When he got called in for an interview with the Ravens after the 2007 season, Harbaugh felt he connected with Newsome and Baltimore owner Steve Bisciotti. They wanted to hire Jason Garrett, but after Garrett decided to stay with Dallas, and after Belichick called Bisciotti in the dead of night to recommend Harbaugh (they'd met while Belichick was scouting John's players at Cincinnati), the Ravens picked the Eagles assistant over their own defensive coordinator, Rex Ryan.
"Bill Belichick doesn't give out recommendations for everybody," said Newsome, who had worked with him in Cleveland. Harbaugh's first five seasons ended in five consecutive playoff appearances, yet he had to navigate his share of conflict to gain complete control of the team. The Baltimore defense was about as loyal to Ryan as the 1985 Bears defense had been to Rex's old man, Buddy, and Harbaugh didn't have the gravitas to change that dynamic. Even though Harbaugh promoted Ryan to assistant head coach in 2008, the defense had put up a wall.
"We were divided," Harbaugh said. "I think everybody knows that."
Harbaugh credited Ryan for making emotional pleas to his players to respect Harbaugh's authority, but the following season, as head coach of the Jets, Ryan said he thought it was "B.S." that Baltimore didn't hire him. Problems remained long after Ryan departed. Harbaugh and Ed Reed went weeks without speaking to each other. With Ray Lewis injured in 2012, Yahoo! reported that the Ravens had a contentious meeting with their coach in the middle of the 2012 season that featured player grievances over what they viewed as Harbaugh's negative and inconsistent tone. Harbaugh acknowledged that the meeting happened; he declined to name the Ravens most critical of him. He said some of the criticism turned personal, some defensive players were upset about the offense and this anything-goes intervention reflected what he called his open-mic policy of letting his players say whatever's on their minds.
"This meeting we just had," Harbaugh recalled saying as the therapy session ended, "would happen in no other meeting room in the National Football League. There's no other coach who would tolerate what was said in here."
Three months later, the Ravens found themselves sitting on the winning Super Bowl bus. Reed was in Harbaugh's seat, and Harbaugh was in Newsome's seat. Nobody cared about protocol and control anymore.
Tom Brady and Ravens coach John Harbaugh greet each other before a 2010 game. Five years later, Brady "pissed off" Harbaugh with a controversial statement about how the Ravens should "study the rule book."
<img class=" lazyloaded imageLoaded " data-image-container=".inline-photo">Belichick ran three plays in that January 2015 game with normally eligible skill-position players reporting as ineligible, and the formations baffled the Ravens, inspired Harbaugh to take an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty (he should've called a timeout) and dramatically altered the momentum of a game the Patriots won 35-31. Harbaugh is still upset about it and still insistent that referee Bill Vinovich -- who announced the primary Patriot who was ineligible,
Shane Vereen, as a player the Ravens shouldn't cover -- didn't give his defense enough time to adjust.
"Maybe those guys gotta study the rule book and figure it out," Tom Brady said afterward.
Harbaugh didn't appreciate the comment. "I was pissed off," he said. "It was uncalled for. And the rules are deeper than that, and I know the rules, and I stand by why that play shouldn't have been allowed. ... So yeah, that should never have been said."
Brady made it up to Harbaugh five months ago, when they shared a private plane ride back from Michigan, where the two attended Jim Harbaugh's national signing day event on Feb. 3. They didn't discuss Brady's "rule book" dig or suspicions that Baltimore might've tipped off the
Indianapolis Colts about potentially under-inflated footballs before the 2015 AFC Championship Game. (The Ravens said their kicking consultant, Randy Brown, sent a text to Colts coach Chuck Pagano complaining that officials working Ravens-Patriots didn't let their kicking ball into the game). Brady talked about the endless work he put in on the journey from part-time Michigan starter to NFL greatness, and Harbaugh's daughter, Alison, a promising lacrosse player along for the ride, took in every word. "We'll go to practice now, and sometimes she'll say, 'I'm gonna Brady 'em today,'" Harbaugh said. "Which means, basically, 'I'm going to win everything in practice.'"
Yet there remains lingering bitterness from that divisional-round defeat -- directed at the officials but not at the Patriots. Harbaugh entered Gillette Stadium that day with a chance to challenge Belichick's standing as the league's best coach; since his hiring in 2008, Harbaugh held leads on the New England coach in postseason victories (10-4), Super Bowl victories (1-0) and head-to-head postseason victories (2-1). Belichick outmaneuvered him in the second half and won his fourth ring, and all the Ravens could do was lobby to have the league rules changed to make any such future formations harder to mask.
The Patriots returned to the AFC Championship Game last season, while the Ravens came undone. They lost six of their first seven games and lost Flacco,
Justin Forsett, Terrell Suggs,
Steve Smith Sr. and others to season-ending injuries. They had an absurd 20 players end up on injured reserve, the most since Harbaugh's hiring. The Ravens coach said he admires Belichick and likes him and sometimes lunches with him at league meetings, and he "regrets we are unable to be the kind of friends I think we would be if we weren't rivals in our conference. ... I think I'd be riding around on his boat if we weren't such rivals right now."
In the end, Harbaugh is less concerned about enhancing the relationship and more concerned about reestablishing his team as a viable threat to Belichick's extended dynasty.
"There was a thing that just came out that I happened to catch, the 25 worst villains of the Patriots," Harbaugh said of a MassLive.com ranking. "I think I was like 20th or 21st [19th]. I think that's a little low. I plan on making that higher in the future."
