OWINGS MILLS, Md. — John Harbaugh was prepared for the topic to come up Monday, so much so that he playfully thanked the questioner. You don’t coach for as long as he has in the NFL without being subject to questions about your job security. And even Harbaugh, who has had two losing campaigns in his 18 years in Baltimore and is flirting with a third, has heard the speculation near the end of previous seasons.

“This is sports,” Harbaugh said Monday. “That’s how it works.”

It is indeed. When you’re a popular preseason Super Bowl pick and touted as having the best roster in football, there are typically ramifications if you badly underachieve. And these Ravens have done just that. These Ravens are in the process of authoring arguably the most disappointing regular season in franchise history.

It’s come to this: They’ll need to beat the Green Bay Packers Saturday night at Lambeau Field, potentially behind backup quarterback Tyler Huntley, to stave off playoff elimination. But that might be temporary. That’s because even if the Ravens (7-8) win Saturday, they’d be eliminated if the Pittsburgh Steelers (9-6) defeat the Cleveland Browns (3-12) the following day.

So either a Ravens loss or a Steelers win this weekend, and the Week 18 rematch at Acrisure Stadium between the two longtime rivals would be void of playoff ramifications.

And the calls for Harbaugh’s job and potentially other organizational changes would only get louder.

Fans calling for owner Steve Bisciotti to move on from Harbaugh has become an annual rite of December/January. Rarely, though, has it even been in question with Bisciotti and the organization’s top decision-makers, who are the only ones that matter in this case.

Yet, this offseason feels like one in which Bisciotti will have a legitimate decision to make. His response will reveal whether he views this year as just a blip in Harbaugh’s tenure or a sign that the organization has plateaued under the longtime head coach and needs a different voice leading the team. It won’t be about whether Harbaugh is a good coach. The organization’s decision-makers believe he’s one of the top coaches and leaders in the NFL. The decision (or lack thereof) will be about whether they believe he’s still the right coach and right leader for the team.

To be clear, all of the 2025 Ravens’ issues can’t be pinned on Harbaugh, regardless of what the change-starved portion of the fan base would like you to believe. General manager Eric DeCosta is the architect of this roster, which has proven to be flawed and thin in the trenches. His offseason produced more misses than hits.

Quarterback Lamar Jackson’s myriad injury issues — he’s missed three games and potentially counting, and left early in two others — have posed challenges. A number of the team’s top players have been plagued by injuries or made uncharacteristic mistakes in different games. Harbaugh can’t possibly be blamed for the fact that future Hall of Fame running back Derrick Henry had fumbling issues this year, and it cost the Ravens in some key spots.

But it’s not been a good year for Harbaugh, either, starting in Week 1 when the Ravens blew a 15-point lead in the final four minutes in Buffalo. They’ve dropped a few games they had no business losing, adding to a string of late collapses under Harbaugh. There have been some curious personnel decisions, like sticking with struggling guards Daniel Faalele and Andrew Vorhees all year, keeping Keaton Mitchell on the bench early in the season, and then not making sure Henry was on the field late in Sunday’s crucial loss to the New England Patriots.

Even after they stabilized following a 1-5 start with a midseason five-game winning streak, achieved mostly by beating up on also-rans, the Ravens played poorly in back-to-back home losses to Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. Those games exemplified the Ravens’ issues at home all season as they lost a franchise-high six games at M&T Bank Stadium, including three in prime time. Losing repeatedly in front of the home fans and a national audience is a good way to put any head coach on the hot seat.

It also doesn’t reflect well on Harbaugh and his staff that so many players on the roster either regressed or didn’t play up to expectations. How many position groups can you say legitimately played up to or exceeded expectations? Did any, except maybe safety? How many returning players in key roles took a significant step forward? Punter Jordan Stout and cornerback Nate Wiggins did, and rookies such as Malaki Starks and Mike Green improved throughout the season, but it’s tough to make a case for too many others.

All of those factors will surely factor in Bisciotti’s thinking if he’s contemplating making a significant change, and there’s no guarantee that he is. Bisciotti is certainly in tune with the fan unrest, but if that drove his decision, he would have made a change years earlier.

