John Harbaugh: Ravens Press Conference 1/6/25

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

Welcome in to the Ravens Press Pass Podcast. It is Monday, January 6th. The Ravens are gearing up for a wild card matchup at M&T Bank Stadium. It's going to be on Saturday night, 8 p.m. against the Pittsburgh Steelers. As Ravens geared up for that game, we had a chance to hear from head coach John Harbaugh. And here's what he had to say today during his time with the media.

SPEAKER_2 (0:23)

Hey, John, good morning. Zay Flowers left with that knee injury on Saturday. What's the latest information you have on him? And what do you think his availability will be for the wild card game?

John Harbaugh (0:36)

He's not a season-ending injury. So it's just going to be day to day, try to do everything he can do to get back as soon as he can. And we'll see where that takes us.

SPEAKER_4 (0:48)

John, what do you see from Pittsburgh? Much has been made about their losing streak. You know, heading into the playoff. So what have you seen from them the last couple of weeks? I don't even know if you've had a whole lot of time to go over the film from recent games, because the game was, you know, because you guys have been on a limited time frame. You didn't know who you were going to play.

John Harbaugh (1:08)

No, yeah, we've been studying them.

And that's what we make of what we study, what we what we look at the football, what they're doing schematically, the players, how we think that they're going to, you know, attack us, how we can try to attack what they do or don't do. And we know them, they know us pretty well. There's always that little, you know, chess game going on, a game of thrones. I don't know, whatever with them, because it's always something different. There's always wrinkles thrown in every week. So that's the part of it that we study really hard.

Brian Wacker (1:39)

John, two things real quick. Just on Dave Flowers, was it a can you just confirm whether that was a sprained knee?

John Harbaugh (1:47)

No, I don't really have any confirmation on anything like that. It's not really what we're required to do. It's his knee, I can tell you that, so.

Brian Wacker (1:57)

And the second thing, what's just the challenge of playing a team like Pittsburgh third time this time of year, just played a few weeks ago? What is the difficulty for that in terms of game planning, particularly if you have to deal with injuries and so forth?

John Harbaugh (2:15)

Well, I don't think there's any specific difficulty in it. You know, this process is still the same. You probably have certain things that are understood, you know. There's a lot of things that are kind of ingrained in your knowledge of a team in a division like that. You've already played twice that year. So you're jumping off point is further down the road, for sure. That's about the only difference.

SPEAKER_6 (2:38)

Coach, following up on that, I believe it's the fourth time you've done this. So can you draw back on the experience of playing this team, you know, for a third time in the postseason?

John Harbaugh (2:49)

How many times have we done it? We did it again, 7-08. I want to say 08, 15, maybe 14, 14, I think twice. That's not right.

SPEAKER_6 (2:58)

I want to say 08, 2010, and 14

John Harbaugh (3:02)

Okay. Maybe. I can't remember. I don't really remember the other times, to be honest with you, that well, I like specifically. I think it's just part of the process. We played the Bengals a couple of years ago, right? Once or twice. So a lot of our teams, teams as division make the playoffs. We've run into them. It's probably pretty normal.

SPEAKER_7 (3:25)

Hey, John, just to piggyback on the Zay Flowers. Rashad obviously made a bunch of plays after Zay went out of the game. I know Zay's still up in the air, but how do you feel about Rashad's ability to lead this wide receiver group? And about how he played against the Browns in the second half?

John Harbaugh (3:48)

Yeah, just same as I've always felt about it, you know. He's always been high, high on my list, my charts. I think he's a tremendous player, tremendous athlete, tremendous competitor, excellent wide receiver, brings us a tremendous skill set to it. He's been playing at a high level all year. Made big plays for us in that game this past week. He was a factor in those drives and getting us into scoring position numerous times. So I just, yeah, he's good. And not just not just Rashad. I mean, I don't think it's just about one guy.