaponizing an absurd credential shell game for sport and your twisted approval.
8David Modell never lied to me. Ditto Brian Billick. And I gave them plenty of chances. These were honest men of character and integrity.
This was David Modell’s Vision Chart for the Baltimore Ravens in 1996:
After Joe Flacco won Super Bowl XLVII, Harbaugh eased into the crown of “untouchable” and Chad Steele started muscling and destroying strong, trusted relationships that Kevin Byrne and many others in your building from the Modell era cultivated over a lifetime. After 2014 and the brazen dishonesty of everyone hiding from the harsh reality of the Ray Rice lies and filthy cover up, I rarely walked out of your building during the midweek without wanting to take a bath after what I heard from your players in the locker room and what I heard from the head coach out on the veranda. The paranoia and ease of “fibbing” became my real life of covering John Harbaugh, whose honesty most times resembled his brother’s cover-up of everything at Ann Arbor. Almost like a family trait or something?
The “brand” standard has become: hide, sanitize, and let Chad Steele run interference and intimidate the people that your security goons can’t in the darkness.
I know because I’m the one who was clipped (although not my hair) and personally fouled. I’m still throwing the flag on his obvious bullshit – and yours.
So yeah — let’s talk about Chad Steele. Because this is where your “culture” becomes personal, and not because I’m whining about legitimate access but because gatekeeping is a very weak leadership tell.
In the end, your fans are the losers, especially at times like now when they deserve better answers than you’re willing to ever give. And you are the fools for not realizing why your stadium isn’t what it used to be after Ray Lewis stopped dancing, the Ray Rice disgrace, the Wembley knee for those Trumper “patriots” and the Justin Tucker slime fest that you’re still running and hiding from a year later.
8I haven’t seen any Black Lives Matter videos from you lately. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen anything from you or about you lately.
No one has ever answered a question about Justin Tucker in your building. I found out last week that your guy Steele has some fabulous fiction in his thick dossier about me so I’m guessing somewhere there in H.R. someone might’ve posed some questions or concerns about your kicker a dozen years ago. Maybe even some folks you knew in the massage and spa business around town?
I had several people who don’t like you (or, even more specifically were, um, rubbed the wrong way by Justin Tucker over the years) reach to me before I’d even thawed out on the hill in Pittsburgh Sunday night saying that “karma” kicked that shanked Loop toward Erie and the gods of righteousness gave you a not-so-happy ending massage, rubbing in the reality of the salty deeds of your previous frat boy “GOAT” who has been rightfully shamed whilst everyone in your building swears that the phone never rang in Owings Mills and no one could have possibly known about his shenanigans.
So was it wide right?
Or just wide wrong…
When the public face of your organization is a guy who “tells you where to stand,” who decides who is “legitimate” based on his personal agenda and bizarre personal grudges, who operates in shadows and phone calls it in when he compiles his notes and somehow never wants anything in writing — including the actual criteria that affords a radio station owner and guy who’s covered your franchise home and away for three decades a professional working press credential – that’s not just PR or media relations. That’s an organizational philosophy: control the message, punish the independent, reward the compliant.
I’ve been doing this work for 42 years and it’s beyond unprofessional. It’s sleazy.
8Chad Steele is a poor liar at best, and a sloppy, juvenile schemer at worst. He is a disgrace to you, the organization and an embarrassment to the man whose little press box in the corner of the stadium bears his name. Steele had the audacity to tell me last week (on the phone, of course, when he was free) that I’ve “made it personal” after he spent 20 years mistreating me and the rest bullying me out of my seats in Section 513 and then out of the press box.
He would never, ever have the nerve to face my audience in real time and serve them the horseshit he’s tried to peddle my way like a coward on the phone without witnesses.
And if you think that stays in the media hallway, you’re fooling yourself. The Pittsburgh Steelers were aghast that he was even attempting to impugn my integrity because they know better. So does everyone who is reading these words and has ever laid eyes on me.
And so do you, Steve (and so does Eric DeCosta and so did John Harbaugh and so does everyone in your building) which is what makes you and the franchise appear so incredibly dishonest to anyone who’s ever met me, gone on a bus trip or read a morsel of my honest and authentic work here at Baltimore Positive or any of the books, blogs, radio segments that I’ve done via WNST since we put our PSL money up in 1996.
I’ve had 5 million people on my Facebook page alone since you went to training camp in July so you can pretend that no one listens but I assure you: everyone hears.