What makes the situation so tricky to project is that it’s solely Bisciotti’s call. That doesn’t mean he won’t seek counsel from DeCosta, executive vice president Ozzie Newsome, team president Sashi Brown and the owner’s very small and private inner circle. But it’s his opinion that matters, and he’s spoken publicly so infrequently that it’s impossible to gauge just how frustrated he’s become. Bisciotti hasn’t done an interview with a group of local reporters in nearly four years.

Asked Monday about the dialogue he’s had with Bisciotti, Harbaugh said there’s been a “lot of messages” from the owner. The two talk regularly. That hasn’t changed. Harbaugh doesn’t report to DeCosta. He reports directly to Bisciotti, the structure the Ravens have long had in place.

“Steve has been fantastic. He’s a great leader,” Harbaugh said. “He’s supportive. He’s also challenging. Steve wants to win. He wants to be successful. I’ve been around a lot of competitors in this job or even in my family, and there’s no bigger competitor than Steve.”

It was only nine months ago that Bisciotti signed Harbaugh to a three-year contract extension, in addition to the year the Super Bowl XLVII winner already had left on his previous deal. Harbaugh is under contract through the 2028 season, so moving on now would leave Bisciotti absorbing three years of a contract for one of the highest-paid coaches in the league, while also paying the going rate for a new coach.

That’s not insignificant. While it’s notable to point out that Bisciotti fired former head coach Brian Billick following the 2007 season after signing him to a three-year extension a year earlier, that’s nowhere close to the same situation. Billick was hired by the Modell family and was never Bisciotti’s guy. Billick’s brash and at times abrasive personality wore on Bisciotti, too.

Harbaugh, on the other hand, was an unconventional and highly successful hire by Bisciotti after Jason Garrett turned down the Ravens’ coaching vacancy. Harbaugh and Bisciotti have had a very close relationship throughout the head coach’s tenure. Moving on from his longtime head coach would be a deeply personal decision.

Bisciotti, when speaking publicly about his football team in the past, has praised Harbaugh’s ability to adapt and evolve as a head coach and his resilience in dealing with adversity. It would surprise no one if Bisciotti challenges Harbaugh to make staff changes and gives Harbaugh and DeCosta, who also have a strong working relationship, an offseason to fix what ailed the 2025 Ravens and another year with Jackson to make a run at that elusive Super Bowl.

However, it would be unfathomable if some notable changes weren’t made after a season that has played out like this one. Recent Ravens teams have been accused of underachieving in January, failing to get over the playoff hump despite having an MVP quarterback and one of the most talented rosters in the league. This team has underachieved from the jump, despite how hard it’s played and the challenges it’s faced. Running it back with only minor tweaks would be a very hard sell.

The question is how wide-ranging the changes will be and whether they’ll reach the head-coaching level. Really, only Bisciotti knows the answer to that, and it’s quite possible that his decision hasn’t been made yet. After all, the Ravens still controlled their playoff destiny as of five days ago.

It’s also quite conceivable that Harbaugh will have a say in what happens, whether that’s in the next few weeks or sometime down the road. Maybe Harbaugh would be buoyed by a change of scenery and a new challenge. He’s one of the most highly regarded coaches in the NFL and wouldn’t be out of work for long, assuming the 63-year-old would want to continue coaching.

Change, as Harbaugh has said in the past, can be good. And he’s seen firsthand how his former boss, Andy Reid, was invigorated by moving from Philadelphia to Kansas City.

For now, though, Harbaugh says his only focus is on beating the Packers Saturday night.

“Coaching at any level is a day-to-day job, and your job is to do the best job you can today, and to do everything you can to help your players and your coaches — if you’re a head coach — be the best they can be every single day,” Harbaugh said. “It’s never been about keeping a job, and there’s no such thing as ‘your’ job or ‘my’ job. We have responsibilities, and we’re given opportunities to steward those responsibilities, and you’re given a job to do that until you’re not.

“Anything after today, I’m not thinking about, because it’s not given for us to think about. We don’t have control over that, except for the job we do today. And if we do a good enough job today, then the opportunity to do that job or a different job will be there tomorrow, and that’s what you hope for.”