John Harbaugh says the Baltimore Ravens "Are Practicing Illegal Formations" to Use This Season
By Rob Perez
If you remember the 2015 AFC Divisional Playoff game between the Baltimore Ravens and the New England Patriots last season: John Harbaugh was noticeably and publicly upset with the New England Patriots running a four down linemen formation which the team “was not notified properly in advance of”…
and also claimed that the Patriots were permitted to illegally substitute players without repercussion.
" “We wanted an opportunity to be able to identify who the eligible players were,because what they were doing was they would announce the eligible player and Tom (Brady) would take it to the line right away and snap the ball before (we) even figured out who was lined up where. And that was the deception part of it. It was clearly deception. The officials told me after that they would give us the opportunity to do that, which they probably should have done during that series but they really didn’t understand what was happening. I had to go take the penalty to get their attention so they can understand what was going on.” "
Fast-forward to this weekend: Baltimore’s Head Coach hasn’t forgotten about the play, and went as far to tell USA Today that he’s brewing up his own “illegal formations” right now at minicamp, to have ready for this year…
"“We are working on formations – legal formations, illegal formations, unexpected formations,” Harbaugh said. “The first time we ran it, you heard [linebacker Terrell] Suggs out there saying, ‘That’s not legal, that’s not legal.’ We will not assume that the referees are going to understand or always get it right when a formation goes out on the field, so we’re working on everything.”"
John Harbaugh: Now that you’re teasing us with this football debauchery, if the Ravens’ offense doesn’t look like an NFL Blitz 64 Playbook this season…
…we’re all going to be thoroughly disappointed.
P.S. ‘Sub Zero’ and ‘Da Bomb’, to this day, remain the two most unstoppable plays in the history of sports video games and it’s not even up for debate.