The Houston Texans signed longtime Ravens safety Ed Reed last month after emerging victorious in a purported bidding war with Baltimore. However, according to Baltimore Sun columnist Mike Preston, perception and reality differed significantly.
Preston wrote Monday that Ravens coach John Harbaugh wanted Reed back "as much as he wants a root canal."
Here's Harbaugh at the time of Reed's departure: “Ed has had a major impact on our organization and our community. He is a great player and a great friend. We will always be thankful for what we accomplished together.”
Harbaugh doesn't come out and say point-blank that he wanted Reed to stay, but there were people within the organization genuinely sad the 11-year pro left Baltimore.
But perhaps Harbaugh wasn't in that camp -- feelings that could conveniently be attributed to the alleged team "mutiny" back in October. However, according to former Ravens safety Bernard Pollard, there was no mutiny, and the current Tennessee Titan was "offended" that Harbaugh never came forward to address the erroneous accusation.
"Coach Harbaugh opened up the floor, he asked us our opinion on things that were going good and things that wasn’t going good and things that we needed to change,” Pollard said in a radio interview following his release. “We as humans, we tend to want to know or want to ask people things, but do we really want to know the truth? And so I spoke up, Ed spoke up, and if it was something that Coach Harbaugh didn’t like, we didn’t know that until now.
"Obviously we would have to say as players that somebody took it personal because for them not to come back and say that wasn’t a problem, there was no mutiny or anything else. I’m offended by that because we walked away from that situation thinking, ‘OK, everybody’s on the same page. We’re all good.’ Like I said, I’m just a little offended that the coach never stepped up and said anything.”
Clearly there are a lot of layers to this story and he full truth is unlikely to ever come to light. Still, given the release of Pollard and Reed's signing elsewhere, there is evidence to suggest that there was perhaps some sort of disconnect between at least some of the players and Harbaugh.