And they know I’m the honest one. I have nothing to hide; no reason to lie. And certainly no track record for dishonesty in 34 years of doing this work in front of your customers on the radio and as a newspaper reporter seeking truth professionally since I was 15 years old.
And yes, I’m going to say the part out loud that your building hates most:
8The real rot in Owings Mills is in the institutional dishonesty.
Because the real story of the John Harbaugh ending isn’t that he forgot how to coach. It’s that the organization stopped listening — and started managing. Managing narratives. Managing access. Managing “brand.” Managing Lamar. Managing CYA. Managing the uncomfortable people who ask uncomfortable questions when the kicker of the team is accused of serial sleaziness and everyone in the building runs like a cockroach when the lights turn on.
Dishonesty and poor communication – the kind that lives in little moments and then becomes a way of life that started when you inexplicably tried to cover up Ray Rice cold-cocking his wife in the jaw on video in a glass elevator in the middle of Atlantic City and everyone in your building trying to cover it up for six months so he could run the football on the field 12 years ago.
Because when an organization starts treating truth like an enemy, it eventually treats its own people the same way.
That’s what I watched happen with John, especially at the end.
By the end, he wasn’t the old “team builder” anymore. He was the human shield — the beleaguered and annoyed face at the podium tasked with explaining the inexplicable and defending decisions that weren’t defensible. And the longer that went on, the more the city could feel it. The locker room could feel it. The media could feel it.
And Lamar? Come on.
8The same instinct that says “keep them out” becomes the instinct that says “deny, deflect, accuse” when something is wrong inside the building. The same instinct that says “we’ll decide who gets to ask questions” becomes the instinct that says “we’ll decide what’s true.”
That’s why this Harbaugh ending matters. Not because he was a “bad coach.” He wasn’t. He won a Lombardi Trophy. He raised your franchise’s floor for a long time. Our Luke Jones said in the immediate aftermath on Tuesday night that the people discrediting the entire legacy sound ridiculous — and he’s right.
But what Harbaugh became — what you allowed him to become through his own worst instincts — was a mirror of the worst impulses in your building: the bully posture, the hardened defensiveness, the exhaustion, the paranoia, the constant sense that everyone is out to get you.
And here’s the part your fans understand in their bones:
When you win, you can hide behind the scoreboard.
When you lose, your character shows.
I’m still aghast that Mark Andrews skated out the back door in Buffalo last January and he wound up getting military endorsement money in the offseason and you inexplicably gave him a boatload more money. There was nothing about that weak act that said “winner” or “winning” to my tired eyes after four decades of sports journalism. Winners are accountable. Always. And especially when they lose.
8It was beyond a bad look; it was an empty soul. Even your rookie kicker on Sunday night in Pittsburgh managed to trudge out with a sullen Chad Steele over his shoulder in the worst of possible circumstances, and represent himself in a fashion that none of your veterans have over the years when they’ve been the reason the team lost. I’m a Tyler Loop fan because he was accountable. From the outside, that means everything to an accountable media guy who has seen the worst side of your organization’s cowardice in every way. And I was the first one to ask Billy Cundiff a question after the AFC Championship Game disaster in Foxboro in 2012.
This year? No one looked like they were having fun. Lamar didn’t look like he was enjoying his life, far beyond the injuries. Your locker room didn’t feel like it belonged to accountable men anymore. It felt like a place where everybody was counting touches, counting targets, counting money, counting blame.
You want receipts? Here are some:
The reporting and chatter — all year — about friction with Todd Monken, and the idea that the breaking point was whether Harbaugh would move on from him.
The idea that Harbaugh’s stance was basically: I’m not doing the coordinator carousel again — and if you’re going to tell me who to hire, I’m out. Which is exactly what you were accused of doing years ago with Cam Cameron… and exactly what Harbaugh spent a decade denying you’d ever do.
You don’t get to spend years telling us this is a “player-led team” and then act shocked when the most important player on earth to your franchise starts looking around like, “Wait…who’s actually leading this thing?”
You have a two-time MVP quarterback (that’s not an opinion; that’s his hardware and he probably got screwed out of a third this time last year after throwing 41 touchdowns with four interceptions), and yet the story of the last few years is still the same: massive expectations, late-season tightness, public tension, talk about his cap number and that creeping sense that everyone is protecting their own corner instead of pulling the same rope.
8And when that happens, Steve, the coach “loses the locker room” in the most modern way possible: not with a mutiny, but with a slow emotional checkout.
Less belief. Less buy-in. Less joy.
More tight shoulders. More “business decisions.” More silence.
