Coaching Confidential: Inside the Fraternity of NFL Coaches

by Myers, Gary

  Lewis addressed his teammates on the first night of training camp in the summer at McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland, one month after his case was resolved. “I need to get to a Super Bowl,” he told his teammates.

  Lewis didn’t want to be a distraction for his team. He didn’t want to be a distraction all season with questions about a case in which there was not enough evidence to convict him of killing another man.

  “Our method, once we got to training camp, we put Ray in front of the media, we’re going to give you one shot at this, we’re going to answer all the questions we possibly can, we want to be as transparent as we possibly can, but after that, that’s it,” Billick said. “We are not going to address this every day in camp or the season. Players rallied around it. Not to sound mercenary, but it did become a rallying focal point for the team in support of Ray and his circumstances. It did kind of bring the team together. That was a good by-product of a very tragic situation.”

  At his first news conference in Tampa at the Super Bowl, knowing that ESPN had rebroadcast a piece in which a relative of one of the victims called Lewis a murderer, Billick was proactive in addressing the media, telling them they were not qualified to retry the case. He was trying to avoid a circus but might have created one. At Lewis’s podium at the Ravens’ hotel, tight end Shannon Sharpe stood behind Lewis, intending to support him, but created a scene. It was a Super Bowl first. A player accused of murder after one Super Bowl playing in the next Super Bowl. That’s a record nobody wants to match.

  Sharpe interrupted Lewis’s media session and began preaching the virtues of Lewis as a player and a person. He spoke for five minutes. Lewis was wearing a blue floppy hat that was low enough to cover his eyes as he looked straight ahead during Sharpe’s lecture.

  “He’s been exonerated of all charges,” Sharpe shouted. “All charges. You know why? Because they know he’s not guilty. They’re just probably not going to say it publicly that they made a mistake.”

  Then Sharpe scolded the media surrounding Lewis. “But you talked to the man, and not one time did you ask him any questions about the Giants or the Super Bowl or the Ravens. ‘Well, Ray, what was it like when you were in jail?’ What the hell do you think it was like? The man was fighting for his life, his livelihood, all the things that were going to be taken away from him. Imagine someone’s going to take your life away from you.”

  The Ravens had lived through a season in which playing road games became a true test of Lewis’s will.

  “I would purposely go out for pregame warm-ups right after Ray came out,” Billick said. “It’s amazing to me the things people would say as he could come out on the field. On two fronts, you can’t believe one human being would yell that out to another. And secondly, I used to almost half smirk, thinking these people had no idea what they were doing. The racial slurs, killer, you can imagine. The derogatory … many of them racially laced … but all the negative things you can imagine someone might say. I used to think, you’re not helping your team much, folks, because all you’re doing is stoking the fire here for a man who doesn’t need it anyway. He played like a man possessed all year long.”

  Billick had also become one of the few coaches to win a Super Bowl by spending the season coaching around his quarterback. He made the switch to journeyman Trent Dilfer during the season and won games with a productive running game and a dominating defense, the second best defense of the Super Bowl era behind the 1985 Chicago Bears. Billick was supposed to be a state-of-the-art offensive coach, but when the choices are Tony Banks and Dilfer, there is no other choice: run the ball and play defense. Billick switched to Dilfer in the ninth game, and the initial results were not encouraging. The Ravens lost 9–6 to the Steelers, and their only points came on long field goals by Matt Stover. It was the third straight game the Ravens didn’t score a touchdown. They had a three-game losing streak and a 5–4 record, and all four of the losses came when the offense didn’t get into the end zone. The Ravens were wasting a terrific defense led by future NFL head coaches Marvin Lewis and Rex Ryan.

  But as so often happens during a season, a team gets hot out of nowhere. The Ravens won their last seven games to finish 12–4. Dilfer ended the season with twelve touchdowns and ten interceptions—barely adequate—but the Ravens’ defense, led by Lewis, set an NFL record for a sixteen-game season by allowing just 165 points; that’s just over 10 points per game.

  All Billick needed was for Dilfer to manage the game, not screw it up.

