John Harbaugh: Monday Press Conference (9/11)

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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John Harbaugh (0:40)

Hey, guys, you know what this playground could use?

SPEAKER_3 (0:43)

A wine country, huh?

SPEAKER_4 (0:44)

A redwood forest would be cool.

SPEAKER_3 (0:48)

Wait!

SPEAKER_5 (0:48)

Did we just invent California?

SPEAKER_4 (0:58)

Welcome into the Ravens Press Pass Podcast. The Ravens opened the season with a 25-9 victory over the Houston Texans. It's good to start the year in the win column. Now, the flip side of that great win is that they did suffer some significant injuries in this one. They lost JK. Dobbins for the season with the torn Achilles and also dealt with a handful of other injuries.

On Monday afternoon, head coach John Harbaugh met with the media for his standard Monday afternoon press conference, and he updated the media about the status of those players who dealt with the injuries on Sunday.

John Harbaugh (1:34)

Okay, first of all, I just want to make mention of 9-11, today being 9-11.

Most of us are age, or a lot younger even, remember where we were on that Tuesday morning. I was in Philly, game planning for a game. I think it might have been against the Giants, I'm not sure.

I just happened to see the second one go in, and something you never forget. Been to the memorial now a couple years ago, would highly recommend it to anybody and everybody. Go spend as much time there as you can. The stories are amazing and compelling. So for our country, what an important day this is. As far as the game, just really happy and pleased with the win.

And I'd say the number one thing pleased with is the effort. The effort that our guys played with was about as good as it gets. It was standard setting effort in all three phases.

And that was something that you can hang your hat on and you can win with. And the physicality was there along with that. So just really happy with that. Also the idea that we made plays that we had to make in critical situations to win the game. I thought guys came up with plays, stops, conversions, touchdowns, getting the ball in field goal range, making kicks, all the things, even punts. You know, you look at Jordan's punt early on from backed up. I think he had a 60-plus yard punt, 50-plus yard net, flipping field position from your own 10-yard line. That's a pretty great play that sometimes doesn't get noticed. So those kind of plays were made during the game, so we're really happy with that.

The things that we, you know, obviously, it's always this way after your first game, and really it's this way after every game, but there's so many things we have to work on. So many things from an operation standpoint, both sides of the ball and special teams, execution standpoint, both sides of the ball and special teams, penalties, just way, way too many penalties. Too many times we took chips and we put them back in front of our opponent. You know, we don't want to do that. We want to keep the chips, hoard the chips. You win with more chips, and we don't need to be giving them things that are caused by us not doing the things we need to do quite the right way. So we'll be looking at that real hard this week and looking hard to improve in those areas. That's what we refer to as winning football. So we'll be talking about that. But individual efforts, focus, playing hard, want to, really proud of the guys and really proud of the win against a good Houston team.

I've said this before about certain teams early in the season. They're going to win a lot of football games this year. So you mark it down. You'll see. That's a good young football team.

So what questions do you have?

SPEAKER_5 (4:20)

John, as far as injuries, do you have any updates on Marcus, Marcus Williams, Ronnie Stanley and Todd Lindner?

John Harbaugh (4:27)

I do. Again, I just confirmed JK is going to have the Achilles surgery to repair that. And he texted me last night after we texted back and forth and told me not to worry. He'll be better and stronger than before. So his spirits will be good. Marcus has a pec injury. He's talking to the consulting with the doctors right now. He'll be out for a while. It may not be a season ender, though. There's different options that he has. So we'll keep you updated on that. And then soon, because he'll have to make a decision soon on a possible surgery there.