Next Man Up

by John Feinstein

  The Lions game answered one question very quickly. After the Lions had stalled on their own 42 on the opening drive of the game, punter Nick Harris lofted a 47-yard punt that Sams caught on the 11-yard line. He cut one way, then the other, found a seam, burst by several would-be tacklers, and was gone, 89 yards for a touchdown. It was an electrifying play, the very first time Sams had caught a punt in any kind of NFL game. That the play was nullified because Musa Smith was called for running into the kicker didn’t change what Sams had done.

  He was greeted like a returning astronaut when he came to the sideline even while the Detroit offense was trotting onto the field to continue its drive.

  “Congratulations, kid, you just made the team,” Matt Stover said to Sams, offering him a handshake.

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Oh, I’m right,” Stover said. “You’re on the team.”

  On the Lions’ next punt, Sams had another good return, this one for 15 yards. This time Chester Taylor was called for an illegal block, bringing the ball back. “How many times have we talked in meetings about where to put your hands when blocking?” Billick asked everyone and no one, clearly frustrated.

  Preseason games are often filled with penalties. There are a lot of backup players in the games, and the officials are trying out their flags to make sure they work. In this game, everyone seemed to get involved in the foulfest. Even the normally perfect Jonathan Ogden was called for lining up in the neutral zone. Of course, Ogden was convinced he had not lined up wrong and spent several plays demonstrating to the officials what he had done so they would understand what a terrible mistake they had made.

  “I try not to let the crazy man come out in the exhibition season,” he said. “But sometimes I can’t help myself.”

  The game was not filled with artistic moments. With the Lions leading, 6-3, at the half, Matt Cavanaugh decided to leave the first-team offense (minus Jamal Lewis, who didn’t need any more banging) in for the first series of the second half. The decision had nothing to do with the score. Cavanaugh thought that Boller and his receivers needed some extra work and that Chester Taylor and Musa Smith should get some snaps with the first team. The strategy worked well. Taylor went 84 yards for a touchdown (no penalties) on the first play from scrimmage, to give the Ravens a 10-6 lead, and then Smith played the next series before Boller and the rest of the starters retired for the night.

  There were good moments and bad moments the rest of the way. The second-team defense stymied Detroit’s offense completely. Gerome Sapp, fighting for his roster spot, had an interception and a fumble recovery. Clint Greathouse got two chances to punt—adding to his tape collection with his family watching. On the other hand, the offense struggled in the so-called red zone. Red zone is a relatively new football term, one that describes the area inside the 20-yard line. How offenses perform in the red zone is often seen as a key to their success or failure. Red zone is another of those terms—like crunch time, stepping up, and the always popular escapability—that has been overused to the point where it is now part of the jock-cliché culture. The perfect TV sound bite from an NFL player or coach describing his team’s success might sound something like this: “We really stepped it up at crunch time, especially in the red zone where [fill in quarterback’s name] escapability really helps us give 110 percent effort on every play.” There is even a ketchup that sponsors plays in the red zone, turning it into the [ketchup’s name] red zone.

  With or without ketchup, the Ravens didn’t step up in the red zone in the second half. On one play from the 9-yard line, Ron Johnson was caught in motion—causing Billick to tear off his headset in anger. Then Kordell Stewart threw an interception. One series later, having moved the ball 79 yards to the 1-yard line, the Ravens failed to score on three plays. Musa Smith fumbled but was rescued by a Detroit penalty. Chester Taylor was stopped for no gain, and then Stewart fumbled the next snap and was not saved by a Detroit penalty. Everyone felt a little better when the Ravens went 75 yards to score the clinching touchdown on the next series. But with the season now two weeks away, there was clearly work still to be done.

