Whomever replaces John Harbaugh as Ravens coach has to fix Lamar Jackson

6 days ago 2

John Harbaugh was a very good and occasionally great NFL head coach. But with Lamar Jackson in tow, he trended squarely toward the former.

After missing the playoffs in 2025 and with a 3-5 postseason record with the two-time MVP in tow, the Baltimore Ravens decided they'd seen enough. Harbaugh made it past Black Monday. He didn't last beyond Tuesday; the Ravens fired him two days after Baltimore's season ended with a missed 44-yard field goal in Pittsburgh.

2025 was a perfect storm for the Ravens, who managed to stave off postseason elimination until the very last second of the regular season anyway. The defense fell apart under former rising star coordinator Zach Orr. An undermanned receiving corps was effectively a one-man show. And, most importantly, Lamar Jackson didn't look anything like the best version of himself.

Injuries played a part. Jackson was, per usual, as banged up as you'd expect a running quarterback to be. He missed four starts due to injury and left two other games with hamstring and back injuries. But when he did play, he was a fraction of the quarterback he once was in every facet of the game.

His passing output dropped from 245 yards per game to 196. His sack rate exploded from 4.6 percent to 10.6. Negative plays compounded while explosive ones dwindled. His expected points added (EPA) per dropback fell from 0.29 in last year's first-team All-Pro campaign (best in the NFL) to -0.04 (22nd, just behind a 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers). His average target distance, deep ball and tight window rates all remained roughly the same but the delivery changed, leading to a significant dropoff. His 72.4 percent on-target throw rate was the lowest of his career.

That threatened to make him the run-to-paper-over-bad-throws quarterback detractors falsely accused him of being early in his career. Instead, his ground game shrank in lock step with his aerial regression.

Jackson went from 8.2 rushing attempts per game in 2024 -- then a career-low -- to 5.2, running less often than nine other NFL quarterbacks including Justin Fields and Jaxson Dart. His success rate, measured by how often a play gains at least 40 percent of yards required on first down, 60 percent of yards required on second down, and 100 percent on third or fourth down, ranked first in the NFL at 64.3 percent in 2022.

In 2024, it hit 56.1 to rank fifth among all qualified runners and second only to Jayden Daniels among quarterbacks. In 2025, his 5.2 yards per carry came with a career-low 47.8 percent success rate. That's the first time it's dipped below 50 percent and good for 48th place among all players and seventh among QBs.

There is hope this was all injury related and a rebound is near. But cracks began to show even before injury turned the offense over to Cooper Rush (horrible) and Tyler Huntley (mostly fine). He dazzled through the air in Weeks 1 through 4 and still went 1-3 in those games. He was sacked 15 times in those games, including seven times by the Detroit Lions -- something that's only ever happened once before in 116 regular season starts. He ran the ball fewer than four times per game. While he was efficient through the air, it was in a way that didn't swing games.

That leads us back to a problem that's persisted throughout his career. Jackson traditionally tends to come up short in close battles. He has 13 career game-winning drives in 115 regular season and postseason starts. He had five such drives in 62 games since 2022. Bo Nix, on the other hand, had seven game-winning drives in 2025 alone. Caleb Williams had six.

Back in Week 1, he couldn't sustain the late drives to keep the Buffalo Bills from coming back from a 40-25 deficit in the final four minutes (obviously Baltimore's deficient defense deserves some blame as well). Early fourth quarter stall-outs kept him from delivering a home win against Detroit in Week 3.

Week 18 saw him dazzle late to keep the Ravens punching in a sloppy heavyweight de facto playoff game in Pittsburgh.

While Tyler Loop's missed kick wasn't his fault, the previous loss to the Steelers -- 27-22 after Jackson led four different fourth quarter drives into Steeler territory at home and came away with exactly two field goals and nothing else -- kinda is.

That was Harbaugh's problem with Jackson. He couldn't turn his quarterback's dazzling heroics into the wins that mattered. Baltimore is 76-31 with its star quarterback at the helm in the regular season. It's 3-5 in the playoffs with a single trip beyond the Divisional Round, zero postseason win streaks and zero Super Bowl appearances to show for it.

Jackson's passer rating drops from an NFL-best (ever!) 102.2 in the regular season to 84.6. His sack rate goes from 7.3 to 10.4. Even though he improves a bit as a runner in January, it's not enough to cover his failings.

The Ravens took all this in. They decided good was, in fact, the enemy of great. They opted to venture into the unknown rather than head back to the playoffs with a sinking feeling of failure enveloping them.

Restoring Jackson isn't the only pressing issue Baltimore's new coach will face. The defensive identity of one of the league's hardest-hitting teams has been cracked and needs to be rebuilt. Derrick Henry is 31 years old and can only keep this up for another one, two decades tops.

But ultimately, Harbaugh's replacement will be judged on his ability to turn Jackson into something more than a regular season award magnet. Improvement may be easy to come by once the dynamic quarterback is healthy again. It won't mean anything until he starts stringing together comeback wins or rallying Baltimore to multiple playoff victories.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: Whomever replaces John Harbaugh as Ravens coach has to fix Lamar Jackson

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