{"id":32,"date":"2026-09-10T08:00:30","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T13:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/who-are-those-guys\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T15:15:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T19:15:52","slug":"who-are-those-guys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/who-are-those-guys\/","title":{"rendered":"Who are those guys?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MIKE BURKE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allegany Communications Sports<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much has changed since that January day when Baltimore Ravens rookie kicker Tyler Loop gagged a 44-yard field goal attempt to send the Pittsburgh Steelers to the playoffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oddly enough, Loop has not been one of those changes as he remains the Ravens\u2019 kicker, at least for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the NFL now upon us, the Steelers and the Ravens, who have long played to one of the great rivalries in NFL history, will open their seasons Sunday with new head coaches for the first time in 19 and 18 years respectively, and the fans of both teams seem to be quite fine with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Steelers went against their history and hired 62-year-old Pittsburgh native Mike McCarthy to succeed Mike Tomlin, who resigned in January after the Steelers\u2019 latest playoff loss, and to reunite with quarterback Aaron Rodgers, as the two teamed up for a Super Bowl victory with the Green Bay Packers..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ravens, on the other hand, stayed true to their history by hiring 43-year-old Jesse Minter to be a first-time head coach just as they had with their previous head coaches, Brian Billick and John Harbaugh, both of whom coached the Ravens to Super Bowl titles and then proceeded to wear out their welcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While McCarthy has earned his stripes as an offensive-minded head coach, Minter is the former defensive coordinator of the Los Angeles Chargers, and he returns to Baltimore, where he had been on Harbaugh\u2019s staff, as one of the most sought after candidates in the most recent NFL hiring derby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sound familiar, Orioles fans? How\u2019s that been working out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a Ravens fan, even when he was a young head coach, I viewed Mike Tomlin as being one of an old soul. I\u2019ve always liked him and admired him other than on Thanksgiving night on national television when he (not so) coyly stood on the field to prevent the Ravens\u2019 Jacoby Jones from returning a kickoff for touchdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tomlin had 201 wins total in 19 seasons as the Steelers coach, 193 regular-season wins, the same number as Chuck Noll, and he also guided the Steelers to a Super Bowl championship and 19 consecutive non-losing seasons, which all has to count for something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then again, not a single playoff win since 2017 had to count for something, as well, which Tomlin clearly recognized, so he resigned his Steelers post and will now do television for NBC, at which he is certain to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word on Minter, who succeeds Harbaugh in Baltimore, is that while he commands the room, he is not a dictator. He is a believer in relationships and thrives on feedback from his coaches and players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minter says it\u2019s about the team sticking together, which transitions into being \u201cat our best when our best is needed,\u201d something the Ravens have not been in quite some time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo first-time head coach is ready for everything,\u201d said Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea, who hired Minter away from the Ravens in 2021, \u201cbut here\u2019s the thing about Jesse. He won\u2019t act like he knows everything. He\u2019s a problem solver. He\u2019s not going to be stubborn and just stick to something that\u2019s not working. He\u2019s going to be honest and try to fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many Ravens fans, Minter seems to be a welcome change. Then again, it had gotten to the point that any change would have been welcome if only to escape the alternative universe of Being Harbaugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, he is a Hall of Fame coach, by far the winningest coach in Ravens history, and being the longest-tenured head coach in Baltimore professional sports history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the truth of John Harbaugh\u2019s tenure is his recent so-called great teams failed to play their best when it mattered the most. There were eight blown double-digit leads in the past four years, there were horrible playoff performances at home against Tennessee and Kansas City, and then there were all of the mistakes two years ago in Buffalo, highlighted by Mark Andrews\u2019 drop in the end zone of the potential game-tying two-point conversion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ravens had become a team that did the same thing over and over, such as abandoning the running game and routinely exercising poor clock management, while expecting different results that, naturally, did not come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ravens of recent vintage consistently played their worst in the biggest moments of the biggest games \u2013 unlike the John Harbaugh Ravens of 2008-2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the quarterback transition from Joe Flacco to Lamar Jackson, Harbaugh had reinvented the Ravens into being great enough to be the league\u2019s biggest disappointment in the end, and Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, close friends with Harbaugh, had seen enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe reasons (for firing Harbaugh) \u2013 and they can\u2019t get traced back to John necessarily \u2013 but, factually, we led the league in giving up big leads in the fourth quarter,\u201d Bisciotti said. \u201cIt\u2019s not something winning organizations do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have underperformed based on our seeding in the playoffs. Very disappointing. A lot of our great players involved making mistakes that they don\u2019t make in the regular season very often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut I just thought it was something in the last 10 years we\u2019ve won the third most games in the NFL, yet people were saying we were underachievers. And we were. We had to own that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harbaugh is now the head coach of the New York Giants where there is no way for him to go but up. Thus he likely will \u2013 before he gets on the nerves of New York as he did Baltimore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Give it the length of his current contract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ravens and the Steelers in the meantime embark upon seasons of either, \u201cI told you so,\u201d or \u201cbe careful what you wish for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the time had long arrived for both teams to find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began. covering sports for the Prince George\u2019s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at mikeburke934@gmail.com<\/a>. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Much has changed since that January day when Baltimore Ravens rookie kicker Tyler Loop gagged a 44-yard field goal attempt to send the Pittsburgh Steelers to the playoffs. Oddly enough, Loop has not been one of those changes as he\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allegany-communications-sports-w-mike-burke","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions\/60"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio.wvrcdev.com\/cumberlandsmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}