Next Man Up

by John Feinstein

  “I’ll be back after the bye week,” which came after the fifth game, Flynn vowed. “I hate the idea of not playing. Playing is what I do.”

  Billick addressed Flynn’s injury with the team after the final practice of camp that afternoon. “Losing Mike is a blow,” he said. “But I know Casey will do well. [Damian] Cook and [Lenny] Vandermade, this is your chance. Remember what I told all of you guys about how things always change in football. The one thing I can tell you for sure is that this is not the last adversity or the worst adversity we’ll face before the end of the season.”

  He paused to let that sink in. “Now, you rookies better have a good show tonight because I’m giving you guys tomorrow off. So don’t let me down.”

  The rookies came through. The show was hosted by Brian Rimpf, the offensive lineman from East Carolina who had been the team’s final draft pick, and Brendan Darby, a free-agent tackle out of San Diego State who was the longest of long shots to make the team. The evening was a typical send-up of the veterans and coaches. There was a skit on the “Billick modeling agency,” complete with a shirtless “Billick” talking about his clientele. There was a re-creation of a linebacker drill with linebacker coach Mike Singletary criticizing everyone, interrupting his diatribe only to say, “Perfect, Ray, that’s perfect. Exactly right, Ray.” Kyle Boller, who had been part of the rookie show a year ago, got nailed for constantly having two or three coaches hanging on his every move.

  It was all good fun and everyone laughed heartily. For many of the rookies, the show was a farewell. Training camp was over. They would get to play one more time, on Saturday night against the Detroit Lions, and then they would hold their breath, hoping they wouldn’t be called up to the second floor the following Monday. The locker rooms and player meeting rooms are all downstairs. The coaches’ offices are upstairs. Players generally understand that a call to the second floor is never good news. Especially on cutdown day.

  Most of the players and coaches headed back to Baltimore after the rookie show. A number of staffers stayed behind to finish up the business of camp the next day. By noon, the sign outside the Best Western had been changed. ROOMS AVAILABLE, it said.

  The third exhibition game is by far the most important one of the summer. For the veterans, it is the one game in which they are expected to play extensively enough to get a real feel for where they are, with the start of the season only two weeks away. For those trying to make the team, it is their last chance to make a case to the coaches to keep them around for at least one more week. Some know their time is short.

  Clint Greathouse, the rookie punter, had flown several members of his family in to Baltimore for the game. “Maybe I’ll get another chance somewhere down the road,” he said. “I hope so. But if I don’t, I got to be in camp and run through the tunnel with an NFL team for three games. I want my family to see me do that.”

  Others were still hoping. At least fourteen players would have to be cut on Monday. (Players on the injured list did not count against the limit of sixty-five.) Most would be rookies, but a few would be veterans. An extra spot on the roster would have to be created for Deion Sanders, who was now expected to show up on Tuesday to take his physical and sign his contract. Deionmania had ebbed slightly since the initial story that he was considering a comeback, but everyone knew it would peak again the minute he showed up. Ozzie Newsome and Eugene Parker had agreed in principle to a contract that would pay Sanders about $1.5 million plus incentives based on how much he played and how well he performed. In NFL terms, that was cheap for a player who was going to the Hall of Fame—cheap, that is, if he could stay healthy, which he had struggled to do during 2000, his last season as an active player.

  Billick was concerned with the number of nagging injuries that had suddenly cropped up. In NFL jargon, injured players are referred to as “down,” healthy ones are referred to as “up.” For the Lions game, the Ravens had a lot of guys down: Flynn, who was going to be gone for a while; Todd Heap, still nursing his shoulder injury; Marques Douglas and Anthony Weaver; Devard Darling, the rookie wide receiver, who had a foot injury; Corey Fuller, who had suffered a calf injury early in the Eagles game; and Travis Taylor, who had a groin pull—a major concern because it was the sort of injury that could linger. The last thing the Ravens needed with their already-thin receiving corps was to have Taylor, who was the most dangerous in the group, hobbling. Still, the team was taking the optimistic approach: let’s have our nagging injuries now rather than later.

  The flip side was that B. J. Sams had been cleared to play. With the first cuts coming the following week, the coaches wanted to get a look at him to decide whether to keep Lamont Brightful around for the final exhibition game. Brightful and Kareem Kelly, who had been given the chance to return a couple of kicks in Philadelphia, had done nothing to convince anyone that they were the answer. The coaches were hoping the answer was Sams.

  The Detroit game would be the closest the Ravens would come to creating a regular-season atmosphere before the season actually began. Billick didn’t make them spend the night at the downtown Hyatt, as they would the night before a regular-season game, but he did have them report to the hotel for the pregame meal—which began four hours before kickoff—to get into the habit of establishing their pregame ritual for home games. Unlike on the road, where they bus from the hotel to the stadium, the players are on their own to get there at home. Many are dropped off at the hotel by their wives and then share a ride to the stadium, which is about a five-minute drive from the hotel.

