The countless injuries accumulated by the Baltimore Ravens have made life quite difficult for the team this season. Things got even more difficult after last week’s game when the Ravens lost star cornerback Marlon Humphrey who suffered a season ending chest injury last Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
According to an ESPN article, the Ravens have placed a total of 22 players on injured reserve. The 8 and 4 record isn’t a glaring example, but John Harbaugh has coached one of his better seasons this year.
“Maybe it’s just experience; I’ve been through this enough,” Harbaugh said. “Everybody in their life … you sit here, and you’re a football coach; these are football problems. People out there face a lot tougher challenges. I’ll say a lot of times that football is a metaphor for life. It’s kind of not … it’s our life, but it’s not life— it’s a metaphor for life. Sometimes, I think we can take things from it, like these games that rundown to the wire.”
The Ravens lost their top three running backs before the season started. Yet, they never went on a “woe is me” vent. Instead, they still kept matching towards another winning season.
Harbaugh even referenced AL Pacino’s “football is a game of inches” quote from the movie Any Given Sunday to put things in perspective. Sometimes those inches are attainable. Sometimes they aren’t. The inches weren’t there for Baltimore when Lamar Jackson tried to connect with Mark Andrews for the game-winning two-point conversion.
The pass fell incomplete and the game was over. Instead of saying, “Woe is me,” the Ravens continue to press forward in hopes of regaining the #1 seed again.
“We’re going to go. We can’t wait. We’ll be going to Cleveland, I promise you,” Harbaugh added.