The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - NEWS: Ravens Fire John Harbaugh

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

The Baltimore Ravens have fired head coach John Harbaugh. Robert Mays and Dave Helman break down the news and react to what's next for Lamar Jackson, Derrick Henry, and the rest of the roster.For more Athletic Football Show content:- Join The Athletic Football Show Discord Server: http://discord.gg/theathleticfootballshow- Follow The Athletic Football Show wherever you listen to podcasts: https://podfollow.com/the-athletic-football-show/view- Twitter: https://x.com/TA_FootballShow- IG: https://www.instagram.com/tafootballshow- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tafootballshowHost: Robert MaysCo-Host: Derrik KlassenExecutive Producer: Michael BellerVideo Producer: Katy DuffyAudio Producer: Michael BellerSocial Producer: Scott KrinchFollow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. It's been a while since we did an emergency episode on the feed. We're doing a show every day, and not much stuff rises to this level. But I can tell you, this news did. John Harbaugh out as the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens. A pretty shocking moment, even if maybe you could believe that it might be on the rise and after how this Raven season went.

But still, crazy to see. it actually happened. And Dave Helman joined me to break this down from every single front. What this means for the Ravens? Why we arrived here? Where John Harbaugh might land? Who the Ravens might be seeking out? Where does Todd Monkin go because of all of this?

So just so much to sort through. And me and Dave did our best to get through all of it. So let's get to that conversation with me and Dave Helman right now. Every once in a while, you're sitting there, scroll in the internet, and something crumbs across the timeline. leads you to a holy shit moment. And that is what happened this afternoon. John Harbaugh officially out as the Baltimore Ravens head coach after 18 seasons.

Dave, we kind of danced around this, you know, in a bunch of different ways over the last week or so. You know, on Sunday, I said after that game, just I was really geared in my voice. I was disappointed in the way that they played. And I was a little bit disheartened by the way that they played. And I think the phrase I used was, I think the Ravens need to take a long look in the mirror about who they want to be after the way that this season ended. And I always knew that this might be a version of that, but even if you had that in the back of your mind, seeing it actually happen after how good the Ravens had been for how long

they've been that good, it's still shocking. This is a lesson to myself to just say it with my chest a little bit more. Because for the last month and a half, this has felt possible. Like you look at this Ravens season from the time Lamar got back from his injury and it's still didn't look right. It felt off. Yeah, it just felt off. And for a month, I've been saying that this could happen.

And I've asked you and Derek multiple times, like, do we really think nothing will happen? And to be fair, we said it about the Steelers too. Like, do we really think nothing will happen to the team that doesn't win this division? And I couldn't quite get there in terms of, like, believing that this was actually on the table. Because he has been there for so long. And they've had so much success. and Baltimore is really not the type of organization to do something like this, but it just goes to show what a frustrating two or three years it's been,

in my opinion, that we got here. And yeah, the signs were there and previous history led you to think, like, okay, maybe they'll retool some pieces of the staff, but not this. And here we are at 5 p.m. on Tuesday. And this is a news dump, very befitting of a much less stable. organization than the Baltimore Ravens. Here's why I think that you could talk yourself into staying the course. And it's because, in my opinion, it hadn't been stale for that long.

As I think about the overall trajectory of the Ravens over the last few years, I think that they were on an upward trajectory for most of last season. And then you get into a playoff game where you have a couple bad turnovers, but it comes down to Mark Andrews dropping that ball in the end zone. I mean Mark Andrews, but that's how thin the margins were for you to be playing in the AFC championship game against the chief team that I think you could have beaten last year. And so because it felt like to me,

the offense had gotten to a point where they were the most dangerous they had ever been during the 2024 season. Even watching as flat and as stagnant as they felt this year, I wasn't sure 17 games of stagnation and not having it be a multi-year thing was worth pulling the cord on this. but we'll dig into some of the layers to it and maybe why there's so many things

that go into this that it was time to do it but I think that's why I could talk myself into just seeing what it would look like if you tried to work through this but clearly they thought there was more happening and more at play where this had run out of road, this had hit a wall and it was time

to move on and try something else. Two thoughts come to mind and last year was devastating but it can't just be last year 2023 equally devastating. You score 10 points coming off of that amazing Lamar season. You turn the ball over three times in the AFC title game. I mean, just gut-wrenching stuff.

And so I think with the success that they've had and as close as they've come without actually getting over the hump, I think friction becomes magnified. I think disappointment becomes magnified. I think that's the type of baggage. that is hard to push past, especially in a season where it's even worse. And now the gut-wrenching loss is to not even make the playoffs.

