Ravens coach John Harbaugh is still angry with the Chicago Bears nearly three months after a botched draft-day trade with the team.
In a Tuesday interview with WMVP-AM in Chicago, Harbaugh once again questioned the Bears' ethics and said the Ravens would be reluctant to make another trade with the team.
"It was disappointing," Harbaugh said via ESPN Chicago. "They can get mad at me if they want, but I'm not buying the mistake thing. It wasn't a mistake. They knew what they were doing."
In this year's first round, the Ravens and Bears agreed on a trade in which they would switch places in the first round and the Ravens would receive Chicago's fourth-round pick in return. Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome called the NFL with three minutes remaining to inform the league of the deal, but the Bears never phoned the league because of a reported miscommunication (Bears general manager Jerry Angelo said the confusion was caused when a pair of Bears staff members thought the other was phoning in the trade).
Under NFL rules, both teams have to confirm the trade to make it official.
After the clock expired, the Ravens drafted cornerback Jimmy Smith with the 27th pick (Kansas City jumped ahead to select 26th), and the Bears went on to get their targeted player, offensive tackle Gabe Carimi, with the 29th pick.
The Bears extended an apology to the Ravens, but not the fourth-round pick.
"They recognized he wasn't getting calls from the team behind them, and they basically stalled for over a minute, telling us they had called the trade in," Harbaugh said. "They hadn't called the trade in. They said it was a mistake. Those guys have been doing it for a long time, c'mon."
When ESPN Chicago contacted the Bears on Tuesday, a team official said "We've moved on months ago."
Harbaugh isn't the first Ravens official to vent his anger. Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti publicly expressed his disappointment in the Bears' owners a day after the botched trade.
"You communicate back and forth. And someone's responsible for calling a trade in," Harbaugh said Tuesday. "There's no way to not get that done. We saw on TV that they had their guy on the phone and he was who they were talking to, and then they drafted him."
Harbaugh added, "So they basically just stole two spots from us, and that's not OK. That's not something ... it's not ethical, it's not right. And I personally agree with our owner Steve Bisciotti that they should have been held accountable for it. But also it is what it is, they didn't do anything illegal. We were just disappointed with it."
Asked whether the Ravens would be reluctant to trade with the Bears in the future, Harbaugh said, "Of course. How do you know that they actually called a trade in? I know one thing, we'll be a lot more careful with all of our... we basically just took them at their word, and obviously that was a mistake."
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