  “Trent understood his limitations and understood how we could win,” Billick said. “It’s not like I had to fight him on it.”

  In the Super Bowl, the Ravens forced New York quarterback Kerry Collins into four interceptions. The defense held the Giants without an offensive touchdown. The only Giants points came on a 97-yard kickoff return by Ron Dixon to make the score 17–7 in the third quarter, but Baltimore’s Jermaine Lewis then took the New York kickoff back 84 yards for a touchdown to put the game away. It was a different formula for Billick. He was the offensive coordinator in Minnesota in 1998 when the Vikings set the record for the most points in a season, a record that was eclipsed by the 2007 New England Patriots. He checked his large ego at the locker room door and did what was required to win. A successful coach adapts his system to fit his personnel.

  The plan worked. The Ravens won the Super Bowl, and the party was going all night. At 6 a.m., Billick left, went up to his suite to shower, and then tried to get a bit of sleep. It was just two and a half hours before the NFL would transport Billick to the media center in downtown Tampa for the morning-after news conference for the winning coach and most valuable player, which was Lewis. Billick had won the Super Bowl in just his second season as a head coach, faster than Tom Landry, Bill Walsh, Chuck Noll, or Bill Parcells. He was forty-seven years old.

  “In the shower, I had a panic attack,” Billick said.

  He had just reached the mountaintop of his profession, but his thoughts were focused on tumbling right on down. “My God, what do I do now? This is just my second year,” he said. “Where do you go from here? We may never get back here again. What if this is it?”

  Coaches are judged by championships. Billick had his first, and that would give him job security for many years even if it was his last. But he didn’t have a lifetime appointment. He knew that. By winning the ring in his second year, he had set the bar high. But how many times do you hear players say they will be back in the Super Bowl the next year and they never get back again? Dan Marino made it to the Super Bowl in his second season in 1984 and lost to the 49ers. He had to figure that with Don Shula as his coach there would be plenty more Super Bowls before he retired and was enshrined in Canton as a first-ballot Hall of Famer. But when Marino quit after the 1999 season, it was still the only Super Bowl in which he had played. As great as Shula was—and no coach in NFL history won more games—he had two humiliating blotches on his record.

  Shula was the Baltimore Colts’ coach when they lost to the Jets in Super Bowl III, the greatest upset in pro football history. The Colts were a 17-point favorite on January 12, 1969, at the Orange Bowl in Miami but were dominated by Joe Namath and the Jets. Shula restored his credibility and built a legacy when he left Baltimore and was hired by the Dolphins in 1970. After losing to the Cowboys in the Super Bowl after the 1971 season, his second in Miami, he won back-to-back Super Bowls. Miami was a perfect 14–0 in 1972 and is still the only team to make it through the regular season and the playoffs undefeated in the modern era. Shula was an institution in southern Florida. He made it back to the Super Bowl in 1982 with David Woodley as his quarterback. The Dolphins lost to the Redskins, and a few months later, Shula couldn’t believe how lucky he was when Marino was available in the first round of the draft after twenty-six other teams had made their choices. When Miami’s pick at number twenty-seven came up, Shula hit the lottery. In one of the all-time cases of teams overanalyzing players, Marino almost slipped out of the first round and was the sixth
quarterback selected.

  But Shula made it to as many Super Bowls with Woodley as his quarterback as he did with Marino. That wasn’t as bad as losing to the Jets, but it was pretty bad. By the mid-1990s, even Shula’s icon status wasn’t enough to protect him against the mounting criticism: he had one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history but couldn’t get back to the Super Bowl. Meanwhile, the Robbie family had sold the team to Wayne Huizenga, and things were changing in Miami. After Shula took an average team to the playoffs in 1995, where the Dolphins lost in the wild-card round in Buffalo, Shula gave no indication that he wouldn’t be back in 1996. He planned to fulfill the final year on his contract.