And then the other thing, Robert, and this is just me 25 minutes after hearing the news just off the dome. But how much does Seattle's success in a season like this, like how much does that sting in Baltimore's building, watching their old defensive coordinator, lead the Seahawks to a 14 and 3 season, and potentially be the coach of the year. Like, if that's not going on,

does this feel as urgent in Baltimore's building? I think you have, like, and I'm not saying you're firing John Harbaugh because of that, but it's just another element where you think about those missed opportunities and you're like, oh, my God, how did we wind up here? And I can't rule that out as a piece of this. It's funny that that's how that played into your thinking. The way that that plays into my thinking is,

does hiring Jesse Mentor for this job absolve the fact that you let Mike McDonald walk out of the building? That's definitely part of it. I mean, I think you're crazy if you're not immediately thinking of Jesse Mentor as an option to sort of recapture that Mike McDonald magic. And I want to say one more time, they didn't fire John Harbaugh because Mike McDonald's a good coach. But like that can't feel good to see what he has built.

in Seattle as a guy who was in your building and was such a huge piece of arguably the best team of the 2023 season, at least in the regular season. I just, that that has to suck for people that are not only Ravens fans, but people that are in that building who have lived through the last like three years. A word you used before that I think is particularly important as we consider this is friction. And when you start falling short, the friction starts to match. matter a little bit more. When you're losing more games, the friction starts to matter a little bit more. And you could see it over the last couple years where it seemed like John Harbaugh and Lamar Jackson

were not always on the same page, whether there was different opinions about injury timelines and things like that, that Baltimore Sun story that came out late this year where, all right, now we're losing a little bit. Maybe we hear about some of the ways that Lamar Jackson is taking care of within the building or that's what that's the messaging that somebody wants out there. And it really did seem like there had been a friction that had arisen between John Harbaugh and Lamar Jackson and that maybe we had gotten to the point where those two could no longer exist in the same building within the same organization. And if I'm the Ravens, I can understand coming to the conclusion that in 2026, keeping your 29-year-old two-time MVP quarterback over your 60s,

62-year-old head coach is probably the right move because I think we have a lot of evidence that would suggest replacing John Harbaugh with someone of equal ability might be easier than replacing Lamar Jackson. And again, I'm not, this isn't anything I've like talked to people about, nothing like that. But reading the tea leaves a little bit, it seems like that likely played into the decision that was made.

And we can give John Harbaugh all, the kudos and he and he deserves them all everything he's accomplished especially coming from a special team's background a guy that's done this much without a direct hand in the design or implementation of scheme on either side of the ball it is easier to replace him than lamar jackson lamar jackson turns 29 tomorrow so after everything he's done in his career he still hasn't hit the threshold of turning 30 years old and I read the reports. I've heard all the stuff. I call BS.

I don't care. I'll ride with Lamar Jackson over damn near. I mean, is there a coach in the NFL that you would side with over Lamar Jackson? Like if you had to kick one of them out of your building, is there a coach? Okay.

I'll give you. I'll let you have McVeigh. That's fine. That's probably, the list doesn't get much longer than that. I was going to say it can't be more than, and maybe Shanahan with what he's been able to be. I'd take Kyle and Sean are probably the two guys that I would throw out there,

but the list is very short. And I'm not surprised at all. And here's what I'll say. I think that there are people around the league, people who be candidates for this job, who believe some of the smoke about Lamar in that story and believe that that is how some of that stuff has gone in the building. The question becomes, how much do you care?

Like the fact that you have to cater to your star quarterback a little bit, This is a tale as old as time, man. When you're good, you get away with stuff. When you're good, that's just kind of how things go. And Lamar Jackson is that good and is that valuable, where if the current coaching staff wasn't willing to kind of do what they needed to do to build around that and to deal with some of that stuff, I promise you you can find a coaching staff that's willing to.

Listen to me. I worked in an NFL building for a long time. And there are guys that live and breathe football and all they want to be doing when they're not practicing or playing is like watching tape on their iPad. Those guys exist. They're not the norm. Football players are human beings.

Quarterbacks are human beings too. And a lot of franchise quarterbacks really love football and are really invested in getting better. Guess what? They all got their own shit too. They all have habits that you would rather they not have or prioritize things

that you would rather they not. Like that's just human nature. And there's probably, Probably a football junkie who really only cares about that somewhere in the NFL, but that's not the norm. And you learn how to manage people, manage personalities, do that type of stuff. That's what the money's for. And if Lamar Jackson's kind of a pain in the ass, but he's capable of winning two MVPs and competing nearly winning a third, you take that every single time. Let's start with the Raven side of this.