  11

  The Turk

  BRIAN BILLICK ALWAYS TELLS HIS PLAYERS to enjoy every victory, regardless of when or how it comes. But he didn’t spend a lot of time enjoying the win over the Lions. He was concerned about the continuing mental errors he was seeing and told the players they were going to have to deal with that issue before the regular season began, when they would pay a serious price for such mistakes as blocking in the back on a punt return, running into the kicker, or being penalized and turning the ball over in the red zone. Those were matters that would be dealt with over the course of the next two weeks. The more pressing issue was the cuts that were to come on Monday morning. “This is the part of the business I dislike the most,” Billick said. “But as you all know, this is a business and we’ve got to make some tough decisions here in the next day or so. Whatever happens, I want to thank every one of you for the effort you’ve given us.”

  The coaches would meet Sunday to finalize the cut list. The rookies and second-year players who were staying at the Hilton Garden Inn were told that a bus would pick them up at 6:30 on Monday morning to bring them over to the complex. Everyone else had to be in the building before nine o’clock for a team meeting. Those who were leaving would be gone by the time the meeting began.

  There wasn’t going to be a lot of argument among the coaches about this list. The first cut would not be that difficult. Many of the players leaving would be “slappies,” kids who were good college players but a clear step or two away from being good enough to play in the NFL. The question for Billick was exactly what to say to those players in their exit interview. He didn’t like the idea of killing dreams by saying something like “Listen, son, you can’t play at this level—you need to go get a job.” But he wanted to at least put that thought in the minds of those he didn’t feel could make a living playing football. “It’s not my place to tell them to stop,” he said. “But for some of them, the time has to come to start thinking about the next thing.”

  It helped Billick that he had been in the shoes of the players he was cutting, having been cut twice in training camp before coming to the realization that he needed to move on with his life. “I can honestly say to them, ‘I’ve sat in that chair, I know how you’re feeling,’” he said. “That may make them feel better about me, that I really do empathize, but it doesn’t make them feel better about what has just happened.”

  The Sunday meeting was relatively brief. The only serious debate was about a rookie linebacker from Baylor named John Garrett. The coaches liked his attitude and aggressiveness, but he was caught in a numbers game. There just weren’t any openings in the linebacker corps for a rookie and, at least at the moment, the coaches liked another rookie linebacker named Brandon Barnes a little bit better as a developmental squad player. Teams frequently do not get all eight players they want for the developmental squad because everyone has to pass through waivers first, and often another team grabs someone for their active roster off the waiver wire.

  There was some talk about the second round of cuts since they would be made in only five days, after the final exhibition game against the New York Giants on Thursday in the Meadowlands. At least two veterans would be cut that day: Ron Johnson and Lamont Brightful. Both were being kept around essentially because they were needed to play in the second half of the Giants game. Johnson’s fight with Gerome Sapp and his thoughtless penalty on Saturday had been the final straws for him, and B. J. Sams’s performance against the Lions had sealed Brightful’s fate.

  The one surprise on the possible cut list was Sapp, who had been the defensive player of the game on Saturday. Mike Nolan was disappointed in the way Sapp had developed, feeling that, as bright as he was off the field, he had struggled to pick up concepts on the field. Gary Zauner spoke up in Sapp’s defense, saying he was one of the team’s better special teams players.

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p; “Will he ever pick up the concepts you’re talking about?” Billick asked Nolan.

  “I’d love to say yes,” Nolan said. “Because he’s a great kid. But I think the honest answer is no.”

  Billick turned from Nolan to Zauner. “How good is he? Is he just good, or is he really good?”

  “In my opinion, really good,” Zauner said. “Special teams is attitude, and he’s got as good an attitude as anyone we’ve got.”

  They decided to let the question simmer until Friday.

  It rained the next morning, appropriate weather for what is always a grim day around a football complex. Relatively speaking, Billick and Ozzie Newsome had the easy jobs. Billick would conduct what amounted to an exit interview, and Newsome would then go through administrative details. The dirty work would be done by the team’s three youngest scouts, Daniel Jeremiah, Jeremiah Washburn, and Chisom Opara. All three had been good college football players: Jeremiah at Appalachian State, Washburn at Arkansas, and Opara at Princeton. A year ago Opara had been a free agent in the Ravens’ camp and Jeremiah had “turked” him.

