OWINGS MILLS, MD. — A day after starting safety Marcus Williams was benched for the Ravens’ game at Cleveland, head coach John Harbaugh expressed confidence in Williams going forward but did not divulge any more information about Williams’ benching, other than to reiterate that it was an internal matter.
Williams was in uniform and active for the game at Cleveland but he did not play a snap. The Ravens (5-3) were upset by the Browns, 29-24, after Browns backup quarterback Jameis Winston, making his first start since 2022, threw three touchdown passes, including a game-winning 38-yarder with 59 seconds left.
Williams had not been on the injury report all week, and after the game Harbaugh described Williams’ absence from the field as a “personnel decision.”
Williams is in the third year of a five-year, $70 million deal he signed with the team in 2022. He has the third-highest cap hit on the team at $18.7 million according to Spotrac, which tracks player contracts.
The Ravens’ secondary, expected to be a strength of the team, has been a major disappointment throughout the first half of the season. The Ravens rank dead last in the league in passing defense and 25th in total defense for first-year coordinator Zach Orr.
Williams, who had played virtually every snap over the team’s first seven games, has 25 tackles and two passes defensed.
His absence was especially striking because the Ravens were already shorthanded in the secondary. Top cornerbacks Marlon Humphrey (knee) and Nate Wiggins (illness) both missed the game with injuries.
After fielding a few questions about Williams at his Monday news conference Oct. 28, Harbaugh said the situation “belongs in house. It’s between us, and it’s not something that we need to tell everybody everything about. I don’t think you’re telling everybody about your family business. … There are some things that we can just choose to kind of keep to ourselves, and that’s going to be one of them.”
Harbaugh did not say whether Williams would play this coming Sunday when the Ravens host the Denver Broncos at M&T Bank Stadium, but he expressed public confidence in Williams.
“I’ll just reiterate what I said before — Marcus is a heck of a player,” Harbaugh said. “I have the utmost confidence in him as a player, as a person, as a pro. He’s a great person; he’s a hard worker, plays hard, practices hard, does everything at the highest level. And I anticipate him playing great football for us all season and very soon.”
In Williams’ absence, the Ravens leaned on backup safeties Eddie Jackson and Ar’Darius Washington. Jackson was beaten by Cedric Tillman on the game-winning touchdown, and he also had the coverage when tight end David Njoku caught a touchdown earlier in the game. Jackson also had a couple of potential interceptions go through or off his hands, which has been a recurring theme for the Ravens all season.
The Ravens’ biggest potential dropped interception against Cleveland came when Winston’s pass hit safety Kyle Hamilton right in the numbers on the Browns’ final drive. Hamilton bobbled the ball a couple of times and then it fell to the turn. Winston threw the game-winning touchdown on the next play.
“We lead the league in those drops, interception-wise. That’s no secret, and those are huge plays,” Harbaugh said. “Those are huge opportunity plays. … We’ll make those plays, we’ll work hard at it, and we’ll continue to work even harder at it, because it’s something that we want our guys to have confidence in. We have guys with good hands. They can catch the ball. I’m very confident that we’re going to do it going forward, but I’d like to see it happen really soon.”
NOTEBOOK
NO UPDATE ON PIERCE, RAVENS SIGN PRACTICE SQUAD DL: Harbaugh did not have an update on defensive lineman Michael Pierce, who left the Browns game with a calf injury. The Ravens are thin along the defensive line now with Pierce, Travis Jones (ankle) and Brent Urban (concussion) all dealing with injuries.
To help shore up that group, the Ravens signed veteran Josh Tupou to the practice squad. Tupou, 30, is a six-year veteran who was with the Ravens in training camp but was released in the final cutdown. He had played his entire career with the Cincinnati Bengals before this season.
Harbaugh said that stopping the run against Denver this week “is going to be really important. … They run it really well, and they run it a lot, so it’s going to be a big part of the game plan.”
HARBAUGH LAMENTS KICK RETURN DECISIONS: Ravens kick returner Chris Collier twice opted to bring kick returns out from the end zone, and neither return reached the 30-yard line, which would be the starting point on a touchback according to the new kickoff rules.
Harbaugh said the Ravens have not given returners “a green light” to bring kicks out from the end zone and that Collier, an undrafted rookie who has moved into a kick return role with Deonte Harty on injured reserve, simply lost his sense of where he was on the field; both kicks were returned from one yard into the end zone.
Harbaugh implied that with difficult blocking angles on returns with the new kickoff alignment, he’d gladly take the ball at the 30 if the opponent wants to kick a touchback.
Problems with the return game were compounded by penalties; twice the Ravens were pushed back inside their 20-yard line by a penalty on a kick return.
“We made some bad blocking decisions on that,” Harbaugh added, “and I was really unhappy with that, too. So, those penalties were not OK. … Field position was a problem in the game.”
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