  He had a problem, however. The big elephant in the room, or at least down at his home in the Florida Keys, was Jimmy Johnson. It had been two years since Jerry Jones had handed Johnson a $2 million check to leave Valley Ranch after the Cowboys had won the Super Bowl in 1992 and 1993. Johnson then went to work for HBO and Fox, but there was little doubt he would get back into coaching one day. And there was no doubt that Shula’s job was the one he wanted. A couple of days after the loss to the Bills in the playoffs, Shula resigned. Huizenga knew better than to fire him as Jones did with Tom Landry in Dallas after he bought the team in 1989. If Shula wasn’t technically fired, he at least left under pressure. Miami had started 4–0 but then dropped to 6–6. At that time, three southern Florida newspapers ran reader polls, and an alarming 10,000 of the 13,000 who responded wanted Shula gone. Shula wanted to make changes in his staff after the season, but after consulting with general manager friends George Young, Bobby Beathard, and Bill Polian, he knew it would be hard to attract quality assistants if he planned to coach just one more year. He had also been irritated by the Johnson-to-Miami rumors that had been going on for two years.

  Billick knew nothing was forever, not even for greats such as Shula and Landry. Johnson was held accountable by Dallas fans for getting Landry fired, but that wasn’t fair. His college teammate bought the team and offered him the security of a ten-year contract.

  Now Johnson was looking over Shula’s shoulder. He owned a home in Tavernier in the Florida Keys, an hour’s drive to the Dolphins’ headquarters in Davie. He was revered in southern Florida for the job he had done at the University of Miami.

  Johnson had put himself in an enviable spot after he left Dallas. He was a free agent. He was red-hot. He could call his shot on his next job. The Eagles and Saints offered him huge deals. He turned them down. The Bucs wanted him before they failed to get Steve Spurrier and settled for Tony Dungy. The phone kept ringing, and Johnson kept saying no. There was just one reason: he wanted the Dolphins job. And he got it. He didn’t have much success in the four years he coached the Dolphins, but in addition to his two Super Bowl titles in Dallas, he is known as the coach who shoved aside Landry and Shula.

  Billick had been a Super Bowl champion for only a few hours and was already stressed out. “There is a chance, a recognition, strictly a business observation, that we may not get back here again,” he said. “What do I do now, so early in my head coaching career? I knew going forward that was going to be the only benchmark that I was going to be measured by.”

  By the time he arrived at the press conference, Billick had calmed down. The fear of failure drives coaches. They all know that at some point they are going to be fired. It’s the nature of the profession. Only the chosen few are allowed to leave on their own terms. “Bill Walsh said for years and years you can only do this for ten years in one place, even if you can last that long,” Billick said. “Well, when you are in the middle of a coaching tenure, you don’t want to believe that. Now, looking back, I think he’s probably right. Typically, you don’t last that long because you get fired in year two, three, or four because you are not good. But if you’re good enough to last, it means you have been good enough early in your career. But you are going to take a dip; everybody does. There’s going to be a couple years where you are going to struggle.”

  Billick had a grace period. The Ravens moved to Baltimore from Cleveland in 1996 in the most controversial franchise relocation in NFL history. The Browns were beloved in Cleveland, but Art Modell was bleeding profusely in the checkbook because he was playing in run-down Cleveland Stadium and couldn’t get the city to help him build a new one. The Browns were a cornerstone franchise of the NFL but had never won the Super Bowl. Their history was tarnished by crushing playoff losses, once to the Raiders when Brian Sipe threw a last-minute end zone interception on “Red Right 88” when a short 30-yard field goal would have won the game, and three times to John Elway and the Broncos in the AFC championship game, the first time on “The Drive.” But they didn’t carry that baggage with them to Baltimore, which had been without an NFL football team from the time Colts owner Robert Irsay loaded up the Mayflower trucks in the middle of the night in 1984 and moved to Indianapolis. Baltimore had been passed over by the NFL when it expanded by two teams in 1995, losing out to Carolina and Jacksonville. The city was thrilled to have the Browns, now called the Ravens, and the state of Maryland financed a $220 million stadium right next to Camden Yards, the home of the baseball Orioles.