  The Turk is one of football’s oldest phrases. Whoever it is who gives a player the news that he’s cut, or sends the message with the unmistakable request “Coach needs to see you and bring your playbook,” is called the Turk. That is, unless you are Orlando Brown. He called the young scouts “reaper,” and always turned his nametag away from them whenever they came near his locker, as if that might prevent them from knowing who he was. Brown had never been turked, but like most older players, he always wondered when that day might come for him.

  Jeremiah, Washburn, and Opara spread out in the locker room as the players began filtering in soon after 6:30 on Monday morning. Technically, everyone was supposed to report to his position coach. When one of the Turks walked into the meeting room—or the locker room before reaching the meeting room—and told a player he was needed upstairs, that player knew what was coming. The mood on cut morning is always somber. Those not getting cut feel for those who are. Some are losing friends or seeing players they like and respect lose their jobs. All of them understand that someday they may be the ones being asked for their playbooks.

  “Not a lot of laughter on cut mornings,” kicker Matt Stover said. “You sort of try to tiptoe around because you know it’s a painful day for a lot of people.”

  Stover had memories of one awkward experience from the year before. Jeremiah and Washburn had been the Turks that day, and both had showed up for work wearing, appropriately enough, black shirts. Quietly, they made their way around the locker room, finding players and asking them to go upstairs. Finally, every player being cut had been rounded up, except for one, wide receiver Milton Wynn. Stover was sitting by his locker when Wynn walked in. Thinking that all the cuts had already occurred, Stover clapped Wynn on the back and said, “Must be a relief for you not having any of those guys in the black shirts looking for you, huh, Milton?”

  Jeremiah had just walked back into the locker room in search of Wynn and he heard what Stover was saying, too late to get his attention and call him off. “I felt awful,” Jeremiah said. “I had to walk over right after that, in my black shirt, and say, ‘Milton, I need to take you upstairs to see Coach.’”

  The only person who felt worse was Stover. “I was sick, almost literally sick,” he said. “I just didn’t think. I told Milton before he left how terrible I felt. He was good about it. He just said, ‘Matt, I wouldn’t be any less cut if you hadn’t said anything.’”

  Occasionally the scouts make a mistake. Jeremiah had been sent down to get an offensive lineman named Jason Thomas the previous year. He had walked into the offensive line meeting room, put his hand on Thomas’s shoulder, and quietly told him he needed to come upstairs. Jeremiah was halfway up the stairs before he realized that the player walking in front of him was Damion Cook, not Jason Thomas.

  “Damion, I’m sorry, I got the wrong guy,” he said, watching Cook’s knees sag in relief. Jeremiah returned to the meeting room to get Thomas. Seeing him come back for a second player, Jonathan Ogden said, “What’s going on here today, are you guys trying to cut the whole team?”

  Perhaps the ultimate case of mistaken identity had happened to Jim Fassel when he was coaching the Giants. “We were making some cuts on an off day, so the players didn’t have to come in,” he said. “I was calling guys at the hotel and asking them to come in. Course, they knew what it was about, but there’s just no easy way to do it. There was a guy named Ryan Smith we had to cut. I called the hotel and asked for Ryan Smith. The operator put me through. He answers the phone. I said, ‘Ryan, it’s Coach Fassel.’ He says, ‘Oh my God, you’re cutting me.’ I told him how sorry I was, gave him my usual speech, thanked him, and all that. He asked me what he’d done wrong and I told him he just wasn’t quite good enough to play for us, but I thought he had potential as a long snapper.

  “He says, ‘Long snapper? Coach, I’m not a long snapper.’ Now I think the kid’s crazy, or I’m crazy. I said, ‘Ryan, is that you?’ He said, ‘Yes, Coach, it’s me.’ I said, ‘Ryan Smith?’ There’s a long pause and he says, ‘Oh God, Coach, Ryan Smith’s my roommate, this is Ryan Phillips!’ I made his day right there. He said Ryan Smith was out. I told him to have him call me when he got back.”

