Next Man Up

by John Feinstein

  Dillon is a talented back who had always had a reputation for finding trouble when he played in Cincinnati. He had fit in well with the Patriots, clearly happy to be on a good team. His mistake surprised the Ravens, but didn’t really shock them. “The man can run out of bounds with the best of them” was Deion Sanders’s comment.

  The Ravens ended up using their last time-out after Dillon—staying inbounds—picked up 2 yards on third down. That meant Josh Miller had to punt with fifty-one seconds still left. B. J. Sams fielded the punt at the Ravens’ 42 and returned it to the Patriots’ 46. Amazingly, the Patriots had committed two major penalties during the punt: a face mask on linebacker Matt Chatham and an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Tedy Bruschi, the All-Pro linebacker. Those gaffes moved the ball to the New England 16 with thirty-six seconds left. This was remarkably un-Patriot-like, and Belichick was clearly perturbed by the sudden turn of events. The Ravens managed to get the ball to the 4-yard line, and Boller spiked the ball to stop the clock with nine seconds left. With no time-outs left, the only option was to try to throw the ball into the end zone and Boller’s pass for Randy Hymes was broken up. They settled for a Stover field goal that tied the game at intermission.

  “We’ve got them playing our game,” Billick said. “Stay patient, keep doing what we’re doing, and we’ll win the game.”

  The locker room was alive with anticipation. Thinking you could walk into the stadium of the defending champions and win was one thing. Actually doing it was another. Nolan was still nervous. “Guys, we have got to hit the quarterback in this half,” he said. “If we don’t, he’ll put up the thirty points he didn’t put up in the first half. He’s that good.”

  If it was possible, it was raining harder when the second half started. The field was pure mud, especially in the middle portion, where most of the play took place. It was amazing that anyone could run forward in the stuff. It was clear from the start that Belichick had read his team the riot act during halftime. The Patriots took the kickoff and moved down the field, and Vinatieri, clearly a good mudder, kicked a 40-yard field goal to make it 6-3. The Ravens offense, still struggling to find something, went three-and-out. This time Brady got his team to the Baltimore 30, and Vinatieri was good from 48 yards. Still, it was only 9-3. If they could just find some way to get the offense moving . . .

  They couldn’t. Another three-and-out for the offense. Murphy boomed a 51-yard kick, but it was largely negated by a 14-yard return by Troy Brown and a personal foul on Bart Scott. The Patriots started at the Ravens’ 48. Dillon, not running out of bounds, picked up 12 yards on three straight carries. A pass interference call on Adalius Thomas was worth 12 more yards, then Brady found Deion Branch across the middle for a first down at the Ravens’ 5. Dillon carried to the 1 as the quarter ended. At that stage of the game, even a field goal was probably going to be a death knell for the Ravens because it would give the Patriots a two-score lead. Dillon made sure a field goal wasn’t necessary on the first play of the fourth quarter, pounding in from the left side. Belichick, wanting a two-touchdown lead, went for two and got it (Dillon again), and it was 17-3. One couldn’t help but wonder if Belichick had said something to Dillon about the out-of-bounds play at halftime because he ran with renewed vigor and toughness in the second half.

  A two-touchdown lead was probably going to be insurmountable, but just to make certain there was no doubt, Bruschi, blitzing from the right side, sacked Boller on the second play from scrimmage and he fumbled the wet ball. In the ensuing scramble, a number of players had a shot at the ball, but it was backup defensive end Jarvis Green, playing in place of All-Pro Richard Seymour, who ended up on top of it in the end zone. The score had gone from 9-3 to 24-3 in less than a minute. The rest of the game was nothing more than forty minutes of misery for everyone, especially the Ravens, who had seen their hopes of an upset blow up completely. The play that summed up the day came on the last drive of the day, with the Ravens in a no-huddle offense, trying to get a consolation touchdown. Scrambling desperately, Boller picked up 13 yards to the Patriots’ 35 with 1:20 to play. Except that play came back because Jonathan Ogden—of all people—was called for holding. Ogden gets called for holding about as frequently as lunar eclipses occur. It was the perfect punctuation mark to what had turned out to be a lost day in the rain, the wind, and the mud.

  They trudged down the tunnel in absolute silence, wet and cold and sore and angry.

  “That’s where we need to get to,” Billick said quietly. “The road to the Super Bowl probably goes right through here. We may very well be back here in January.”

  There was a lot of work ahead of them if they wanted to get to that point. The Patriots were 10-1. So were the Steelers, who had beaten the Redskins earlier in the day. The Ravens were 7-4. Any realistic hopes of defending the division title were now gone.

  “We have to focus on the wild card now,” Billick said quietly as he dressed. “Which is fine. We can still get where we want to go that way.”

  It was the road they had taken to the Super Bowl four years ago. Billick would remind his team of that fact repeatedly. Their first job was to make sure they had the chance to get back on that road again.

