Newsome spearheaded the research team. He put together a T.O. tape—not a highlight tape, but one that showed Owens at his best and his worst to present to the team’s decision makers, a group that included Bisciotti, Cass, the scouts, Billick, and the offensive coaches. Newsome showed everyone the tape on a February afternoon, showing a T.O. who made great plays but also made not-so-great plays, at times not running routes to their finish, occasionally backing off from tough catches. This was typical Newsome. Before he asked for input, he wanted everyone in the room to have all the information that was available.
The consensus when all was said and done was that T.O. was worth the risk. Billick was confident that the leaders on the team—Lewis, Jonathan Ogden, Ed Reed—would handle Owens’s foibles and eccentricities. Lewis had publicly campaigned for the Ravens to try and sign Owens. That endorsement was not lost on the team’s leadership. Billick was convinced that Owens could fit in to the locker room and would make a huge, tangible difference on the field, especially in an offense that would be run by a second-year quarterback who had started nine NFL games. A decision was made: go after him. If it became a bidding war and the price got out of control, they would probably back off. But they would, at the very least, make a run at Owens. Billick half-jokingly told Newsome he didn’t believe the Ravens would get Owens because someone would make an off-the-charts offer and the Ravens would be out of the running.
Newsome knew that was a possibility. He also knew that a lot of teams would shy away from Owens because of his reputation. Newsome is, if nothing else, thorough. He had checked to see if Owens had any problems off the field (no) and if he there were any skeletons (like drinking or family problems) that hadn’t come out publicly (no again). He talked on the phone to both Owens and his agent to gauge their interest in the Ravens (considerable, he believed) and to let Owens know why he believed Baltimore would be an ideal place for him. The more he did his homework and the more he talked to Owens, the more convinced Newsome became that the Ravens had a chance to get him. Billick continued to be skeptical.
That thinking changed suddenly and surprisingly on February 26. Somehow, David Joseph, Owens’s agent, had failed to file with the league by the February 21 deadline the proper paperwork declaring his client to be a free agent. Under league rules, that meant he still belonged to the 49ers and was not free to negotiate with anyone but them. The response to this news in the Ravens’ offices was one of disbelief. How could Joseph have possibly made such a mistake? How could he possibly keep his job, given that the oversight could cost Owens millions of dollars? Far more important to the Ravens was the question of whether the ruling would actually stand. Newsome began calling everyone in the league—the management council, the union, the league office—to find out if this was a technicality that would ultimately be overturned or if it was real. Categorically, he was told the same thing by everyone: it’s real. He still belongs to the 49ers.
“Which means,” Newsome told everyone, “that Terry Donahue is now driving this bus.”
Donahue was the 49ers’ general manager. Since the 49ers were in a major rebuilding process, there was no way they wanted Owens and his salary and baggage back. That meant they would try to trade him. Whomever Owens was traded to would need to sign him to a new contract, but it would not be as burdensome as a free-agent contract since there would be no competition. Owens would have a choice: sign with his new team or not play.
The T.O. caper was now being played out on two separate playing fields with four teams in the competition: the Ravens, Eagles, Jets, and Dolphins. On one field, Newsome and the other three general managers were negotiating with Joseph to establish contract parameters that would make Owens happy if and when a trade was made. On the other, the four GMs were talking to Donahue about what it would take to make the trade. If any of the teams were willing to offer a first-round draft pick for Owens, the Ravens were eliminated because their 2004 number one was in New England as a result of the Kyle Boller trade the previous April. But Newsome was fairly certain—correctly, as it turned out—that no one was going to trade a first-round pick to a team that had to make a deal. General managers generally look at first-round picks the way fathers look at their eldest daughter: just as almost no one is good enough to marry your daughter, almost no one is good enough to trade a first pick for.
