John Harbaugh Throws Tyler Huntley Under The Bus For Goal Line Fumble; QB Explains What Happened

The Baltimore Ravens were less than one yard away from possibly winning Sunday’s playoff game against the Cincinnati Bengals.

In the fourth quarter, with the game tied at 17 and the ball near the goal line, instead of handing the ball off to a running back like, say, J.K. Dobbins, Ravens quarterback tried a sneak. As he jumped over the pile with the ball outstretched, Bengals linebacker Logan Wilson knocked the ball out of his hands, resulting in a 98 yard touchdown the other way, giving Cincinnati what would be the game-winning points in a 24-17 game.

After that play and on into the night, Huntley and Ravens head coach John Harbaugh were questioned both online and in person about what went wrong and why that particular play was called (Dobbins himself was one of those people).

“You decide whether you’re going to hand it off in the backfield or whether you want to quarterback sneak it. We felt like we had a good call; it’s a push-sneak play. It wasn’t executed the right way,” Harbaugh told the media after the game, savagely throwing Tyler Huntley under the bus. “Tyler went over the top; that’s a ‘burrow’ play. He has to go low on that. That’s the way the play is designed.

“We felt like that was the best call, we just didn’t execute right.”

Tyler Huntley, when he was asked about the ill-fated goal line play, responded, “I saw everybody packed in, just tried to go over the top. I thought I cleared the line. They just made a play and just happened to take it all the way back.”

He added, “At the time, I just felt like everybody was packed in, they shot for our linemen’s legs, the ‘backers felt pretty good up at the line. I just tried to make a play.

“I’m going to be thinking about that the whole offseason, how just one play, they won the game. It’s going to be hard, but it’s going to motivate me to grind hard, work hard, and be ready for next year.”

As for the Ravens’ inexplicably bad use of their timeouts and clock management at the end of the game, well, that’s all on John Harbaugh.

Oh, right, I forgot. It was all part of the script.