OWINGS MILLS, Md. — After another frustrating home loss, this time to the New England Patriots, Baltimore must win out, and Pittsburgh must lose out for the Ravens to sneak into the playoffs.
WATCH: Harbaugh on job security: 'Anything after today, I’m not thinking about'
"We'll be getting ready for Saturday night, for a game that we'll be all-in, to play our best football," Ravens head coach John Harbaugh told reporters to begin a Monday news conference.
Despite Derrick Henry rushing for 128 yards and two touchdowns, he wasn't on the field late in the game.
"The last series was a conversation between Willie [Taggart] and Derrick [Henry]," Harbaugh said, "and they decided that Keaton was going to start the series off as part of the rotation, and that Derrick was going to come in in that series."
"Looking back on it right now, to your point, I would've grabbed it and said, 'No, put Derrick in the game.' But that's not really the way it works in real time, it's the guys doing the rotation, the coach doing the rotation, and it's also the plays that are called," he added.
Lamar Jackson left the game with a back injury with less than two minutes in the first half, and Tyler Huntley took over for the rest of the game. Harbaugh said Jackson has a painful contusion and is day-to-day.
Despite the Ravens' 11-point lead, Patriots quarterback Drake Maye led New England to a fourth-quarter comeback.
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"[Maye] made a lot of good plays, and we didn't make the plays we needed to make," Harbaugh said. "We had opportunities, we had the ball in our hands a couple times. We had a chance to bat a ball down in a critical situation. We had chances to sack him in the backfield, we got him sometimes, we hit him sometimes. Sometimes we hit him, we got there, the ball was out, and guys made great catches."
The Ravens are dangerously close to missing the playoffs. It would be their first time out since 2021.
Toward the end of his Monday news conference, Harbaugh was asked about his own job security.
“This is sports, this how it works," he said. "One thing I’ve always believed is that, first of all, coaching at any level is a day-to-day job. Your job is to do the best job you can today, and to do everything you can to help your players and your coaches, if you’re a head coach, be the best they can be every single day. And it’s never been about keeping a job, and there’s no such thing as your job and my job."
"You try to do the best- I try to do the job, not try to keep the job," Harbaugh continued. "There's no such thing as having a job; it's doing a job. My focus is always and has been for the last 18 years here and the last 41 years in coaching, has been to try to do the best job I can today. And fight as hard as I can so the guys can have the best chance to be successful today. And anything after today, I'm not thinking about. We don’t have control over that, except for the job we do today.”
If the Steelers lose to the Browns this Sunday and the Ravens win against the Packers on Saturday, the Ravens still have a chance. If not, it'll be the start of a long offseason.
