As Super Bowl week officially kicks off today, few teams seem as far away from a berth in the title game as the Ravens.

The Ravens, who are nine months away from next season, have a novice head coach who still is sifting through résumés of potential staff members and a world of questions to answer following a 5-11 campaign.

The Ravens have plenty of expensive, injury and turnover-prone veterans, a Pro Bowl offensive tackle — Jonathan Ogden — who is contemplating retirement and the perception the team might be in transition.

At times, it is easy to forget the Ravens are just more than a year away from posting the AFC’s second-best record of 13-3 in 2006.

This story continues below
Advertisement

So, are the Ravens on the verge of a rebuild or a reload?

“I believe we have the nucleus of a team that can get back to the Super Bowl, and we felt that in the next five years, we had a better chance with a new coach than leaving [former coach] Brian [Billick] in that position,” owner Steve Bisciotti said on Dec. 31, the day he fired Billick.

Coach John Harbaugh and recently hired offensive coordinator Cam Cameron are the team’s only coaches, but it appears the Ravens are ready to welcome former defensive coordinator Rex Ryan back any day.

If Ryan returns, which is expected, the move likely will satiate star players who were miffed at his dismissal along with all of former coach Brian Billick’s staff. Ryan could also bring back many defensive coaches who were popular with the players.

Harbaugh has yet to meet with all of his players, but did speak to the team’s employees on Friday to introduce himself and share his philosophies.

Harbaugh’s next goal is to meet with the players.

“We’ll start building those relationships, communicating with those players and start just getting ideas,” Harbaugh said. “[We’ll] find out what they believe, see where they see the thing going, let them know who we are, what we’re about. And then, when it comes time for that first meeting, we’ll know what to say.”

Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome and the team’s scouts have spent much of the past two weeks analyzing college players for April’s NFL Draft, where the Ravens have the eighth pick. Given Bisciotti’s belief there is a championship inside the current crop of players, it seems unlikely the Ravens will rebuild like they did in 2002.

“As far as the plusses and minuses of each single guy, we’re going to spend a lot of time looking at that,” Harbaugh said. “What we’re going to try to do is we’re going to play to those guys strengths. Whatever our guys do well, we’re going to look for what they do well and we’re going to put them in a position to do those things well. That’s what smart football coaches do. That’s where we start.”

mpalmer@baltimoreexaminer.com