  Billick was the NFL’s hottest assistant after the 1998 season, when the Vikings’ offense was racking up points like it was a video game. The NFL had put an expansion team back in Cleveland for the 1999 season. They would play in a beautiful new stadium on the site of the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. If the city had built that stadium for Modell instead of an expansion team, he never would have moved. It was ironic that the new Browns and the old Browns each wanted Billick. He chose the old Browns and went to Baltimore. The Browns hired Chris Palmer, who turned out to be the first of six head coaches they would have in their first thirteen years back in the league.

  Billick’s premonition about never winning the Super Bowl again turned out to be spot-on. He also never got to test Walsh’s theory about being in one place ten years because he was fired after nine. The ramifications of getting fired stretch way beyond the head coach. It changes the life of his family. A new coach generally brings in his own staff of assistants, maybe keeping one or two from the previous regime to help in the transition. Those fired coaches have families, too. Now they are going to have to relocate. The wives have to find new jobs and make new friends. The kids have to go to new schools. Maybe some of their children have special needs and have found schools tailored to suit those needs. Now they have to leave all that behind.

  It’s a cutthroat business, a results business. Win and you stay. Lose and you leave. The good ones get to pay down the mortgage for five or six years before moving on. The bad ones are better off if they rent.

  Billick was one of the good ones. He made it nine years with the Ravens. He did make a mistake after the Super Bowl when Dilfer, a free agent, was not re-signed. Billick wanted more from his quarterback, but Dilfer was popular in the locker room and did a lot for team chemistry. Dilfer is the only quarterback to win the Super Bowl and then not be asked back. It was a flawed decision. Billick first wanted Brad Johnson—they had been together in Minnesota. But Johnson signed with Tampa and won a Super Bowl in 2002. Instead, Billick signed Elvis Grbac, which turned out to be a big mistake.

  The Ravens’ management team of Billick, Ozzie Newsome, and James Harris didn’t think it was realistic to expect that the defense could have another historic season and that the Ravens would run the ball as well. “We needed productivity at the quarterback position,” Billick said.

  In 2001, Baltimore finished three games behind the Steelers in the AFC Central with a 10–6 record. They beat Miami in the wild-card round but then lost in Pittsburgh in the divisional round. Grbac retired after one season with the Ravens, which began a revolving door at quarterback for Billick from Jeff Blake to Kyle Boller, Anthony Wright, and Steve McNair. Baltimore made the playoffs again in 2003 and 2006 but didn’t win a playoff game. The 2006 team was a huge disappointment. The Ravens were 13–3 and the AFC’s number two seed. Billick hire
d his good friend Jim Fassel, the former Giants coach, as his offensive coordinator, but that relationship deteriorated and the Ravens’ offense took off after Billick and Fassel had a falling out. Early in the season Fassel left the team, either on his own or he was fired, depending whether Billick or Fassel is telling the story. Billick started calling plays again, and he and Fassel have not spoken since.

  In the Ravens’ divisional-round game at home, they held Peyton Manning and the Colts without a touchdown but lost 15–13. It hurt even more the next day when the Patriots won in San Diego. If the Ravens had defeated the Colts, they would have hosted the AFC championship game. Baltimore football fans were not happy that the Ravens had been eliminated by the team that had abandoned their city. After the season, Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, who had purchased 49 percent of the team from Modell in 2000 and in 2004 exercised his option to buy the remaining 51 percent, gave Billick a new four-year contract.

  That gave him security even though he had yet to fulfill offensive expectations or find a quarterback. The new contract apparently provided Billick with another grace period. Bisciotti certainly wouldn’t have committed to him for that long if he wasn’t planning to stick with him for at least two years. But the Ravens fell apart in 2007. They started off 4–2 and then lost nine games in a row, including a crushing 27–24 loss to the Patriots when it looked like Baltimore was going to end New England’s unbeaten string at 11–0. Two weeks after losing to an undefeated team, the Ravens lost to the winless Dolphins, who were 0–13. Even so, Billick looked safe.

  One week before the end of the season, he said he met with Newsome and Bisciotti and the Ravens owner assured him he would return in 2008. They outlined what the Ravens needed to do to get better. The plan, according to Billick, did not include hiring a new head coach. The Ravens then ended their season by defeating the hated Steelers. Billick was convinced that Bisciotti was giving him another chance.