I say the coaching. Joe has always been a mediocre quarterback who randomly goes on hot streaks. While Ozzie has whiffed horribly in some cases (the 2009, 2010, 2012 draft classes and the 1st and 2nd round of 2013), Harbaugh has also failed to develop any players to the best of their abilities. Even with mediocre drafting, a decent coach will develop at least a few players. The team basically has no identity or leadership on either side of the ball. He’s terrible in countless aspects of the game, as I’ll outline below:
He still defers to bad coordinators on both sides of the ball to my knowledge and he’s gone on record both trashing the fan base for criticism of their poor performances and has a history of throwing players under the bus in post game after they were put in position to fail. He saw no problems with the horrific performances Cam Cameron gave every week as OC and wasn’t actually on board with his being fired when he should have been fired after 2010 as opposed to late in 2012 Marc trestman was just as bad an he stood up for him too. The last few years Marty Mornhinweg hasn’t been much better and he seemingly hasn’t had an issue there either. He stayed defending Dean Pees as DC when he would teach bad tackling technique and emphasize a style of defense that relied on soft coverage and needed good tackling to even have a chance at being effective. He also was a big fan of Greg Mattison, who’s defense blew 7 fourth quarter leads in his last season before heading off to coach in college (2010). At the same time, he clashed with both Rex Ryan and Chuck Pagano when they were in town and both did a phenomenal job on defense, having to be convinced by the players to not fire Rex when he first got hired. That’s not a coincidence. He still provides little input, if any on either side of the ball, which is inexcusable for an 11 year guy. They frequently are among the most flagged teams in the league as well, showing a lack of discipline, an issue dating all the way back to just his second season on the sidelines.
Preparation is still an issue too. They regularly start games poorly on offense. I can’t recall the numbers last year, but from 2014-16, I don’t think they had more than 2-3 opening possessions where they got into the end zone, and moving the ball at all in the first quarter is frequently a struggle. He also stays making 0 halftime adjustments and getting killed in the second half. He still wastes challenges and mismanages the clock in a way Andy Reid or Herm Edwards would laugh at too.
Going into this season, since he took over the ravens had an 18-39 record against teams that made the playoffs during the season, with their 5-0 mark in that category in 2011 being the extreme outlier. Every other year they finished multiple games under .500 against good teams.
They play poor situational football overall. In 2010 alone the defense blew 7 fourth quarter leads as I mentioned, in large part because they don’t adjust for the situation they’re in or have the players prepared for pressure situations. Then from 2012-17 the defense lost 24 separate games just by either failing to get off the field or by giving up the losing score on its final possession. During that span, nothing about their philosophy for late game situations changed whatsoever even as they lost an average of 25% of all games on their schedule over a 6 year span in this manner alone. Just staying in prevent defense late in games no matter the score or time left on the clock. Three of the last four seasons where they missed the playoffs, all they had to do was hold a late lead against Pittsburgh or beat the bengals who had nothing to play for and they’d have been in. They embarrassed themselves all 3 times.
In short he possesses the ego and arrogance of Greg Schiano, Brad Childress, and Josh McDaniels mixed with the coaching acumen of Jason Garrett or Rich Kotite. Bernard Pollard just went on record saying in his opinion that Harbaugh had nothing to do with their super bowl win over the niners and that they won in spite of him, and I’m inclined to agree. Most of the worst qualities of his coaching were on display all game long. He’s long overdue to get the axe just for chasing him, Boldin, and Ed Reed out of town after the super bowl. He even wanted to bush the squirrel dance when he first arrived. If you need more proof, look at how they lost in the playoffs in 2009-11 and 2014. No good reason he should’ve had this long a leash.
