PHILADELPHIA -- Moments after the Baltimore Ravens' 40-17 preseason loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, coach John Harbaugh told his players that they will learn from this.
There were no signs of concern or lack of confidence in the locker room after the Ravens tied their largest margin of defeat ever in a preseason game. The Ravens' players and coaches feel that Saturday night's debacle was the result of not being ready for the Eagles' frenetic pace and not an indication of trouble to come when the regular season begins in three weeks.
"We didn't prepare for it by design," Harbaugh said. "It's not something we're going to prepare for. I guess in the preseason, it's pretty effective in that sense. If we were playing in our third preseason game, we'd probably prepare for it. I know we'd prepare for it because we game plan a little bit more. There's no way we're going to game plan the second preseason game when we're still installing and trying to develop guys and find players and all that. So, we were doing the best we could."
The Ravens' first-team defense struggled to keep up with the fast-moving Eagles offense from the start. A group that included mostly Baltimore starters allowed 17 points, 179 yards and 14 first downs in the first three series.
Linebacker Terrell Suggs said the Ravens didn't see any of that style of offense in their three days of joint practices leading up to the game.
"Teams weren’t going to show their hands," Suggs said. "But they came out and they executed. Tip your hat off to them."
Harbaugh also noted there was an unexpected obstacle with communication. The Ravens didn't have their phones, so they couldn't relay calls to their players.
"We were out of position a bunch of times," Harbaugh said. "Guys didn't know what the call was because the phones are crackling up on us the whole time. So that made it really challenging for us."
The Ravens have only lost by 21 or more points in two previous preseason games. The first was a 24-3 loss at Washington in 2003, and the other was a 30-7 defeat at Minnesota in 2006.
In both of those seasons, the Ravens brushed off that tough loss and ended up winning the AFC North.
"You’ve all been around here a long time where we’ve run all four preseason games and we thought that we were going to go on and win the Super Bowl," Suggs said. "And we didn’t win nothing but five games in the regular season. You just learn from them."