It quickly became apparent that the deal would turn on a number two going to San Francisco for Owens. The Dolphins had no second-round pick, so they dropped out, not willing to give up their number one, knowing that a three would not be good enough. The Jets appeared to be a threat because they had the forty-first pick in the draft—ten spots ahead of the Ravens’ first pick. But Newsome was making major progress with Joseph. The message coming back to him was: T.O. likes what you’re offering; we want him to come to Baltimore. That was great, except, as Newsome kept saying, “Terry Donahue is still driving the bus.”
Donahue, naturally, wanted to get as much as he possibly could for Owens. The Eagles wanted him, but their second-round pick came seven spots after the Ravens’. To counter that, they were offering a fifth-round pick and a player, described in Billickese as “some slapdick.” Anyone who is anything less than brilliant at his or her job is, in the world according to Billick, a “slapdick”— or “a slappy,” for short. Billick isn’t sure where he first picked up the phrase but he thinks it may have been from Rick Smith, the longtime public relations guru for the San Diego Chargers and, more recently, the St. Louis Rams. Players who get cut early in training camp are “slapdicks.” Writers (and there are many) who Billick doesn’t approve of are “slappies,” as are mediocre coaches, movies, and restaurants. If you take Billick to dinner, it had better be a high-class place, not some “slapdick joint.”
With the Jets unable or unwilling to come up with the kind of money Owens was looking for and with the Eagles offering a fifth-rounder and a slapdick, Donahue wanted his bus to land in Baltimore. He told Newsome late on the afternoon of March 3 that he was almost certain he would trade Owens to the Ravens the next day for the fifty-first pick overall. “Unless something better comes up tonight, I think we can close this tomorrow,” Donahue told Newsome.
Billick was still skeptical. “Close it tonight,” he told Newsome impatiently. “Write it up, let’s get this done before something happens.”
One of the reasons Newsome and Billick work so well together is that each understands the other’s temperament. Newsome knows that Billick wants everything done now, and he doesn’t get upset when Billick starts pacing the halls, wanting to know why lunch can’t be delivered right after breakfast. Billick, on the other hand, knows that Newsome isn’t going to rush into anything. He can be in the middle of a heated negotiation and when it comes time for him to leave for his daily workout, he goes to his workout, then picks up where he left off. On Fridays after lunch, he goes to get his haircut. If Paul Tagliabue really needed to see Newsome on a Friday, Newsome would make time for him: after his haircut.
Newsome is never rushed into a decision. To him, the process—talking to his scouts, getting input from the coaches looking at tape, discussing a player with people around the league, finding people who might know what a player is like off the field—must be followed, regardless of Billick’s wanting something decided yesterday. “It’s one of Ozzie’s great strengths,” Billick said. “The process is inviolate. I understand that, but it doesn’t prevent me from occasionally walking in and saying, ‘Come on, Ozz, this is a no-brainer, let’s do it.’”
At those moments, Newsome will nod, tell Billick he’s right, and say he’ll get back to him as soon as something happens. In the old Colts facility, Newsome’s office was at one end of a hallway, Billick’s at the other. Those with offices in between could always tell when something big was occurring because the two men would take turns wearing a path between each other’s office.
The next day—March 4—Newsome’s patience paid off. Donahue called back to say that the 49ers were accepting the Ravens�
� offer. Elated, Newsome called Owens to welcome him to the Ravens. Owens’s response was a bit baffling and a little disturbing: “Talk to my agent,” he said.
That wasn’t what Newsome had expected to hear. He knew he still had to close the deal with Joseph, but with the trade done, those conversations should be little more than a formality. “Call my agent,” Owens repeated when Newsome tried to explain to him that the contract was all but done and he was going to be a Raven. Billick, who was in the room, was stunned.
“At the very least, players don’t talk that way to Ozzie, simply because he’s Ozzie Newsome, Hall of Famer,” he said.
Newsome put in a call to Joseph. There’s no deal, Joseph was insisting. Philadelphia is offering more money than you guys, so we want to go to Philly. Newsome tried to explain as patiently as he could that Owens had been traded to the Ravens. The only team that could sign him was the Ravens. Before finalizing the deal, he had again checked with the league, the management council, and the union to be absolutely certain there weren’t any loopholes that would allow Owens to escape the contract he was now bound to with the 49ers. There was nothing. Joseph didn’t seem to get it—or want to get it. T.O., he said, wanted to go to Philadelphia.
