OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Ravens coach John Harbaugh disputed the assertion made by Vikings running back Aaron Jones that Baltimore had any role in Minnesota's eight false starts on Sunday.
«We didn't have a gameplan for that,» Harbaugh said Monday. «If we did, I would've been happy, but we're not going to do anything illegal.»
Minnesota committed the most false starts by an NFL home team in 16 years in the 27-19 loss to the Ravens. After the game, Jones said the Baltimore defense was making calls designed to simulate quarterback J.J. McCarthy's cadence.
NFL rules prohibit the use of «acts or words by the defensive team that are designed to disconcert an offensive team at the snap.»
Harbaugh said the Ravens have never said «set» or «hut» to throw off the cadence, but he acknowledged that Jones' comments caught his attention, which led him to re-watch every one of the Vikings' false starts.
«None of them did we stem. Not one [time] did we move,» Harbaugh said. «They were doing a lot of cadences. They were doing a lot of [snaps] on two trying to draw us offsides. And then they were doing some shifts where they could uncover man [or] zone and try to see what we were in, and they jumped a few times when they were doing that to try to get to their alerts and their change of plays.»
Before Sunday's game, Ravens opponents had been flagged six times for false starts in eight games, which ranked as the third-fewest in the NFL this season. In Harbaugh's 18 seasons with the Ravens, no opponent had previously committed more than four false starts in a game.
Harbaugh made the point that it was only Jones who accused the Ravens of wrongdoing.
«So, like [Vikings] coach [Kevin] O'Connell said: 'It wasn't anything we were doing,'» Harbaugh
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