More looking at the sideline like it’s a customer-service desk, especially when Derrick Henry isn’t touching the ball late with a lead. Or when Monken sent in a play that didn’t work, or worse yet, no one liked to begin with and wanted to execute.
That’s what culture death looks like.
So here’s the question you can’t PR-juke anymore:
Who created the conditions where John Harbaugh could no longer reach them?
8Because if your answer is “John did,” then you’re telling me one man controlled everything for 18 years — roster building, messaging, internal discipline, external relationships, the temperature of the building — and that’s either untrue or terrifying.
Your reality is that Lamar is under contract and doesn’t have to renegotiate anything — which means your whole offseason hinges on whether your agent-less franchise quarterback actually wants to cooperate with the people running the place. (Luke even clarified the housekeeping: $74.5M cap number, $51.2M base salary — the point being: he’s under contract, and goodwill matters.)
The fact that the “how” of the firing sounded messy enough between two very fiery alpha males with lots of ego, money and the power to pretty much do whatever they want.
The broader truth my dude Luke Jones said out loud: this franchise takes “almost as much pride in being secretive as being successful.” That is not a compliment, Steve. It’s a diagnosis.
And, by the way, where the hell have you been?
I don’t even know if you were at the Pittsburgh game. I was there freezing with the good Yinzers while the fans of your franchise were living and dying on a kicked football. And I do know you’ve built a fortune while removing yourself from accountability.
That’s why I’m not satisfied by “we will work relentlessly” in a press release.
8You don’t get to use “relentlessly” after you’ve built a system designed to avoid questions.
So here’s the uncomfortable part you need to hear:
Harbaugh didn’t just “lose games.” The building lost games.
And the building is still yours.
But an organization cannot keep calling itself “integrity-first” while behaving like a corporation that fears sunlight.
Integrity isn’t an adjective you attach to a person in a farewell statement. Integrity is operational. It shows up in how you handle criticism. How you treat outsiders. How you respond when you’re wrong. How you talk when you lose. How you explain decisions without hiding behind secrecy and selective access.
And right now, Owings Mills has become a place where accountability is treated like an infection to be contained instead of a duty to be honored.
8So let’s get painfully specific, Steve. Since you’re the only person in that building who can actually change it, here are the questions you owe Baltimore — not in a “town hall,” not in a choreographed sit-down, not in some glossy season-ticket-holder email. Real answers. In the daylight.
Who, specifically, was responsible for the culture of communication?
Not the public statements — the actual internal reality. Who set the standard and who enforced it?
What went wrong with the Lamar-John dynamic — and when did you know it was broken?
And don’t give me “we keep internal matters internal.” This is the franchise. This is the city’s emotional investment. This is the product you sell!
Why did this organization become so allergic to independent scrutiny?
Why has “access” become a weapon instead of a professional courtesy?
What is Eric DeCosta accountable for in this collapse — and what isn’t he?
If this is a “new direction,” it cannot be only a new headset on the sideline with a fresh ball coach to whisper to Lamar as long as practice starts after noon.
What are the non-negotiables for the next coach — beyond “leader of men” clichés?
Because if the next era is just the same opaque structure with a different face, you didn’t fix anything. You just changed the signature on the memo.
Which brings us to the next sales bread crumbing in your offseason social media soap opera: the coach search as theater.
8We know how you did this last time. A consortium. A process. Votes. Steele gets a vote. Sashi Brown gets a vote. Eric DeCosta gets a vote. Ozzie gets a vote. You’ll “cast a wide net” and leak just enough names to keep the season-ticket base engaged while you hire the guy you were leaning toward anyway.
And here’s my fear: you’re going to hire another version of the gloss and floss you naturally like.
Another “tough guy.” Another “military walk.” Another bully-ball posture. Another press-conference preacher with a nasty, dishonest streak who turns into a hedgehog when he loses.
Because that’s what you’ve rewarded.
And because your culture has taught everyone around you that the appearance of strength matters more than the substance and real integrity of leadership. And it’s abundantly clear that emotional intelligence should be at the forefront of your operation but anyone who has ever met Chad Steele or Sashi Brown would tell you that your corporate arrogance rubs off all over their words, behavior and posture.
There’s nothing that feels less “Baltimore” than spending 30 seconds with those imposters.
Inherent arrogance and entitlement should never be confused with emotional intelligence or authentic human connection. I waited 20 years to hear a word of kindness from Steele and last Wednesday, because he refused to entertain a three-way call with another professional from the Steelers (he never, ever speaks to me with witnesses) I endured 12 more ridiculous minutes of how I didn’t attend OTAs in 2021 and a relentless stream of arrogant, unaccountable nonsense that insults my intelligence and would that of anyone with a brain.
