OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Ravens coach John Harbaugh disputed the assertion made by Vikings running back Aaron Jones that Baltimore had any role in Minnesota’s eight false starts Sunday.
“We didn’t have a game plan for that,” Harbaugh said Monday. “If we did, I would’ve been happy, but we’re not going to do anything illegal.”
Minnesota committed the most false starts by an NFL home team in 16 years in the 27-19 loss. After the game, Jones said the Baltimore defense was making calls designed to simulate quarterback J.J. McCarthy‘s cadence.
NFL rules prohibit the use of “acts or words by the defensive team that are designed to disconcert an offensive team at the snap.”
Harbaugh said the Ravens have never said “set” or “hut” to throw off the cadence, but he acknowledged that Jones’ comments caught his attention, which led him to rewatch every one of the Vikings’ false starts.
“None of them did we stem. Not one [time] did we move,” Harbaugh said. “They were doing a lot of cadences. They were doing a lot of [snaps] on two trying to draw us offsides. And then they were doing some shifts where they could uncover man [or] zone and try to see what we were in, and they jumped a few times when they were doing that to try to get to their alerts and their change of plays.”
Before Sunday, Ravens opponents had been flagged six times for false starts in eight games, which ranked as the third fewest in the NFL this season. In Harbaugh’s 18 seasons with the Ravens, no opponent had previously committed more than four false starts in a game.
Harbaugh made the point that it was only Jones who accused the Ravens of wrongdoing.
“So, like [Vikings] Coach [Kevin] O’Connell said: It wasn’t anything we were doing,” Harbaugh said.
O’Connell took accountability for the false starts Monday.
“I’ve got to do a better job coaching this team,” O’Connell said. “Clearly, when you have pre-snap issues like that in-game, not just relying on position coaches and [offensive coordinator Wes Phillips] to get things fixed and flip over to the defensive side. I’ve got to be directly involved with some of those things.
“… We have the benefit of going through each one as its own thing, and don’t know if there’s necessarily the smoking gun that maybe I thought [Sunday]. It’s a variety of a couple things, but we’ve got to make sure we fix it, and we will.”
ESPN’s Kevin Seifert contributed to this report.