Billick was now officially bouncing off the walls. He was calling Joseph names far worse than slapdick. Even the usually unflappable Newsome was a bit unnerved. When the trade was announced, the Ravens wanted Owens to come to Baltimore for an introductory press conference. No way, Owens told them, I’ll never play for the Ravens. Again, the league was contacted. If Owens tried to contest the trade, was there any way it could be overturned? Bisciotti told Newsome to tell the people in the office that he didn’t want an answer from anyone but Commissioner Tagliabue. The word came back: “It’s a slam dunk.”
One reason the Ravens wanted to be absolutely certain they were going to get Owens was that Marcus Robinson was pressuring them for a decision on his status. If Owens became a Raven, then Robinson was a luxury item the team didn’t need. Without Owens, the team would probably want to re-sign him, the belief being there were no wide receivers available other than T.O. who were better. Two days after the Owens trade, Robinson called wide receivers coach David Shaw. The Minnesota Vikings were about to make his agent an offer. If Shaw thought the Owens deal was going to happen, then Robinson might as well sign with the Vikings. Vikings coach Mike Tice, whom Billick had worked with while in Minnesota, called Billick to ask the same question. The Vikings didn’t want to waste time putting an offer on the table to Robinson if he was going to end up re-signing with Baltimore. The Ravens were still being told that when all the smoke cleared, Owens would be playing for them in 2004. Billick told Tice, and Shaw told Robinson: T.O.’s coming to Baltimore. Robinson signed with the Vikings on March 8.
“Essentially we were taken out of the free-agent market for receivers,” Bisciotti said later. “If we hadn’t been involved with T.O., we might very well have brought Marcus back. Or we might have gone after someone else; obviously there was no one out there at T.O.’s level, but there were some guys we could have signed. But as long as we thought we were getting T.O. we wouldn’t—really couldn’t—move on anyone else. And we had every assurance that in the end, when the dust cleared, T.O. would be a Raven.”
In fact, Newsome and Billick made a conscious decision to keep Billick out of the ongoing controversy. Newsome would be the out-front guy in a situation like this under any circumstances, but it was only natural for reporters to go to the loquacious Billick for comment. Billick was convinced that Joseph was a slapdick and angered by the entire episode. But, for once, he made a point of keeping his mouth shut. “At the end of the day, when T.O. became a Raven, I was the one who was going to be dealing with him day to day. It was important I be the good guy in the whole thing, that I be able to say to him, ‘Yeah, the business side wasn’t pretty, but you and I need to work together now so that we all end up rich and happy.’”
So, as the battle unfolded in the papers and on TV, Billick lay low.
Joseph and Owens were now claiming that Owens should have the right to make a deal with any team, that he had clearly declared his intent to become a free agent and the lack of paperwork was nothing more than a technicality. The players union, which had initially told the Ravens that it agreed with the 49ers’ contention that Owens was not a free agent, had now made an about-face and was siding with Owens. A hearing before a special master who was a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania was scheduled for Sunday, March 15, in Philadelphia.
Technically, the Ravens were not a part of the hearing. Joseph and Owens were claiming that the league had done Owens wrong by denying him free agency based on a changed rule—the deadline had been moved up—for which Joseph had not received official notification. The league had faxed the new deadline date to agents, and Joseph—now through the union—was claiming that did not constitute official notice.
The Ravens were not part of the hearing, but they were clearly an interested party. Bisciotti dispatched Dick Cass, whom he was going to hire as team president as soon as the official transfer of power took place in April, to represent the Ravens in New York. Cass was a logical choice. He was a lawyer—Princeton undergrad and Yale Law, where he had been a year ahead of Hillary Clinton and two ahead of her future husband—and had done lots of NFL-related legal work before getting to know Bisciotti. He was leaving an extremely successful practice at Wilmer Cutler Pickering in Washington after thirty-two years to join the Ravens.