  Billick normally keeps some kind of background music playing in his office throughout the day—jazz early, classical later. On cutdown day, there’s no music. Once the players started filtering in, one of the young scouts was assigned to stand in the doorway to identify each player as he came in. As in, “Coach, Don Muhlbach is here.”

  Billick knew just about all the players in camp on sight. But he wanted to be sure not to make the same mistake he had made three years earlier when Terry Jones came into his office on cut day. Neither Billick nor Jones is exactly sure how Jones found himself in there: Billick thinks Jones wandered in to ask a question about scheduling; Jones remembers Billick having said he wanted to speak to all the rookies that day one way or the other. Jones was a fifth-round pick out of Alabama who thought he was going to make the team as a backup tight end.

  When he sat down, the look on Billick’s face told him differently. “You’ve worked really hard for us, and that makes this really tough.” Jones felt his stomach drop to his shoes. The coaches had told him he was doing well. He had been almost certain he would make the team. “I don’t think this is the end for you,” Billick continued. “You’re the only one who can decide how long you want to chase the dream.”

  Jones, who thought he might cry, just nodded his head as Billick talked.

  “Do you have your degree?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “That’s good, that’s important. Where do you think you’ll go right now?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it, but I guess I’ll go back to Birmingham.”

  Billick stopped. Birmingham? The next player on his list of cuts was from California. He looked at Jones closely.

  “Oh my God,” he said. “I’ve got the wrong guy. I’m not cutting you. You’re on the team.”

  Jones thought he might pass out. He was taking deep breaths to keep his composure. “I’m not cut?” he asked. “I’m on the team?”

  “Yes, you’re on the team,” Billick said. “Terry, I’m so sorry, I made a terrible mistake.”

  “Oh thank God,” Jones said.

  Billick didn’t want that scene repeated, although he had once intentionally told a player he knew had made the team that he was being cut. That player was John Jones, a talented tight end with a questionable work ethic. Billick wanted to get his attention, so he called him in and told him he had been cut. Jones was, predictably, shocked and devastated. After letting the news sink in, Billick walked around his desk and said, “You aren’t cut, John.” Jones leaped to his feet and threw his arms around Billick, going from low to high in seconds. “I wanted you to know what it felt like to be cut for a few seconds,” Billick said. “Because I want you to work to make sur
e that day never comes.”

  Most of the time, the meetings in Billick’s office were brief. Billick would give his speech about deciding when to give up the dream, offer up the possibility that NFL Europe could be a good training ground if a player wanted to continue his career. Very few—if any—ever told Billick they were done, because very few, if any, thought of themselves as done. Twice during his player meetings Billick opened the conversation by saying, “How’s it going this morning?” Then he caught himself: “Now there’s a stupid question.”

  Not everyone got the same speech. Billick told Muhlbach he believed he could snap in the NFL. “I believe it because Gary Zauner believes it,” he said, “and Gary is almost never wrong about these things.” He pointed out to offensive linemen such as Eric Dumas and Brendan Darby that it often took longer for offensive linemen to develop than players at other positions. “Mike Flynn got cut a couple times before he stuck,” he said. “Bennie Anderson came in here as a camp guy, a body to get us through July and August, and now he’s a starter.” He was honest with Brian Gaither, the free-agent quarterback. “What I saw of you on tape excited me,” he said. “For some reason, maybe it was lack of snaps, I don’t know, I never saw that in camp.”

  The two toughest meetings were with John Garrett and Kareem Kelly. “I want you to know it took us fifteen to twenty minutes before we decided to make this move with you,” he told Garrett. “There’s certainly a chance we’ll bring you back for developmental. You’re a good football player.”

  Kelly was different. He had bounced around—cut by the New Orleans Saints, signed to the Ravens developmental team, kept around with the idea he might make the team at wide receiver. “I know you’ve been through this before,” Billick began. “So have I. The problem has been consistency. We just haven’t seen it. At some point you need to figure out if you’re done chasing this dream. Have you given any thought to what you’d do? Do you have your degree from USC?”