Bring on the future, and bring it now.

Ever since he signed the contract making him a head coach for the first time, Harbaugh has preached about the mission of finding the right guys — his guys — to take this franchise into its next phase.

That means a talented player such as veteran running back Willis McGahee shouldn’t make long-term plans to stick around, since he blew off the conditioning program and practically every other non-mandatory off-season function. McGahee then showed up out of shape, before suffering a knee injury early in training camp.

Harbaugh didn’t envision the picture forming this way, this quickly. Yet, two of his guys will be lining up in the backfield to start off this transitional season, sooner than expected, in the form of Flacco and Rice. After you make the sign of the cross and wish the rooks well, after you stop fixating on the frightening image of Flacco dropping back on an obvious passing down behind that young offensive line, think about the future and say goodbye to the past.

You’ve got to feel for Boller. He’s a nice guy, a tough guy, a team guy. He tried hard throughout his five years in our fair city. But smoke and mirrors and decent completion percentages can’t alter the simple fact that Boller never had the package of tools necessary to succeed as a starting quarterback in the NFL.

He had enough raw ability to dupe the Ravens into mortgaging their future on what turned out to be the biggest draft-day bust in team history. Despite that strong arm — and the graveyard of failed NFL passers is littered with them — Boller’s legacy will be defined by those untimely turnovers, those messy mechanics and the shot-put release, a lack of vision, those bad decisions.

That Boller was even involved in a three-way, open competition with Flacco and second-year man Troy Smith served as a silent indictment of his limited ability and illustrated his lack of a real future with the Ravens. You didn’t need to be a CIA code breaker to see that Harbaugh’s plan all along was to use Smith as a bridge to get to Flacco, and groom Rice to take over for McGahee down the road.

Now, Flacco and Rice and second-year fullback Le’Ron McClain — definitely a Harbaugh guy — will line up behind a young line and try to forge a smash-mouth, offensive identity former coach Brian Billick provided lip service for, but never seriously embraced. When the Ravens added veteran bulldozer Lorenzo Neal to the backfield last month, they suddenly had a huge dose of Smash.

While the quarterback situation played out so weirdly, with Smith going down in the grip of that awful virus and Boller’s injury further opening the path for Flacco to grab the job by default, Rice was plugging along the entire preseason as the starter in waiting.

Rice led the team in preseason carries and receptions. He showed improved patience and decisiveness, and he finished runs better as the practice and preseason repetitions wore on.

In the short term, Rice may relinquish his job to McGahee, just like Smith could get healthy and take the job from Flacco should he falter, as I suspect he will.

No matter how it plays out, the future is here.

Gary Lambrecht writes about the NFL, Major League Baseball and college sports. He can be reached at [email protected].