It was less than a half hour after he said it, and I wasn’t sure if Ravens’ coach John Harbaugh had gotten a look yet at what everyone watched him do on national TV. So I told him that he’d basically turned the rest of us at home into amateur lip readers, and reading his wasn’t tough for anyone.
Because he was demonstrative. Because he was direct. Because his message was clear.
The question, really, was the kind a coach only asks if he already knows the answer. And in this case, it turns out, both guys knew what had to be done. A banged-up, 0–1 Ravens team was staring at fourth-and-1 at its own 43 with a little over a minute left, up 36–35 on the two-time defending conference champion Chiefs. Picking up the first down would end the game. Failing to probably would, too, putting Kansas City on the fringe of field-goal range.
“I already knew we were going for it but it was just kinda … I just wanted to make sure,” Harbaugh told me, from the victorious locker room. “I really didn’t have an answer [if he didn’t say yes], but I think more than anything I just wanted to make sure he knew we were going for it because he was kinda moving back toward the sideline, and he was talking to somebody. Just wanted to make sure he was back in the huddle ready to go.
“And maybe he already knew we were going for it.”
So sure, maybe the decision seemed obvious to Harbaugh in the moment. To the rest of us, it wasn’t so academic. Weeks ago, the Ravens lost their top two tailbacks, J.K. Dobbins and Gus Edwards. On this night, they were also without their franchise left tackle, Ronnie Stanley. And punting in that spot could’ve meant pinning Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs’ offense inside their own 20, and maybe 10, without any timeouts.
But to Harbaugh, that’s not what the situation called for, and, truth be told, he knew the play before, as the Ravens lined up for third-and-7 from their own 37, that he’d go for it if they could muster five or six yards to get within a yard or two. “You want it to be close enough, and get a realistic shot. … And like I told Lamar when we first went out there, I just said, ‘Get the first down. We gotta get the first down.’ We couldn’t give it back to Mahomes.”
They wouldn’t.
On third down, Jackson deftly hit Sammy Watkins underneath for the six yards needed to green-light the fourth-down try. And on fourth down, rather than trying to fool anyone, the Ravens rolled their sleeves up to throw the knockout block—lining Jackson up alone in the shotgun, with only fullback Patrick Ricard in the backfield with him, and Ricard offset as a lead blocker. The call was a basic quarterback power run, and Jackson picked it up easily.
And so ended a wild second Sunday of NFL football, with a bruised, but proud old champion going toe-to-toe with the league’s best team of the last couple of years, and taking that team down. We’ve got a lot to cover this week, from beginning to that very dramatic end.
