On the eve of the Ravens’ first training camp practice in late July, coach John Harbaugh stood before players, coaches and other team personnel in a packed auditorium at the Under Armour Performance Center and outlined his expectations for the 2017 season.

The speech was typical Harbaugh. He emphasized toughness, togetherness and discipline. He verbalized his vision for what he hoped his team would become. He also issued a challenge of sorts, reminding his players that the organization’s patience had its limits. Players who weren’t developing and couldn’t consistently stay on the field would get left behind.

If the players didn’t get the message that day, they’ve since had it reinforced in some fashion. Nobody from the organization has publicly labeled this a watershed season for the Ravens. Everybody at the team facility, though, seems to understand what’s at stake whether they’re saying it or not.

“At the end of the day, if you don’t win, if you don’t get into the playoffs — especially here — things are going to happen. Whether that’s coaches or that’s players, if we don’t win, a lot of us will be gone,” safety Eric Weddle said. “So you just try to take it for what it’s worth and give it all you’ve got for this season, because next season is not guaranteed. You definitely think about it, not so much the coaches or the organization but just the players and this team. Let’s win and keep everyone together.”

The Ravens have been one of the most stable organizations in the NFL, and their brain trust, consisting of owner Steve Bisciotti, president Dick Cass, general manager Ozzie Newsome, assistant general manager Eric DeCosta and Harbaugh, has long been one of the most respected. As another football season begins, there is more pressure on those men than perhaps ever before to steady an organization that has lost its winning touch.

Since Super Bowl XLVII, a glorious victory that reaffirmed the Ravens as one of the elite organizations in the sport, the team has gone 31-33 in the regular season and made the playoffs once in four years. It hasn’t won the AFC North since 2012, and the gap between the Ravens and the reigning Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, the measuring stick for AFC contenders, has widened significantly.

If the Ravens don’t return to the playoffs this season, it would be the first time since the franchise’s early years in Baltimore (1996-1999) that they have missed the postseason in three consecutive years.

“If you want to be good at anything or great at anything, you better be working at it — no matter what you do,” Harbaugh said. “So you don’t go to the playoffs for two or three years, and you are supposed to have a sense of urgency? But you win the championship, and they are asking [Patriots coach Bill Belichick] about his sense of urgency? Maybe — as you quoted it — ‘the outside world’ looks at it differently than NFL players and coaches do, but I highly doubt that. I think most successful people understand that you better be urgent every single day about what you do.”

Navigating rough waters

The Ravens had a rough summer. During a two-month stretch, they lost 10 players who likely would’ve been on their 53-man roster to a season-ending injury, suspension or retirement. Quarterback Joe Flacco and wide receiver Breshad Perriman missed the entire preseason. The team’s top decision-makers were skewered nationally for their public flirtation with polarizing free-agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

Amid the tumult, players insisted it was business as usual as they readied for the season. During his tenure, Harbaugh has done some of his best work steadying his team through adversity while not allowing outside distractions to seep in.

This summer, he’s seemed as resolute and determined as ever ahead of a season that some believe could be crucial to his long-term future in Baltimore. In late August, Bisciotti added another year to Harbaugh’s contract, extending him through the 2019 season. Nobody inside the organization ever indicated Harbaugh was on the hot seat heading into this season, but the extension should keep the outside speculation at bay - at least for a while — if the Ravens struggle.

“You’ve got to understand, we’re used to a certain standard here,” Ravens rush linebacker Terrell Suggs said. “We expect to go deep into the playoffs and contend. That sense of urgency is on all of us to get back to the playoffs. That’s definitely here but not because of any job insecurities. It’s just the standard.”

Harbaugh, 54, has helped cement that standard. He’s led the Ravens to the playoffs in six of nine seasons. The team’s 95 wins since Harbaugh took the helm in 2008 are more than every team except the Patriots, Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers. Even Harbaugh’s most vocal critics have to acknowledge that several of the Ravens’ primary problems in recent years, such as overwhelming injuries, underwhelming drafts and some players on big contracts who have come up small, can’t be put on the head coach.

But Harbaugh, the NFL’s sixth-longest-tenured coach, is entering his 10th season in, by and large, a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately league. Sixteen teams have better winning percentages than the Ravens since their Super Bowl victory.