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John Harbaugh meets with Sean McDermott after a playoff game.
The Baltimore Ravens saw their 2024 season come to an end with a defeat at the hands of the Buffalo Bills, and now they’re using the bitter loss as motivation to start the 2025 season.
The Ravens travel back to Buffalo, the site of their divisional-round playoff loss, to open the coming season. Both teams are expected to return to Super Bowl contention, and their Week 1 meeting could end up having massive playoff implications.
Speaking to reporters at the start of the week, Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said the team is using last year’s playoff loss as motivation.
John Harbaugh: ‘Certainly Motivated by Disappointment’
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Harbaugh was asked whether the team is looking at last year’s 27-25 loss as they prepare for the Bills. The Ravens coach said that is part of their preparation, along with looking at some preseason game tape, and agreed that the team is eager to avenge the loss that ended their season.
“Everything kind of motivates you, that’s probably true for any kind of circumstance,” Harbaugh said. “You’re certainly motivated by disappointment, and that’s something that motivates us.”
The Bills capitalized on a series of mistakes from the Ravens, including a fumble from quarterback Lamar Jackson and another from tight end Mark Andrews. The Ravens also had a chance to tie the game after a late touchdown, but Andrews saw the two-point conversion pass bounce off his hands and fall incomplete.
When asked if he was tempted to flush the memories from the game, Harbaugh said they would instead rewatch and learn from it.
“We have to understand how the game went, how they played us, what the schemes were,” he said. “There were a lot of chess moves that game that will be built on this game.”
Harbaugh added that they would watch again to see what went well for them that game and what didn’t. The Ravens ran the ball well, rushing for 176 total yards, while Jackson completed 18-of-25 passes for 254 yards with two touchdowns and one interception.
Ravens Still Bitter Over Playoff Loss
Harbaugh isn’t the only one reliving the pain of last year’s loss. Defensive tackle Nnamdi Madubuike was also asked if he rewatched the game film and said he did, though he admitted it wasn’t pretty.
“Yes, I have,” Madubuike said. “It’s not a good feeling. There’s things that we did good, things that we did bad, but the bad overrides the good. We really want to tighten the bolts on that.
“It will be great motivation. That’s the last game we played. To go back there and play the same team that we lost to that we believe we should’ve won, self-inflicted mistakes. Everybody’s pumped up. You want to get that bad taste out of your mouth.”
The Bills saw their season come to an end the following week with an equally devastating loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. Like the Ravens, the Bills suffered some costly mistakes and struggled to contain Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs’ offense.
Nathan Dougherty is a sports reporter covering the NFL for Heavy.com, with a focus on the Buffalo Bills, Detroit Lions and Miami Dolphins. Previously he wrote for the Rochester Business Journal and served as the assistant editor of athletic trade magazines Coaching Management, Athletic Management and Training & Conditioning. He is based out of Rochester, New York, and loves everything football. More about Nathan Dougherty
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