John Harbaugh

Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh heard what we said.

(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Last month, while we were still in the dregs of the offseason, we published our rankings of the 25 biggest 'villains' in Patriots history.

It was a bit of fun to play around with the players, coaches and other figures that touched a nerve with Patriots fans. It went up, there were some chuckles and then we were on to training camp. It's not like anyone on the list would even hear about it, much less care.

Oh no. We were wrong. John Harbaugh found out, and the Baltimore Ravens head coach wasn't happy with his ranking. He thinks he should be higher.

Harbaugh mentioned the rankings to ESPN's Ian O'Connor:

To be fair, No. 19 is pretty low. If we were to compare that to Batman villains, he'd fall somewhere along the lines of Victor Zsasz, the Ventriloquist or Clayface -- and none of those guys made it into the Christopher Nolan movies, or even Suicide Squad for that matter.

But keep your head up, John Harbaugh. There's plenty of time to really crank up your villain rating. Usually, all it takes it to keep talking about Deflategate. Although, knowing him, he'd much prefer it to be as a Manning*-esque playoff nemesis. (Peyton or Eli. Take your pick.)

The Patriots do run into the Ravens this season in Week 14 on Monday Night Football. That could be good for the equivilant of some "Batman: The Animated Series"-level villainy. But Harbaugh really needs to think more along the lines of feature-length movie to get his ranking up. (Remember what it did for Ra's Al Ghul?)

All that needs to happen for that is for New England to overcome the Tom Brady suspension -- and for Baltimore to overtake the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC North, so that we get a playoff matchup.

If the Ravens can pull off something heinous there, we'll talk about bumping up Harbaugh into the Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy range of villains.