Harbaugh said that nobody has seen that before, but his own players didn't have the same level of disdain for the play calls.
"We hadn't seen it this season," defensive end Chris Canty said. "Certainly we've talked about it in our meetings. That's one of those things that you can't anticipate. You just gotta see it and you gotta adjust to it. Unfortunately on that drive they were able to tempo things and keep things rolling and score a touchdown there, and that hurts. We weren't able to adjust to it quick enough."
The Patriots ended up scoring a touchdown on the drive as Tom Brady hit Rob Gronkowski in the end zone for five yards. New England would go on to score two more touchdowns later in the game, but they didn't go back to the ineligible receiver package. That damage had been done.
"They tricked us! Nah, just [kidding]," Lardarius Webb said. "They did that the whole drive and it was different, something I guess we didn't prepare for. We were supposed to be smart about it. He was ineligible and we weren't supposed to cover him up. We didn't find that out until we came off the field.
"They couldn't drive the ball down on us regular, they had to do something tricky and they did."
As for having seen something like that play call previously, Webb has to an extent, but he's about to utilize it himself a whole lot more.
"I've always seen a guy saying he's ineligible, but just not with the whole empty [backfield] thing. I believe I'm going to take that to my Madden game. Go on Madden and tell him he's ineligible."
Webb didn't think it was a cheap call. Instead, he said the Patriots played "smart".
"Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do to win because you know the Ravens were coming here to kick their butts. Smart, man, you just gotta say it was a smart thing. They pulled it out at the right time."