What Cass heard when he got to Philadelphia was shocking. The union presented a case that made it clear—at least to Cass—that the league had not done everything it was supposed to in order to make the new deadline clear to agents. The league had very little response. As the day wore on, Cass knew the Ravens were in trouble. His concerns were confirmed at the end of the day when the special master looked at the NFL’s lawyers and said something along the lines of “Please tell me this isn’t all you have.”
He went on to suggest that, before he ruled the next day, the league and the Ravens might want to cut some kind of deal to salvage something, because the ruling wasn’t going to come back in their favor. The next day the league asked the Eagles if they would give the Ravens a fifth-round draft pick, to compensate them for being innocent bystanders in what was quite clearly a screwup on the part of the league and the management council. The Eagles readily agreed. Thus, the master never had to actually make a ruling, because the parties reached a “compromise”: Owens was free to sign with the Eagles. The Ravens would get back the second-round pick they had traded to the 49ers and the Eagles’ fifth-round pick.
The Ravens were furious. Bisciotti, not even officially an owner yet, was angry with the management council, but angrier with Tagliabue—who had personally assured him that the trade would stand. Cass, having heard the case in person, was almost disbelieving. Billick was also furious. “It’s one thing to let me down or even to let Steve down, but how could they let Ozzie Newsome down this way?” he asked. “All he’s ever done is follow all the rules the league has—he’s on the competition committee, for crying out loud—and they do this to him?”
Newsome, for his part, was the calmest member of the group. “Stuff happens,” he said. “Is it upsetting? Of course it is. But there wasn’t any malice involved. They miscalculated. The unfortunate thing is, we got hurt by their miscalculation.”
The media had a field day with their miscalculation. Ray Lewis criticized Owens for his behavior and said he couldn’t wait for the Ravens to play the Eagles, not so much in preseason in August, but on Halloween in Philadelphia. More important than any of that, the Ravens’ less-than-sterling receiving corps now had one less dependable receiver, with only a handful of borderline free agents still available and a draft coming up in which the team didn’t pick until the second half of the second round.
It was turning out to be a long winter in Baltimore.
5
The Draft
THE
T.O. CAPER was not the only cloud hanging over Owings Mills as the snow began to thaw in March. A month earlier, shortly after the Super Bowl and before the Owens non-free-agency saga started to unfold, the Ravens had received an out-of-the-blue phone call from Atlanta with news that rocked everyone in the organization: Jamal Lewis had been arrested. Federal prosecutors were alleging that he had been involved in a conspiracy to sell drugs in July of 2000—a little more than two months after he had been drafted by the Ravens and a few weeks before he had signed his first contract with them.
Just when it seemed the Ravens were putting Ray Lewis and Atlanta behind them for good came charges that their star running back, coming off the second-greatest season any back had ever had in NFL history (2,066 yards), was a drug dealer. Lewis had hired Ed Garland, the same lawyer who had defended Ray Lewis, and was maintaining that he had been set up. Dick Cass, who was doing a lot of work for someone not officially on the job yet, talked to Garland at length to find out exactly what the team was dealing with. In the meantime, headlines screamed all over the country and the Ravens found themselves dealing once again with their image as a thug team.
Beyond that, it was apparent from the moment the team learned of the charges that this story would continue well into the season. The 2003 season had ended, even after the loss to Tennessee, with a feeling of optimism. The rebuilding was ahead of schedule. There were only a few truly significant free agents the team had to worry about re-signing: Marcus Robin-
son (gone to Minnesota), linebacker/special teams star Adalius Thomas (signed), center Mike Flynn (signed), placekicker Matt Stover (signed) and backup quarterback Anthony Wright (signed). In all, twenty-three or twenty-four starters—including Stover and punter Dave Zastudil—were returning, an unheard-of number in the salary-cap era of the NFL. The off-season goal was to upgrade in a couple of key areas, pick up depth through the draft, and come back ready to make a run at the Super Bowl. Everyone in the building believed it was possible.
Next Man Up Page 9