We already mentioned Jesse Minter's name. I think that's absolutely somebody who will be on the radar for this job. We'll see what happens maybe with somebody like Anthony Weaver, who has also been in the building and was on that staff in 2023 when Ravens had that killer defense. I think somebody like that, Stefansky, who has been a head coach in the league before, this immediately becomes the best opening.

And it's not even like a conversation. It's the best opening by far. None of the other teams are even in the same discussion. And so Jesse Minter, I think many people have very quickly connected him to this job and said that he is maybe the best candidate and potentially the most likely candidate before any of this even gets started. That's not surprising to me. I think in a lot of ways, he understands the organization. Again, it allows you to kind of write the wrong of letting Mike McDonald out of the building in a way. So it's not shocking to me to see a lot of people

connecting him to this gig almost immediately after it becomes open. And then there's another one, which, and this is, you and I have had this conversation so many times and I don't think there's a right answer to it and so many defensive coaches are doing wonderful stuff, but there's the age old question of, you know, Lamar is, I don't want to put a timeline on how much time he has left in his prime, but again, he's turning 29 tomorrow. He's entering into an advanced stage of his career. Do you want to pair him with a play caller, an offensive minded head coach and really make that the focal point of years, whatever, 29 to 33 of Lamar Jackson? his career. And I can't help but notice

Kevin Stefansky, who probably knows Labar pretty well by now, I would guess, who has good play calling and offensive bona fides in the NFL. He needs a job. So that was another one that came to my mind. If they do hire Jesse Minter,

obviously the huge question becomes who is going to be the offensive play caller on that staff and where is he going to go get those guys? I don't know what his rolodex looks like. He's somebody that wasn't in the NFL for that long. He spent a lot of time in college. I think he spent probably three to five seasons with the Ravens before going back to Michigan and replacing Mike McDonald then coming back to the

Chargers. And I don't think McDonald had like a really strong opinion about who his initial play caller should be. And I think that kind of got in the way for the Seahawks. And they had to fire that offensive coordinator after one year. And so I don't know if Jesse Minter is on the same page. I don't know how much he's thought about this. I don't know if he has somebody in mind. But that becomes an extremely important hire. because Lamar Jackson is a great player. We know that Lamar Jackson is a great player. Lamar Jackson looked like a much better quarterback

and a much different quarterback under Todd Mock and then he did in the final years of Greg Roman. And so I think taking into account what your offense looks like and what that coordinator and play call is doing to set up Lamar Jackson to succeed, it's not as simple as we have Lamar Jackson. We've seen Lamar Jackson with lesser play callers

and the Ravens offense has not been good enough. And so who, if Jesse Mentor is the one that gets this job, who he lands on in that situation becomes hugely important. Which, and that's why I say, and it'd be a, go Jesse Mentor firmly in favor of that. But that right there is why maybe you lean toward somebody whose expertise is in playcalling and maximizing the best piece of your franchise. Like I think that's completely defensible. I've come a long way from only wanting the play caller head.

coach, I don't believe that anymore. I think there's half a dozen different ways to do this. I still believe that. Hey, well, you're benefiting from it here in Chicago this year. Like, it is, if you get it, it's great. If you, if you nail it, then it is probably the best way to do this. If you want to try the Miner thing, I think that's totally fine. I've seen a lot of people bring up Brian Flores as well.

Like, Brian Flores could be incredibly fun in Baltimore with the way that they've acquired talent and the defensive pieces that they have, that would be cool too. But Lamar Jackson is the best thing going for this franchise. And if you want to try your best to make sure he is with a play caller and an offensive mind that maximizes that, I think that makes perfect sense. I'm kind of joking.

Like obviously there are tons of examples of defensive coaches working out. I think you set up a barrier to success. And even if there are guys who do it, I think a play calling offensive head coach in a vacuum is still what I would choose. I also think that with Lamar, you don't necessarily need that guy. I think for the most part, I go with that model for a bunch of different reasons. One of the reasons that I tend to default to that model is most teams don't have MVP-level coaches or MVP-level quarterbacks.

So while I think the quality of the offensive play caller matters and Todd Monkin has been an indication of that, you don't need Sean McVeigh or Kyle Shanahan to have a Super Bowl-Caliber offense with the Ravens. You need somebody who is as good as Todd Monkin. And I do think that level of play caller is something that you can find, even if you go with a defensive-minded head coach. I completely agree with that. I mean,

look at Todd Monkin now. I mean, he helped Lamar win an MVP and Lamar had a case to win MVP last year, but he came up from the college game. It's not like he was the whiz kid higher that everybody was geeked about the year he showed up in the NFL.

