Chiefs vs. Ravens: John Harbaugh reflects on Week 3 loss

Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh gave a lot of credit to the Chiefs game plan.

By definition, one team had to lose. The shocking part was that the Baltimore Ravens lost as badly as they did to the Kansas City Chiefs.

Coming into the Week 3 showdown on Monday Night Football featuring both teams, it was clear that one of them would get knocked off of the top of power rankings for at least a couple weeks. At this point, there are still plenty of undefeated teams in both conferences, and the winner between the Ravens and Chiefs would have to wait behind them. Still, the nature of the Chiefs dominant win has to cast doubts about Baltimore’s ability to win the big game.

On Monday, the Chiefs rolled over the Ravens by a final deficit of 14 points, but the true distance between performances were much greater. The Chiefs left plenty of points on the field with a missed field goal, missed extra point, a dropped touchdown and a red zone fumble.

Baltimore head coach John Harbaugh knew the degree to which the Ravens were really beat and stated so in his comments to the press after the game.

"“We didn’t play well today,” said Harbaugh. “They beat us. They out-executed us. They out-game planned us. They just beat us. That’s the story tonight. Big picture stuff, all that, I don’t know. Obviously, they’re a better football team at this point in time. You win or you learn, and we have a lot to learn from this game right here.”"

The Chiefs came with a loaded bag of tricks and employed them all against the Ravens for 60 minutes. When asked about the Chiefs use of misdirection on offense, Harbaugh said they knew it was coming. They just couldn’t handle it.

"“We were expecting [the misdirection], we just didn’t handle it very well,” he said. “I thought what they did was really good, a lot of misdirection, jet screens, ghost motions—casper motions, as we call ’em—screens and double screens, crossing routes off of that, passes off of that, draws off of that. It was just a really well-executed game plan. It’s a lot of stuff they did and caused us a lot of problems.”"

The Ravens have the next three weeks to beat up on underwhelming opponents before facing another contender. The Washington Football Team, Cincinnati Bengals, and Philadelphia Eagles are the next three opponents for Harbaugh and company, which means the Ravens should look elite again fairly soon. That should make fans happy, but it also means it will be some time until we learn whether or not the Ravens really learned anything.

As for the Chiefs, they face the New England Patriots and Buffalo Bills in two of the next three weeks which means they can’t afford to let down their guard anytime soon. Fortunately they looked up to the task on Monday night.