  24

  Roadblock

  REGARDLESS OF WEATHER or field conditions, the loss to the Patriots was sobering. They had been dominated in the second half in a way they weren’t used to. Furthermore, the Ravens all knew that if they wanted to make any noise in the playoffs, they would have to go to a place like New England or Pittsburgh in bad weather conditions and win. Unlike 2000, when a wild-card team could host a first-round game—which the Ravens did—wild-card teams now opened on the road because there were four division winners, and each played at least one playoff game at home. The two wild-card teams from each conference were seeded fifth and sixth, regardless of record. The only way a wild-card team could host a playoff game under the new setup would be if both reached the conference final: then the fifth seed would play at home. That was an extremely unlikely scenario.

  Billick’s thoughts early Monday morning were not on the playoffs. He was sitting at his desk, watching tape, when Ozzie Newsome walked in with an e-mail from the league office. Apparently, the Patriots had complained about the fact that Orlando Brown had not been on the Ravens’ injured list during the week and then had not played in the game. The league had e-mailed the Ravens demanding an explanation. “Here’s the explanation,” Billick said, exasperated. “He was hurt.”

  That would not be good enough for the league. Because so many coaches play games with their injury lists—wanting to make it as difficult as possible for an opponent to know whom to prepare for—the league tries to stay vigilant if it suspects someone is trying to pull a fast one. That’s one reason why teams are required to tape their practices. If a player listed as out or doubtful shows up on a practice tape, that means the team was trying to hide that he was going to play. Conversely, if someone not on an injury list or listed as probable doesn’t show up on practice tapes, that means the team is trying to hide the fact that he is injured. The Patriots—and the league—were accusing the Ravens of hiding Brown’s injury.

  “Here’s my response to that,” Billick said. “Why don’t they e-mail [Bill] Parcells and ask him why Julius Jones was listed as doubtful all week before they played us and then carried the ball thirty times in the game on Sunday?”

  The team’s official response would be a little less heated. They would send the league practice tapes from Wednesday and Thursday showing Brown taking most of the snaps at right tackle. That would put an end to Zeus-gate.

  As the Ravens began preparing for their rematch at home with the Bengals, Billick was far more concerned with rebuilding his team’s confidence. He knew there had to be some doubts after the way they had been dominated in the second half by the Patriots. He decided to pull out the schedule chart he had shown them in preseason that contained his formula for a 12-4 record, which he had thought prior to the start of the season wo
uld be good enough to win the AFC North. With the Steelers 10-1, that wasn’t going to happen, but 12-4 was still possible and would get them into the playoffs as the first AFC wild card. According to Billick’s chart, the team was one game behind where it should be: he had figured on 8-3 going into December: 4-1 before the bye week; 2-1 in the Bills, Eagles, Browns block; and 2-1 against the Jets, Cowboys, and Patriots. The last two blocks had gone exactly as figured; the losses had even been to the teams they were most likely to lose to: Philadelphia and New England, both on the road. The only glitch had come early, when they had lost to Cleveland and Kansas City. One of those games had figured, in Billick’s projections, to be a win.

  Billick had them going 4-1 in the season’s final stretch, which would now produce an 11-5 record. That, too, would almost certainly be good enough to make the playoffs. But it wouldn’t be easy. There were three home games left: Cincinnati, the New York Giants, and the Miami Dolphins. Those three games should produce wins. All three teams were under 500—the Dolphins were fighting with the San Francisco 49ers for the league’s worst record and the first draft pick and had already lost Coach Dave Wannstedt; the Giants had started well under Tom Coughlin but were fading rapidly; the Bengals were playing better than they had early on, but Billick didn’t think they could beat his team in Baltimore. The two road games were another story: at Indianapolis and at Pittsburgh. The Colts had started slowly but were now rolling, Peyton Manning heading toward a record-smashing season, and the Steelers still had only one loss—the second week of the season in Baltimore before Ben Roethlisberger became the starter at quarterback. They hadn’t lost a game since Terrell Suggs had sacked Tommy Maddox and forced Roethlisberger into the lineup. To win either road game would be difficult. If they held serve at home and lost the two road games, they would be 10-6. History said that would be good enough to make postseason, but in 2004 the AFC was deep in potential ten-win teams.

  “I’d rather not take any chances,” Billick said. “We need to take the approach that we’re going to win all five, but we damn well better win at least four.”

  It was on Tuesday that Mike Nolan and Mike Singletary asked Billick if they could talk to him privately about the offense. Billick knew what was coming. But he respected both men and knew why they were concerned. So he sat down with them in Nolan’s office to listen.

  “Coach, we keep saying we’re an old-school team, but we aren’t playing like one,” Singletary said. “Mike and I both understand that the offense has to make adjustments with Jamal out, but we threw the ball thirty-five times on Sunday [with only twenty runs] in a driving rain. Is that really us?”

  “I think Matt thought, and I tend to agree, that was our best chance to move the ball against that defense on that day, given the players we had on the field,” Billick said.

  Nolan was shaking his head. “Even if that’s true, sometimes you have to think about your defense, too, especially in a game like that, where it’s 3-3 at halftime. I’ve been on the offensive side of the ball and I know there are some times you have to try to just give your defense a breather, take some time off the clock even if you aren’t putting points on the board. Three incomplete passes doesn’t do that. We haven’t done that for weeks. I know the offense is hurt, but so’s the defense. With injuries and all the special team guys who were up, we only dressed nineteen guys on Sunday. There’s not a team in the league dressing so few players on defense.”

