John Harbaugh's Ravens Blew 18 Double-Digit Leads. His New Giants Team Blew Five Last Season.

John Harbaugh's Ravens teams lost 18 games after leading by 10 or more points in the second half, the most of any NFL head coach since 1991, according to the New York Post. Eight of those collapses over the previous 10 seasons came with a double-digit lead in the fourth quarter — the most in the league, two more than San Francisco's Kyle Shanahan, according to an Associated Press tally last September. Two of Harbaugh's 11 playoff losses involved a blown double-digit lead.

The collapses

In Week 1 of last season, Baltimore led Buffalo 40-25 with 11:42 to play after a 46-yard Derrick Henry touchdown run, and lost 41-40 on a Matt Prater field goal as time expired. Buffalo's win probability fell as low as 1.1% in the fourth quarter, per NFL Next Gen Stats. Buffalo scored on its final three possessions; Henry fumbled at the Baltimore 30 with 3:06 left. The Ravens scored 40 points, rushed for 235 yards and lost — the first team in NFL history to do all three in one game. Teams with those numbers had been 277-0.

Since 2022, the other double-digit collapses came against Miami, Buffalo, the Giants, Cleveland, Las Vegas and New England. By last September, Baltimore had lost eight games since 2021 in which it held a win probability of at least 90%, according to ESPN. Counting leads of any size, NFL Research put the number at 46 blown fourth-quarter leads since 2008, tied for the second-most in the NFL over that span.

Harbaugh's Baltimore tenure ended with a blown double-digit lead and a missed kick. The Ravens led Pittsburgh by 10 in Week 18, trailed 26-24 at the end, and rookie kicker Tyler Loop missed a 44-yard field goal on the final play. Baltimore finished 8-9 and missed the playoffs. The team fired Harbaugh two days later.

The Baltimore Banner reviewed eight of Baltimore's late-game collapses possession by possession. In those games, Baltimore's defense allowed 114 points on 23 late possessions — 1,166 yards on 171 plays — and forced one punt with no takeaways. The offense scored 11 points on its 22 possessions and committed nine turnovers.

The playoff record

Harbaugh's two postseason double-digit collapses came in divisional-round losses. In January 2011 at Pittsburgh, Baltimore led 21-7 at halftime and lost 31-24. In January 2015 at New England, Baltimore led 28-14 in the third quarter and lost 35-31. Both games were on the road.

The playoff losses most associated with Harbaugh do not involve blown leads. In the 2023 AFC Championship at home against Kansas City, Baltimore never led; the game was tied 7-7 in the first quarter and the Chiefs led the rest of the way. In the January 2023 wild-card game at Cincinnati, the score was tied 17-17 when Sam Hubbard returned a fumble 98 yards; Baltimore's largest lead had been one point. In the January 2012 AFC Championship at New England — the Lee Evans drop, the Billy Cundiff missed field goal — the Ravens never led by more than four.

In Super Bowl XLVII, Baltimore led San Francisco 28-6 in the third quarter, saw the lead cut to 34-29, and won 34-31.

The other side of the ledger

Harbaugh's teams also had more leads to protect than most. From 2021 through 2024, Baltimore carried big fourth-quarter leads more often than all but a few NFL teams — more often than Buffalo or Kansas City, according to FS1's Colin Cowherd.

Harbaugh won 193 games in Baltimore, made the playoffs 12 times in 18 seasons and won Super Bowl XLVII. Only 11 coaches in NFL history have won more games — a list that includes Don Shula, Bill Belichick, Tom Landry and Andy Reid, per Pro Football Network. His response to the blown-lead criticism last September was essentially a denominator argument: "We've been in a lot of games over the years where we've had leads. I think it's actually 152 since 2008 and we've won 140 of them." His count has not been independently verified.

In New York

The Giants, who hired Harbaugh on Jan. 17, blew five fourth-quarter leads of their own through 12 weeks last season, four of them by double digits. The first four came under head coach Brian Daboll, who was fired in November; the fifth — an overtime loss to Detroit in which they allowed a 59-yard field goal to force overtime and a 69-yard touchdown on the first snap of the extra period — came under interim coach Mike Kafka, and the team fired defensive coordinator Shane Bowen the next morning, per CBS Sports. They finished 4-13.

The difference is how the two teams got there. Baltimore's collapses came during an 18-year run in which Harbaugh won 193 games and routinely built late leads. Daboll's Giants went 20-40-1 and had far fewer games to protect. Last season, though, the failure looked familiar: five of their first 10 losses came after they had led in the fourth quarter. The worst was almost a replay of Baltimore's Buffalo collapse — New York led Denver 26-8 with 10:14 remaining and lost 33-32.

Harbaugh has not publicly addressed the blown-lead record since taking the job, but late-game work has been an emphasis of his first Giants training camp. "We throw everything at them right away on every situation we can think of," he said Aug. 1, saying those situations "are game-winning play opportunities usually" and adding: "It usually comes down to that."

The Giants open the preseason Saturday against Minnesota at MetLife Stadium.