About a month later, the Minnesota Vikings fought the Baltimore Ravens in a double ot barnburner. They set an NFL record for a home team with eight false start penalties, making history along the way. This performance was a huge departure from their opening season last year. In those first eight games, they were penalized for those same types of infractions just six times. The Ravens largely took advantage of these misplays, winning the closely fought contest 27-19.
Under the guidance of head coach John Harbaugh, the Ravens’ defense executed a strategy designed to disrupt the Vikings’ rhythm. Harbaugh was particularly pleased that his team was able to replicate the cadence of Vikings QB J.J. McCarthy. This tactic led to their foes challenging the envoys on the court.
“It was a variety of a couple things, but we’ve got to make sure we fix it, and we will,” Harbaugh stated after reviewing each of the false starts. He knew that the Ravens never focused on rattling an opponent’s timing. They even refrained from saying “set” or “hut.”
They were doing a lot of cadences. They were just running a ton of snaps on two trying to bait us into offsides,” Harbaugh added. And then they were doing a couple shifts where they could reveal cover man or cover zone and kind of look in and figure out what we were in, and they guessed a few times when they did that.
As was the case in Harbaugh’s 18 seasons with the Ravens, opponents could not remain sound. None of the teams ever had more than four false starts in a game. This huge spike in penalties created alarm bells about the Vikings’ game plan on a fundamental level, as the team’s plan of attack fell short in this area.
Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell accepted responsibility for the team’s failures in this area. “I’ve got to do a better job coaching this team,” he admitted. He did stress that his squad wasn’t ready enough for what the Ravens bring on that side of the ball.
“We didn’t have a game plan for that,” – John Harbaugh
As false start penalties cropped up during the game, Ravens’ coaching staff met the challenge head-on. Positional coaches and offensive coordinator Wes Phillips worked directly together to identify and fix these errors. Through all of the adversity, the Ravens were able to keep their heads and pull off a win.
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