By Jamison Hensley Nov 10, 2025, 05:13 PM ET
OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Ravens coach John Harbaugh on Monday pushed back against Minnesota running back Aaron Jones’ suggestion that Baltimore contributed to the Vikings’ eight false starts in Sunday’s 27-19 game.
‘We didn’t have a game plan for that,’ Harbaugh said. ‘If we did, I would’ve been happy, but we’re not going to do anything illegal.’
Minnesota, playing at home, committed its most false starts by a home team in 16 years. After the game, Jones said the Ravens’ defense was making calls meant to mimic quarterback J.J. McCarthy’s cadence — an action the NFL forbids when it is intended to disconcert the offense at the snap.
Harbaugh said the Ravens have never used words such as set or hut to try to disrupt a cadence, and Jones’ comments led him to review every one of the Vikings’ false starts.
‘None of them did we stem. Not one [time] did we move,’ Harbaugh said. He described Minnesota’s offense as running varied cadences, snapping on two to try to draw the defense offsides and using shifts to determine coverage. Harbaugh said several of the false starts came when the Vikings were executing those shifts to get to their alerts or change plays.
Through eight games this season, opponents of the Ravens had been penalized just six times for false starts, the third fewest in the NFL. Harbaugh added that in his 18 seasons with Baltimore no visiting team had previously committed more than four false starts in a game.
Harbaugh also noted that Jones was the only player to accuse the Ravens of wrongdoing.
Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell accepted responsibility for the pre-snap mistakes and said he needs to be more involved in correcting them during games.
‘I’ve got to do a better job coaching this team,’ O’Connell said. He acknowledged the team will review each false start and that there did not appear to be a single ‘smoking gun.’ Instead, he said, the issues were varied and require fixes on multiple fronts.
ESPN’s Kevin Seifert contributed to this report.
