Let me say it loud and clear: As much as Sunday night’s 26-24 Ravens loss sucked the air out of my lungs, it sure beats the 13-year absence of an NFL franchise in a truly great football town.
Sunday’s bitter loss was as riveting a game as I have watched in a long time, when I didn’t have a penny bet on the outcome.
But my infuriation with how the Ravens operate at the top really started Saturday night when the Seattle Seahawks went into Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara and took apart the San Francisco 49ers, whose offense looked unstoppable the previous several weeks.
Seahawks head coach and former Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald put together a defensive game plan that confused and stymied Brock Purdy, who had been playing at the level he showed back in 2023, which is a pretty high bar.
Seattle, by way of a 14-3 record, gets the NFC’s No. 1 seed and a first-round bye. The Seahawks’ plus-191 point differential is the best mark in the NFL. Macdonald is 24-10 since taking over in Seattle, the kind of regular-season numbers his mentor John Harbaugh has put up in the past in Baltimore.
The Ravens finished the 2025 season 8-9. They have a coach well past his prime. Harbaugh’s excuses after painful losses make less and less sense. Hearing his optimism is reminiscent of watching an old movie over and over again and hoping for a different ending.
Typically in sports, the owner owns and the general manager is in concert with his boss. The GM makes the personnel moves and is the prime mover on when it might be the appropriate time to move on from a coach who has lost several miles per hour off his coaching fastball.
Ravens GM Eric DeCosta should know a little something about making sure a team keeps a bright young mind in the organization. DeCosta benefited from that game plan when Ozzie Newsome was politely pushed out from the GM’s chair to ensure continuity with DeCosta taking over after the 2018 season. Note that Newsome is still well-paid, still a friend and still helps the organization.
But between owner Steve Bisciotti, DeCosta and Harbaugh, the Ravens have this troika of friends running the team. If the chain of command is usurped by the personal relationship between the owner and the head coach, then what real purpose does the GM really have?
Hey, I am not here to pick apart DeCosta vs. Newsome and tell you I know what DeCosta could have done better with the roster. I’ll leave that to experts in that field.
But I am here to tell you in my estimation, DeCosta should have explained to Bisciotti as the 2023 season was winding down just how good Macdonald was and strongly suggested the team put in place a path to succession for Macdonald to take over as head coach of the Ravens.
Bisciotti could have told Harbaugh, “Hey, you have the next two seasons — ’24 and ’25 — as head coach. I am giving Macdonald a big two-year raise to be defensive coordinator and then he is going to take over. You’ll go upstairs with a long-term deal as a consultant/adviser.”
And if Harbaugh turned that offer down, let him go his way and part company.
Letting a young coach like Macdonald walk out of the castle was the biggest mistake Biscotti has made as owner of the Ravens in these past two-plus decades. He hasn’t made many, but this was a whopper.
I doubt the troika will do anything different this time around. It’s this dysfunction that is at the root of the Ravens’ larger problems than the personnel out on the field.
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