John Harbaugh
Opening Statement
"It was a difficult loss. Obviously there was a lot of anguish after a game like that. It was a hard-fought, long, tough football game. I'm always proud of the way our guys compete. We fight and we will come out of this, and we will find a way to attack our next game."
On if the inclement weather was discussed prior to the game"Yes, there were some contingencies. The NFL let us know what the situation was. It's always a possibility."
On if he'd ever been a part of a game with so many delays"I think we've led the league in delays over the last few years."
*On what it was like emotionally to have so many ups and downs
"*It's all there. It's how this league is. It's life. It's just the way it goes. Our guys fought and they came back out and battled and we made mistakes and we made plays and in the end we came up a little bit short. I heard Joe [Flacco] just say, 'It might be hard to convince people. There are going to be a lot of skeptics out there who don't want to believe it, but we will keep fighting.' We'll come back next week. We'll come back home for a few weeks and will get ourselves back in this thing. That's what we've got to do, so we'll go to work and try to do that."
On what the two hour delay was like
"I don't really want to get into all that. It was what it was. I haven't analyzed it. It was two hours."
On if there was anything else Lardarius Webb could have done to cover the long pass
"I thought he had good coverage. It was a well-thrown ball in those circumstances. The tight end is a big man. He was kind of out of Lardarius's reach, and made a nice play."
On the success of Baltimore's running game and who to attribute it to
"I'll see the tape. I'm sure we blocked a little bit better. We did a better job with it as far as gaining some yards but I'll have to see the tape to find out more."
On if Ngata Haloti ever got close to playing
"I'm not sure how to answer that."
On if there were any other updates on injuries
"No."
Ray Rice, RB
On the improvement in the running game
"Our O-line got a head on the hat. Under the circumstances, with the weather, we knew we had to run the ball and we did a good job today. We're heading in the right direction. I'd love to get the win, but it's just the way that things have been shaking lately. Needless to say, we are getting better. I'm not going to say any more about that. We are getting better. We've shown a lot of drastic improvement in the run game today and that's something we've been criticized [for], so for us to go out there and do what we did in the run game, that's a positive. Like I said before, before I talk about any stat, the only thing that really means anything to me is the 'W.' So, it's a tough one, but we have to get ready for the New York Jets next week."
On the offensive line
"Those guys really got the edge sealed. I kind of made a joke with the guys on the sideline that I didn't know what to do with a hole that big. They got the job done. All of my success today really attributes to the O-line getting a head on the hat. I did what I needed to do when it came to dealing with the safeties, I got my pads down lower. That's something I look forward to keep doing. It's just something that we've been working on. It looked like that in practice and we're going to continue to try and do that."
On dealing with the delay
"I thought we weathered it not bad. The delay always stops something. When you've got momentum and your juices (are) flowing, you want to keep going. From my standpoint as a running back, I run the ball for a 47-yard run and then at the end of the first quarter, you're talking about a delay. I mean, I'm ready to roll. But, needless to say, I'm just glad that I was able to get my feet back up under me with the field conditions. I really didn't slip much. I just wanted to get a win."
On whether there was anticipation before the game for a delay
"No, I just made sure that I had the right shoes and the right gloves and was just like if it came down, it came down. We were just hoping there wasn't going to be any lightning or something like that."
On the last possession of regulation
"They just made a good play. That's just a good credit to them. You know, they hit the gaps and tried to make me bounce and spill it. You know, that's just a good play, but we were rolling. There was no need for us to sub right there. We had our timeouts. The question might have been could we have gone goal line and put a different package in there, but, we had them rolling. We were going to go for it right there and we did. But, we knew we had three (points). We had to take our best shot and the best way to do it down there is to spread them out. But, the linebacker made a good play and shot the gap and that's just a good play by him."
On making a run now that they are 4-6
"We just have to take care of business. We got the New York Jets next week. If you look at where we're at right now, we really just – and I know it's getting old – got to take care of business. We've got a couple of home games ahead of us. We've got to take care of everything. As far as the team, you know, I think guys know what's ahead of us. We've got to turn this thing around, get better every day and try to shake this thing up and put ourselves back in the hunt."
Joe Flacco, QB
On the last drive in regulation
"I thought we did a good job of getting down there, we just need to put the ball in the end zone, obviously."
On whether he felt there was pass interference on the third down play in overtime
"I thought he got held, but that's just me in game time. You guys probably had a better view of it than I did."
On how frustrating this loss is
"Yeah, it's pretty frustrating. You come out and put 10 quick ones up and you feel like you're going pretty good, you feel like you're able to do what we wanted to do against them and you have the delay. You come out in the second half and the weather was just crazy. We kind of got out of rhythm. It's frustrating because I felt like we had the ability to really let it go today and explode on offense and we just didn't do it."