  Billick walks to the stadium. He began walking from the team hotel to the stadium for home games while he was in Minnesota. Kim would drop him off on Saturday night, then she and the girls would drive to the game so the family could all ride home together after it was over. Billick would walk about a mile from the Vikings’ hotel to the Metrodome before the game. Occasionally this could be risky. “One day it was so cold, I think I was on my way to getting frostbite. I was shivering, having trouble walking. I was crazy to be out there. Fortunately, one of our security guys came by and made me get in his car. Actually, I didn’t really argue with him. I was too cold to talk anyway.”

  It never got that cold in Baltimore. When Billick first arrived, he had asked Vernon Holley to help him map out a walking route from the hotel to the stadium. Like a lot of NFL security people, Holley is a retired cop, having worked as a homicide detective for the Baltimore City Police Department for most of his twenty-three years on the force. He and Billick found a route that took them through a restored city neighborhood to the foot of the Hamburg Street bridge. From there they walked across the bridge, arriving on the concourse outside the stadium. Once Billick had the route down, he thanked Holley.

  “What time do we leave?” Holley had asked him.

  “We?” Billick said.

  “You’re a head coach now,” Holley told him. “You aren’t walking through throngs of fans without security.”

  “It’s okay, Vernon,” Billick said. “We aren’t on a losing streak yet. I’ll be fine.”

  “I’m sure you will be,” Holley answered. “But you’ll be fine with me walking next to you. This is not your decision.”

  At six foot five, Billick is a lot bigger than Holley. He’s also a few years younger. “Vernon is one of those guys who is as nice as anyone you’ll ever meet,” Billick said. “But there are moments when you can see why he was a homicide cop. I just said, ‘We’ll leave two hours and twenty minutes before kickoff.’”

  Which they have done before every home game for six years. Billick tried walking to the stadium on the road a couple of times early on but found that the notoriety he had acquired as a head coach (and an outspoken and controversial one) made it difficult for him to make the walk without encountering a few fans who weren’t that thrilled to see him. “Actually, most of them were nice or funny,” he said. “But there were always a couple who went a little too far.”

  The last road walk had been on a trip to Nashville f
or a game against the Tennessee Titans. As Billick and Holley neared the stadium, a car passed them with two men in it who appeared to be already drunk. Their message to Billick for the day did not include the words “Good luck, Coach.” The car went past. A few minutes later Holley saw that it had circled back and was coming near them again.

  “Coach, walk on the inside, away from the curb,” Holley said.

  “Vernon, it’s okay. . . .”

  “Coach, do what I’m telling you to do, please.”

  Billick complied.

  The drunks came past, repeated their profanities, and moved on.

  That sort of thing is never a problem in Baltimore. After six years, the fans now know exactly when Billick and Holley will cross the Hamburg Street bridge. Many are tailgating in the parking lots that fan out on either side of the bridge, and they cheer Billick heartily as he passes. Most fans on the bridge wish him luck or shake hands. There are regulars. One woman stands about a third of the way up the bridge and insists that Billick give her a pinky shake for good luck. Another waits at the bottom of the bridge to take a good-luck picture, occasionally with friends. Billick always complies. For the past two years, the same guy had passed Billick on the bridge in almost the same spot and said, “Fire Cavanaugh,” and kept on walking. Billick’s response was usually a laugh or “Matt sends his best to you, too,” also without breaking stride.

  One week a national TV crew wanted to get Billick on tape walking across the bridge, but someone fell asleep at the switch and the camera wasn’t on as Billick and Holley reached the top of the bridge. The producer ran up to Billick and explained what had happened. “Really sorry to hear it,” Billick said.

  “Any way you can go back to the bottom of the bridge and walk back up again?” the TV guy asked. Billick looked at him for the smile that would indicate he was kidding. There was none. He laughed anyway and said, “You’re joking, right?” and kept on walking.

  In addition to the picture lady, Billick is also greeted at the bottom of the bridge by a woman named Downtown Diane who works for WQSR, the flagship station on the Ravens’ radio network. Diane conducts a brief interview with Billick as he walks briskly (she has to run to keep up since she is about five foot two) toward the entrance to the stadium. The interview usually goes something like this:

  “Coach, big game today. Do you think the team is ready?”

  “Well, I certainly hope we’re ready. The [fill in team name] are a very good team and we’re going to have to play a great game to beat them.”

  “Coach, what does the team need from the fans today?”

  “We need everybody loud, really loud. They have a [young and inexperienced/old and experienced] quarterback, and anything we can do to rattle him is going to help our defense.”

  “Anything we should know about injuries or lineup changes?”

  “No, can’t think of a thing.” (If Jamal and Ray Lewis had woke up too sore to play, that would still be Billick’s answer. Like every NFL coach, he doesn’t give away anything about any kind of lineup change until the last possible moment.)

  “Coach, good luck today. We’re all behind you.”

  “Thanks. We need all the help we can get.”

  It may not be the most scintillating radio in history. Still, Billick is the only NFL coach who submits to a weekly chat while walking into the stadium. It makes the fans feel closer to him, because in a sense, he’s no different than they are. He walks across the bridge that many of them walk across, chats about the game, and enters the stadium. The only difference is he doesn’t have to go through a patdown or have his bag checked by security.