So I think that or the year he came back to the NFL, I should say. I think you're right about that, but if you could find a guy who, if he's successful, is going to be there for the rest of Lamar's career, I mean, the stability that you get from a play calling head coach who's successful is what makes it so appealing

because that's just your guy instead of saying, oh, no, Lamar's going to win another MVP. We're going to have to find a new OC. So I still think it's really appealing, even if there are other ways you could do this. Absolutely. And again, I think that for the most part, if Baker Mayfield is your quarterback,

if Jared Gough is your quarterback, you need a high-level play caller to win a Super Bowl. That is not the case if you have Lamar Jackson. I think that's why you can make slightly different decisions. The Todd Munkin thing is I actually wanted to talk about that next before we get into John Harbaugh's future here. He becomes immediately a sought-after play caller in this cycle, in my opinion. If you're the Lions, if you're a team like the Bucks,

where you were dissatisfied with, what your offense looked like this year and you didn't like what happened when you moved on or had to replace one of those guys who got hired away, I think Todd Mocken almost immediately becomes an attractive option for any teams of that ilk.

I completely agree with you. I'm literally, I'm reading updates here as we're talking and our own Jeff Saribic just reported Harbaugh didn't even have a chance to inform his staff of his firing. Like it sounds like this it sounds like this kind of came out of nowhere,

at least other than just the fact that we all know that there's a lot of frustration in Baltimore. And then I wanted to bring this up too. Our own Diana Rusini was reporting right before we went on too that one of the key inflection points of this whole thing was Harbaugh refusing to even entertain a discussion about letting Monk and go, which that is a very interesting tidbit to me considering, I mean, Todd,

God, like the offense is, other than this year, like the offense has been great over the last two years. It is, it's wild that it got to this point so quickly. And I go back to what we were saying that it just feels like the frustrations of the last two years snowballed into all of this where like in a vacuum, 2025 is not enough to do any of this. But when you came three or four plays away from reaching a Super Bowl and it didn't happen, this kind of stuff can snowball and go off. the rails. With John Harbaugh and all of this, he immediately becomes maybe the best coaching candidate on the market in a year where there just aren't a lot of slam dunk coaching candidates.

I think Kevin Stefansky is rightly garnering interest for all of these jobs. He's interviewing with the Giants tomorrow, and I believe he will be in, I think it's Atlanta and then Tennessee or some version of that. of those are going to happen this weekend. And so he is making the rounds. And he is already, I think, weighing what the pluses and minuses, a lot of these jobs are because I think he might be in a position where he can do that. When you compare him to a lot of the other coaching candidates on the market, especially

the offensive coaching candidates on the market. But now you throw John Harbaugh into the mix here, and that changes a little bit. I think the job that makes the most sense to me straight away is the Giants. because this is a team that has cycled between multiple first-time head coaches over the last couple regimes where you go from Joe Judge to Brian Daibald, both of them end up flaming out. And I think having somebody with the potential level of stability that a John Harbaugh brings you when you need that organizationally in New York.

It's not even just the head coach. I think that bringing John Harbaugh in, if he wants Joe Shane out of there, why would it be any different than what happened in Jacksonville last year? I think that's the type of considerations that might be on the table for a John Harbaugh in New York. That's the one where if I were the Giants, I think that I would be doing everything I could to walk away from this cycle

with John Harbaugh being my head coach. That feels like such a giant's thing to do. And I don't even mean that in a disparaging way. Like it just fits their ethos and everyone. It's Kaufflin. It's exactly. It's Kaufflin again. It provides you like a truly, known quantity for the first time in so long.

I would also throw out the Titans just because and ironically, I don't want to I don't really want to use the same verbiage we used with Pete Carroll and the Raiders because we just talked about like having an adult in the room and somebody who knows what they're doing and obviously the Carroll situation in Vegas was a disaster. But

Harbaugh could give instant credibility and stability to an organization that desperately needs it and is building a football stadium in Nashville and wants people to be excited about their team, I assume. So in terms of just getting your ducks in a row about how to build an NFL program, I wouldn't be surprised if the Titans were in on that either. Shepter 19 minutes ago, John Harbaugh is expected to emerge as a favorite for the head coaching job of the New York Giants. Yeah, I mean, not remotely, not remotely, I don't think that should be surprising. I think that you hop on the interstate and be in East