On how much the weather was a factor
"The wind was pretty crazy, but the bigger issue was that the ball, every time you got it – when Gino (Gradkowski) had to snap it out of a divot – it was either wet or had all kinds of mud on it. This was an issue with some of the timing stuff on getting a grip on it quick enough. If we could sit back there with some time on those rhythm plays, it wasn't too bad. But, you guys saw it out there. It was pretty crazy."
On the difficulty of having to wait two hours
"I don't know if it was really that difficult or what it was. It was just something that we dealt with. It was just what we had to do. You kind of go back in the locker room and get something in your stomach because you knew that you weren't going to be able to for a while. It was a long day, it was a long game, and, you know, we didn't persevere as well as we wanted to and get through it."
On the pass attempt to Torrey Smith in the end zone toward the end of regulation
"I saw him late as I got my head up and he was definitely sitting in there… he definitely found a hole in there and if I was probably able to get it to him a little quicker, we might have had a shot. I'll have to go back and look at it because by the time I got to him, everything was just converging on him and I felt like I had to put it up high and give him a chance or nobody else."
On what he saw on the pick-6
"I saw Vonta (Leach) open in the flat and the next thing you know, I saw a guy run the other way with the football… he was just a lineman. You're not really paying too much attention to him. You're trying to get a read down field and we had just a little curl-flat combo going, and Vonta came pretty open."
On his other interception
"I was just trying to give Dallas (Clark) a 1-on-1 shot up the middle where he was running with the MIKE linebacker and the guy made a pretty decent play."
On being 4-6
"It's tough. Listen, we're close and it's tough to continue to tell yourself and convince everybody else that you just have to keep going, keep going onto the next game, but that's what we're going to do. No matter how tough it is, we're going to push through it and come out of this thing on the other side. We just have to concentrate on right now and getting better right now to win the next football game. We can't look too far ahead. It's kind of easy to do that because you want to fall into the trap and do that a little bit, but we just have to take care of business right now and it will all play itself out."
Dallas Clark, TE
On his first catch of the game
"I'll enjoy that after the season, but right now that's not the point. It's unfortunate."
On his catch on fourth and four
"It was a drag [route] and Joe [Flacco] put it out where I could reach it, away from the defender and I was able to bring it back in."
On if veteran leadership needs to take over moving forward
"It's everything. Everyone needs to improve just a little bit better and start winning these close games."
Torrey Smith, WR
On his touchdown reception
"I ran kind of quick slate and Joe just squeezed it through the window and I made a play."
On if the wind was a major factor on the Raven offense
"At times. Some times worse so than others. They had to deal with the exact same thing so it's not really an excuse. Obviously it affects the way you approach your gameplan and how you're going to use it."
On today being a move forward type of day
"We can sit here and complain all day about how we lost or coulda, woulda, shoulda, but it isn't going to get us anywhere. We might as well just go on and worry about things we can control and that's next week against the Jets."
On if this is regrouping game for the Ravens
"I wouldn't say it's regrouping. We know what we do every week. We work harder than anybody week in and week out, win, lose or draw. Obviously we're not satisfied with where we are, but we're going to stick together, keep fighting. We didn't lay down for anything. We just have to finish a little better. That's really been the difference in all these games. It's not like we're getting blown out or anything. We're losing close games. We know what we need to fix. At the end of the day we just have to do it."
On if the weather delay affected their momentum
"That's how it's been treating us, some delays. They had to sit around the same amount of time we did. At the end of the day we have to go out and limit our mistakes and make plays. It's that simple. There's no magic change or anything. It's on us."
**Daryl Smith, LB
On the field conditions
"It's tough, but they were playing in it too. They were able to make some plays. We made some plays, but not enough."
On the Matt Forte touchdown
"He's a good player. They had a little screen play. I got there first, couldn't quite get him and I don't even know who else had a shot. They got enough for a touchdown."
On if the delay killed the Raven's momentum
"I don't know. We came in. They had to take a break like we did and we came back out. I really can't say."
Tandon Doss, WR
On what was the difference in the game
"It was one or two plays on either side of the ball. I couldn't make the catch at the end to keep things going. The defense made some plays. We've got to figure out what we need to do to start getting some wins because we've got a long season ahead."
On the effect the playing conditions had on the Ravens
"That's what we're here to do. No matter what the conditions are, we're supposed to be able to play ball, and be able to make plays when the ball is thrown to us. It did affect the game. We couldn't run routes at all. Every time you would plant, you were either slipping or falling. The wind was carrying the ball every direction. You just have to adjust to it."
On if those were the worst conditions he's ever played in
"I've never been on a field that messy and never played in a wind that bad, gusts from every direction, but I've got to make plays."
On if the delay affected the team
"I don't think it did on us. We were in here preparing still. We did what we had to do to get our minds right and go back out there and play ball. I don't think it had any affect on us."
On if this is a time to regroup
"Of course. We come to the next team. We have the Jets. I hope we take care of business."
