The Ravens’ long-time head coach has no interest in talking retirement or ending his coaching career.
On Friday, Baltimore Ravens Head Coach John Harbaugh and the team announced he has signed a three-year contract extension.
With Harbaugh being the second-longest tenured head coach in the NFL and being 62-years-old, he was asked during the NFL Owners Meetings on Monday how much longer he’s considering coaching for. Harbaugh, plainly, stated he has no interest in retiring any time soon.
“I’m happy to be alive! I hope that continues for awhile,” Harbaugh said. “Honestly, what [I’m] thinking about is how are we going to get better today? How can we get better? What do we need to do? Players, coaches, schemes. I mean, everybody thinks about it but it’s not really [at the] forefront of my mind. I just hope I make it there to make a decision at some point in time.”
Harbaugh said he’s not much spoken about the thoughts of retiring, but shared the same advice his father, Jack Harbaugh, gave to his younger brother Jim Harbaugh.
“I think my brother shared this recently,” John said. “[Jack told Jim], ‘You coach until you just can’t take it any more. There’s just no way you want to do it. You don’t even want to come to work any more. When you come to that point, you coach for two more years and then you move on.’ That’s dad’s advice.”
John’s coaching career has reached the 40-year mark after staring as a running backs coach at Western Michigan in 1984. Since becoming the Ravens’ head coach, Harbaugh has a career record of 185 wins to 115 losses (.617) and has won a Super Bowl championship and been named AP NFL Coach of the Year (2019).