Rutherford by like 9 o'clock. Like let's go. There are so many things that you're weighing when you're looking at these jobs and I think all of them have different pluses and minuses. With Tennessee specifically, I think ownership is going to scare off some of these candidates. Rightfully so. If you just look at how volatile that situation has been over multiple regimes. With Atlanta, I think that ownership is more stable obviously, but you have an aging owner, you have an entire redux of the building top to bottom. There's more talent on

that roster, especially offensively than there are and a lot of the other teams that you're going to be taking over, but there's still questions a quarterback. With the Giants, I think that even with this idea that the GM is sort of a barrier to people taking these jobs,

I don't think that is necessarily as high on a lot of candidates' lists as things like the quarterback or the owner. ownership. And with the Giants, even if you're a little bit worried about Joe Shane, I think that Jackson Dart, whatever worth do you think he has, he's a young quarterback that has shown something in the league. That is better than you get at a lot of these destinations when they're looking for head coaches. And even if they haven't had a lot of success, I think that there's respect for the ownership with the Giants. And so if those are the two most important factors,

and they often are for head coaching candidates, I do think that the Giants job, even with Shane there is more attractive to people within the league than it might be to fans who are on the outside looking into it. It is funny that and what you said is right, but like over the last decade, other than being the Mera's

and just having all of this history in the NFL, like Giants ownership is doing everything they can to like throw their hat in the ring of the dysfunctional owners list, you know? Like they have not behaved like that sort of franchise in a minute.

But the quarterback is... Their missteps have been that they've been too patient. And if you're somebody in one of these jobs, that's not necessarily the worst thing. It's not a bad thing. I guess that's fair. Two measured, of all the things that could be wrong with ownership, too measured is not the worst thing.

The Giants dysfunction is an effect, is related to them not wanting to seem dysfunctional and not just like ripping Band-Aids off. that's probably fair. I was going to say, and I'm not trying to convince you that Harbaugh would take the Titans job, but if you believe in Cam Ward,

that's a great equalizer for dealing with a lot of other bullshit. I think the, if I was a candidate for the Titans job, and I think this is going to be the case in a lot of situations. And again, if we're taking all of these kind of individually in Atlanta,

they're going to be questions about, okay, what's the new structure? What is Matt Ryan's role in all of this? What's the GM search going to look like? How is the building going to be? be set up. That's a blank slate. With the Titans, I think there are going to be questions about, all right, you have Borganzi, you have Chad Brinker. They were very open and very public about some of the streamlining that was done within the building a couple weeks ago. I think there was

probably some understandable motivation behind providing a little bit of clarity for that as we get to a head coaching cycle. But even if you have a little bit of clarity on that, I think there's still some questions about the ownership. And with the Giants, the real impediment is the general manager. And I think that is, if we're talking about the load bearing pieces of a team that can potentially change, you can knock that one down pretty easily and remake the room however you want to. And so again, I think it's less scary than some of the general questions elsewhere with some of these other jobs. I got to believe John Harbaugh is not taking a job. And maybe he wouldn't get Joe Shane fired like the week of the way that Liam Cohen did with Trent Balke last year in

Jacksonville. But even if Joe Chains stays on, I got to believe John Harbaugh is not taking a job without a level of understanding that I am a Super Bowl winning coach. I was the most tenured coach in the NFL or right behind Tomlin.

Like I'm going to have some outsized say in what goes on here. You know, like this isn't your typical coach reports to the GM sort of situation when John Harbaugh takes a job. Man. Again, I said it the top. There aren't that many holy shit moments. And this was certainly one of those holy shit

moments. So two things. Number one, you mentioned it with Monkin. Cliff Kingsbury out of a job as well now. So two of last year's biggest play-calling success stories on the market as of tonight. And then just one more thing I wanted to add, Harbaugh put a statement out through the Ravens. And the statement has a smiley face emoji in it, which I just that made me do a double take. I wasn't ready for that. I got to sit with whether, I think that at first glance, I can understand

how Cliff would make sense as the offensive coordinator in Baltimore if Jesse Minter were to get that job when you just think about what he did with Jayden Daniels. I think that's like, but that's the first thought that hits my mind, whether that offense is layered and good enough

and built for prime time to a level that you needed to be, to win a Super Bowl, I think that's something I'd want to sit with a little bit more, but I can understand why the first thought through people's minds is, would Cliff make sense as the offensive coordinator there if Jesse Minter would get the job? I get how you arrive at that place. He wouldn't have to move, probably.

Like, how far could he possibly be from Baltimore's facility? Man. What a day. What a day, indeed. We will have plenty of, more coming your guys way on the athletic football show here this week. Still got Billing the Beast on Wednesday. We'll have midseason awards on Thursday.

And then we'll have a two-part wild card round preview coming your guys way on Friday. So a ton of stuff on the horizon. A big day in the NFL. Appreciate you guys spending a little bit of time with us. We'll talk to you very soon.