Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said he never would have tried to score that final TD late in the Ravens 31-13 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs late Friday night had it been a regular season game. He said that the Ravens would have taken a knee with the victory in hand, but since this was a pre-season game, the team needed to play to the final whistle in order to get the much needed practice that teams have missed due to the NFL Lockout that did away with all the mini-camps and OTA's.
When the Ravens took a timeout with five seconds left and holding a 24-13 lead, they knew they had the game won, but with the ball within scoring distance, they decided to practice their hurry-up sort-yardage offense and rookie RB Anthony Allen ran the ball in for the final margin of victory.
After the game, Chiefs head coach Todd Haley was reluctant to shake hands with Harbaugh as he was obviously miffed at the Ravens' coach's last moves of the game. Harbaugh understood his reason for being upset, but deflected any criticism by basing the move on just additional reps for the reserves that need to learn that type of situation in a game that might really matter, according to a story on Yahoo! Sports.
If this move pisses off the Chiefs and their head coach, then imagine how upset he will be when Kansas City is inviolved in a similar situation in the 2011 regular season. Perhaps the real reason Todd Haley was upset was the fact that the Ravens had just put another 30-spot on the Chiefs and dominated them for the second time in less than eight months to prove they still have a long way to go before they can be counted along with the Ravens among the NFL's elite.