  Saturday, August 28, was hot and humid in Baltimore, one of the first truly unpleasant days of the late summer. The atmosphere in the pregame locker room was a lot more tense than it had been before the previous two games. The starters were treating this like a real game; the younger players like a final exam. If there was any doubt that the game was to be treated like the real thing, it was erased almost as soon as Ray Lewis walked into the locker room. There may be no one in football who has a game face like Lewis’s. Like his idol, now coach, Mike Singletary, Lewis’s eyes radiate intensity from the minute he enters the locker room until the game is over. He almost always keeps up a running commentary that is alternately funny and insightful, if not always logical. Lewis keeps up such an endless monologue that some players keep their headphones on before the game just to shut him out. Others enjoy hearing him. Still others find that listening to him either inspires or relaxes them.

  “We need to show [Lions running back] Kevin Jones what the NFL is about!” Lewis shouted as the linebackers prepared to take the field for pregame warm-ups. “I hope he doesn’t think this is a preseason game, because it’s not. This is personal. It’s football; that means it’s personal!” Turning to outside linebackers coach Jeff FitzGerald, he said, “Come on, Jeff, don’t keep us in here too long. We’re ready to get out there. We need to get out and hit somebody!”

  The time when the linebackers would leave the locker room was written on the greaseboard just inside the locker-room door. It wasn’t up to FitzGerald to change the time, and Lewis knew it. He was just letting off steam.

  “Ray may be the only guy I know who can get intense talking about cereal,” Todd Heap joked.

  Like every football team, the Ravens’ pregame routine is identical before every game. The players take the field in stages, by position. The kickers and their holders and snappers go out first, and the others follow one group at a time. Most players greet a few players on the opposing team whom they know. When the Ravens are at home, Billick always seeks out the opposing head coach at some point. It may be when he first arrives at the stadium and walks the entire field from one end to the other, one corner to the other, or it may be later, during warm-ups.

  “I always think when you are the home team, it is up to you to seek the other guy out, almost as if you are the host,” he said. “I know I appreciate it when other guys do it for me on the road, and I’m disappointed when they don’t. So, I always do it, whether it’s a friend, someone I hardly know, or even when it’s someone I might not like.”

  The players return to the locker room about twenty-five minutes before kickoff. The coaches leave them alone to relax for a few minutes. In the Ravens’ locker room, the players gather in a circle, holding hands to say a prayer as soon as they come back in from warm-ups. This was something the team leaders—notably, Lewis—had decided to do for the 2004 season. Billick had always had everyone kneel to say the Lord’s Prayer as the last thing they did before taking the field, but Lewis and others had decided praying as a team with no coaches in the room was something they needed to do to feel closer.

  Most of the players were fine with that idea. A few felt uncomfortable with it because they felt there was peer pressure to take part. “I can’t not do it,” said one player, “because I’m afraid some of the guys will be offended. But I’m not comfortable with asking God for help in winning a football game.”

  A couple of players—backup running back Chester Taylor and long snapper Joe Maese—always went to the bathroom during the prayer, preferring not to take part. Everyone else joined in. Different players led the prayer from week to week. Often it was Lewis. Sometimes it was Marques Douglas, one of the leaders of the team’s Bible study. Other times it was Corey Fuller or Matt Stover. Usually Rod Hairston, the team chaplain, would ask one player to lead the prayer.

  Just before it is time to leave the locker room, Billick walks to the center of the room and says the same five words: “Okay, let’s get it up.”

  That is the signal for the team to form a circle around him for a pregame speech. Except that Billick rarely gives speeches. He reminds the players about the keys to the game that have been talked about all week and talks about the effort needed to win. When he is finished, everyone who is playing in the game leaves the locker room by a back door that takes the players through the bowels of the stadium to the tunnel where
they will be introduced. Everyone not in uniform—injured players, assistant coaches, doctors, trainers—leaves through the front door and enters the field from two stairways that spill out onto the sidelines directly behind the team bench.

  “Nothing worse than going out this door,” Mike Flynn said on the night of the Lions game as he walked to the front door dressed in street clothes, his arm in a sling. “You walk out this door, you’re just some guy. You come out of that tunnel, you feel like you’re a god.”

  Like every other team in the NFL, the Ravens hype their introductions to try to get the crowd jazzed for kickoff. They do not have a goofy foam helmet they run out of, but they do have cheerleaders who form a cordon, first for the players not being introduced and then for the players being introduced individually. (The cheerleaders are paid $50 a game plus two tickets, making them, arguably, the most underpaid performers in football.) Before each game, coaches decide whether to introduce their offense or their defense. When the defense is introduced in Baltimore, the player introductions officially become an event because the last player introduced is Ray Lewis.

  It is during introductions that the entertainer in Ray Lewis is clearly on display. Even before the PA announcer gets to his name, Lewis goes into his act. He pounds his chest. He screams to the fans and waves his arms and then when the music starts—a song by the rapper Nelly—he does the Dance. By the time he is finished and runs into the arms of his teammates, the dead in Baltimore may very well have been awakened.