  Billick felt he knew exactly where Nolan and Singletary were coming from. In addition to losing the game, Nolan had seen what had started out as an excellent defensive effort—on national TV—blow up into a lopsided loss, even if the offense had given up the last touchdown.

  “You guys are stacking,” Billick said. “I understand why, but that’s what you’re doing.”

  He walked back to his office and sat down. “Some days,” he said, “I wonder if I’m not stacking.”

  Billick’s talk to the team on Wednesday covered a lot of territory. He had given them Monday off in spite of the loss because he thought rest was more important at this point than going through the game tape. There just wasn’t that much to be learned from looking at the New England tape. They had been outplayed in the second half. Move on.

  He began the Wednesday morning meeting by again showing them the schedule chart. They had seen this before and he knew it. He also knew that he had already given them a lot of pep talks. So, after he finished reminding them that everything they wanted from the season was still very much there for them, he called them out.

  He went back to Good to Great, the motivational book he had told them about before the season. One of the sections in the book was called “Confront the Brutal Facts.” Knowing all the whispers going on in the locker room—all of which he heard in one form or another—he confronted them. He knew the defense wasn’t happy with the offense—specifically the play calling. He knew the offensive line wasn’t happy, either. They were a great run-blocking line being asked to pass-block 60 percent of the time.

  “Here are the brutal facts, fellas,” he said. “Defense, you’ve got a team backed up inside the 5-yard line on the first series of a game, you have to stop them! Offensive line, you aren’t happy with how much we’re passing, well, that’s on you. We averaged under four yards a carry on Sunday and we didn’t have a single run over ten yards. You want to put that on the backs? Or is it on you? You want thirty-five to forty run calls in a game, fine, I’m all for it: earn it. It’s easy to point fingers. That’s what losing teams do. Winning teams look within and figure out how to get better. We do that, we can still have the kind of season we all want. If we don’t, we won’t.”

  It was probably as sharply as he had spoken to them all season. It was December now and there was no longer time to find a comfort level. The doctor in North Carolina had told Jamal Lewis the same thing the Ravens’ doctors had told him: two weeks. That meant he wouldn’t play Sunday. Deion Sanders wanted to play, but the pain in his foot was going to make it impossible. He and Lewis were limping around the facility in what appeared to be matching boots, protecting their wounded feet. They sat together at lunch on Thursday and talked about the off-season.

  “Maybe, when I go away, I’ll start working on a book,” Lewis said. “I think I’ve got a story to tell and I’ll have the time.”

  “When you come out, I’m going to interview you about it,” Sanders said.

  “For who?”

  “I don’t know, 60 Minutes maybe. Nothing second-rate, I guarantee you that.”

  Lewis told the media on Wednesday that the doctors had told him he was out at least another week. Billick groaned when he saw that. “In the future, before you declare yourself out of a game, do me a favor and check with me,” he told Lewis. “You don’t need to tell everyone on Wednesday. Let ’em wonder a little.”

  Orlando Brown would not appear on any practice tapes in the coming week, nor would he appear in the game. Billick wondered if he would play in a game again during the season.

  “He told me he didn’t trust our doctors to get him better,” Billick said. “I said, ‘Zeus, who do you trust?’ He said, ‘No one.’ I think that’s accurate.”

  Dave Zastudil needed another week before he could think about coming back, but that was okay. Nick Murphy’s punting had been about the only bright spot in the game on Sunday. He would get his three weeks and his vested year. Perhaps more important, he had proven to people he could punt in the NFL. “All I ever wanted was a chance to prove I can kick in this league,” he said. “These guys gave it to me. Now I think I’ve really got a chance to make it someplace next season.”

  The best news of the week was that Todd Heap was taking snaps in practice. He still felt some tenderness in the ankle but was convinced he was ready to play. He was, in fact, dying to play. He had missed nine games. “It feels more like nine hundred,” he said. “Standing on the sidelines is hard, especially when we’re struggling. There have been times when I wondered if I would ever get better.
”

  Even though he was better, Billick wasn’t certain about playing him on Sunday. He wanted to be absolutely certain that he was 100 percent for the game in Indianapolis in two weeks. To do that, he needed at least one game under his belt—next week against the Giants. He called Heap in after practice to ask him what he thought. Heap, naturally, wanted to play. The trainers told Billick there was no reason to hold him out, that he wouldn’t be risking reinjuring the ankle by playing him. Billick told Heap they would try it and see how he felt. Heap felt as if he had been paroled from jail.

  Even though the current season was still hanging in the balance, it was time for the team to begin thinking about next season. Once the season ended—whenever that was—things would move fast. Already one coach—Wannstedt—was gone. Rumors were rampant that Butch Davis wasn’t going to make it to the end of the season in Cleveland. Dennis Erickson had a long-term contract in San Francisco, but the 49ers had one victory and there was talk that 49ers owner John York might clean house and start over again at the end of the season. Mike Tice, a close friend of Billick’s, still appeared to be at risk in Minnesota. Jim Haslett was certainly under the gun—again—in New Orleans.