8He really enjoys telling me that I’m no longer qualified to cover the Baltimore Ravens. And, it seems, derives even more pleasure that he’s managed to blackball me throughout the entire National Football League.
Are you proud of that, Steve? I know no one at the club or on the boat down in Florida ever asks you about it; but it’s the most common topic of my daily existence when I walk the streets of town.
Speaking of arrogance and entitlement, you still haven’t answered a question or even said “Thank You” to the citizens of Maryland who gifted you and Sashi Brown $650 million of civic money to kick me out of the press box and build some gold-plated walls in The Black Wing to squeeze more premium revenue out of a sweetheart deal and move the fans on the field closer to the action.
Don’t you think you owe Baltimore — not your sponsors, not your season-ticket sales team, not your website, not your PR wall — the people of Baltimore, Maryland and the fans of the Ravens any explanations or accountability or an hour of face time once a year to discuss your $5 billion brand and the goodwill of your customers and fans?
Isn’t that a bare minimum that any fan should expect: simple presence, care and accountability?
Are you going to talk? Not via statement. Not via a “selected pool reporter.” Not via controlled sit-down. A real press conference. Real questions. Real follow-ups. Real reporters. Are you really willing to recruit the community again because it’s sorely needed more than those cheesy TV ads begging me to buy the tickets your organization threw me out of three years ago at the behest of your esteemed and promoted-from-within culture of exclusion.
Who is accountable for the culture in the building — specifically the gatekeeping, the secrecy-as-a-value, the hostility to independent media? Is it Chad Steele? Is it your buddy Craig, who plays the heavy in every circumstance? Is it you? Is it “the organization”? (That word is always used when nobody wants to put a name on it.)
8What happened between you and Harbaugh on Tuesday? Did you demand staff changes? Did he refuse? Did he walk? Did you fire him? Don’t give us “comprehensive evaluation.” Give us the truth. We’re stakeholders. All of us.
Where does Lamar stand in this power structure? Because whether you like it or not, the short-term reality is: the quarterback is the sun. Everything orbits him. And if he’s not happy, your “process” won’t matter. I found his post-firing Wednesday Instagram post and song choice to almost be an OG “SMD” to John Harbaugh because he clearly won the war. But will he win a Super Bowl?
What is the role of Sashi Brown in choosing the next coach — and why should any Ravens fan trust that? Because “Cleveland” isn’t exactly the résumé bullet point that screams “stability.” Plus, I’ve met him. And consider me as unimpressed as every person I know in your building who remembers Dick Cass.
And I’ll add a bonus question, just for me — because you’ve let this fester into something uglier than football:
Are you going to stop treating independent media and people like me as state enemies? Because the day you start punishing questions is the day you stop being a serious organization and start being a brand cult.
John Harbaugh was a punisher. I don’t have to tell people what a bully Chad Steele is: they tell me. I’m not the only one; I’m just the only one with the courage to speak the truth.
I’ve said this in a hundred ways and I’ll say it again in the only way that matters now:
8If you want a culture reset, you have to stop acting like the truth is negotiable.
No more shadow games.
No more selective accountability.
No more “we’ll handle it internally” as a blanket excuse for public silence.
John Harbaugh is gone. That was the earthquake.
Now comes the rebuilding. And if you do it with the same old people protecting the same old habits, Lamar will feel it. The locker room will feel it. The city will feel it.
This is the moment, Steve. This is the fork in the road.
You can hire the next coach and pretend it’s a clean reboot, a fresh start, a new era.
Or you can admit what grown-ups already see:
8John Harbaugh didn’t just “run his course.” He became the final expression of a paranoid, dishonest, Trumpian culture you built — a culture that confuses secrecy with excellence, control with leadership, and bullying with strength.
And an arrogance that knows no wrong, does no wrong and completely refuses accountability because it’s too big and bloated to fail.
And if you don’t change that, you’re just swapping out a ball coach headset while keeping the same sickness.
I’m not asking you to win the press conference.
I’m asking you to show up and tell the truth.
Because the city is tired. The fans are tired. Lamar is tired. Even the people inside your building looked tired.
And the next time you write “Integrity” in a statement, you need to mean it by showing your face and energy in full expression on behalf of the Baltimore Ravens.
8Otherwise, don’t waste the the ink beyond the capital ‘I.’
Or we’ll just have to agree to disagree…
