“I certainly didn’t want to cut Corey and we couldn’t cut Cornell. But we had to have Harold back. We were cutting a good kid and a good football player because of a circumstance that might very well be resolved by Monday. Only we couldn’t wait until Monday.”
Newsome volunteered to deliver the news to Sapp. He had drafted him a year earlier and he always felt responsible if a draft pick failed—regardless of the reasons for that failure. The sun had come back out on Thursday, and the team had gone through its regular Thursday morning walk-through. A walk-through is just that: once the game plan has been given to the players on Wednesday morning, they begin looking at tape of the opposition. Then, before lunch, they go out onto the artificial-turf practice field (the only one in the old facility where no one can look out a window and peek at what’s going on) and mimic the plays they are going to run and expect the opponent to run, in what amounts to slow motion. There’ s no hitting involved, just gaining familiarity with the plays that they will run at full speed in practice that afternoon.
Sapp was jogging off the field with the other defensive backs when Newsome, leaning against the same tarp where Billick and Fuller had talked the day before, called his name. Smiling, Sapp turned back to trot over to Newsome. “What’s up, boss?” he asked.
When he saw the look on his boss’s face, he knew exactly what was up. Newsome explained to him he had done nothing wrong and, if he cleared waivers, the team would do everything it could do to bring him back. Billick walked over to reinforce to Sapp how much the team thought of him. Of course, if they had told him they planned to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, it wouldn’t have mitigated the shock Sapp was feeling at that moment. “You see that stunned look and you just feel awful,” Billick said.
Sapp shook hands with both men, thanked them for giving him a chance, and walked slowly into the locker room. The first person he encountered was Trent Smith, like him a 2003 draft pick. Smith could see in his friend’s eyes that something was wrong.
“You okay?” he asked.
Sapp shook his head. “They cut me,” he said.
Smith felt his stomach tighten. There was nothing he could say and he knew it. Sapp didn’t stick around for lunch. To the surprise of most, he cleared waivers. But the following Monday—as Newsome had predicted—he was signed by the Colts.
There was one small bit of comic relief. On Wednesday, Kevin Byrne had received an e-mail forwarded to him by the Cleveland public relations office, from Andra Davis. When he had learned after the game that Orlando Brown had lost his mother on Saturday, Davis felt guilty about their confrontation during the coin toss. He sent Byrne a heartfelt apology and asked him to pass it on to Brown: “Please tell Orlando how sorry I am about what happened,” he wrote. “I am amazed by the courage he showed playing in the game on Sunday. I doubt if I could have done what he did. Please tell him how sorry I am for his loss and wish him my very best.”
“I guess the guy must have been way out of line,” Byrne said, reading the note. He had been unaware of what had happened on the field, since he had been up in the press box. On Thursday morning he took the note to Brown, who read it and laughed. “Kevin, this guy’s got nothing to apologize for,” he said. “I was the one who was motherfucking him. He didn’t do anything wrong. It was all me.”
Byrne laughed. “It’s a nice gesture, though, isn’t it, Zeus?”
“Oh yeah,” Brown said. “But the motherfucker’s got nothing to be sorry for.” Like a lot of players and coaches in the NFL, Brown uses profanity both to show anger and as a term of endearment.
That wasn’t the only apology issued that day. After practice, Billick apologized to his players for being snappish on Wednesday. “It was a bad day all the way around,” he said. “Between the weather and the union situation, the slipping and sliding plus the decision we had to make on Gerome, I wasn’t feeling real good about things. I want you guys to understand one thing: there’s nothing in the world I enjoy more than being out here with you. That’s what makes all the other stuff worth putting up with. So, if I went a little overboard, I’m sorry.”
With that behind them, all the Ravens had to do was worry about the Steelers. The two franchises had been rivals forever, first when the team was in Cleveland and just as much since the move to Baltimore. The Ravens were 5-11 against the Steelers since the move and had lost to them the first five times they had played them in M&T Bank Stadium (including the game that opened the stadium), finally ending that string in the ’03 season finale with a 13-10 overtime victory. Even that win had been controversial since the Ravens had clinched the division title earlier in the day when the Cincinnati Bengals had lost their game and some people thought Billick should have rested his starters that night. In fact, earlier in the week Steelers linebacker Joey Porter had called Billick “stupid” for not playing subs in that game once Jamal Lewis had gone over 2,000 yards rushing for the season, which he did on the Ravens’ first drive.
This was not even close to the first time that Porter had been involved in trash talking with the Ravens. He had missed the start of the previous season because he had been involved in an accidental shooting outside a bar in Denver. Walking out of the stadium after the season opener in which the Steelers had beaten the Ravens, Ray Lewis had passed Porter and said, “Hey, Joey, we hope you’re better soon. You’re in our prayers.”
Whether Porter misunderstood what Lewis said or his intent in saying it, his response was to start screaming profanities at Lewis. He had briefly followed Lewis to the Ravens’ bus before thinking better of it and heading the other way, still screaming at the top of his lungs.
Billick didn’t mind playing the Steelers coming off the embarrassing loss in Cleveland. “These guys are exactly who we need to be playing right now,” he said. “We need a game that makes it easy for us to get back to where we need to be emotionally, and there’s no one better to do that than these guys.”
If there was any doubt that the team was getting where it needed to be, it was erased by Friday’s practice. Friday is normally a day when practice is dialed back a little. Many of the Ravens wear different numbers than normal—Sanders, for example, wore 2, his old high school number—and if anyone is the least bit sore or tired, he will sit out. Pads are never worn and most of the practice takes place at about three-quarter speed. On this Friday, Orlando Brown and T. J. Slaughter got into a fight. It wasn’t anything serious, just the usual wrestling match with the normal profanities shouted before it was broken up. Billick, who normally doesn’t like fighting in practice, didn’t mind it this time.
“It was actually a teaching opportunity,” he said. “I liked the emotion, but I told them they had to be disciplined in this game, that there were going to be times when someone wanted to draw them into something and they couldn’t afford to let it happen.”
Things were looking up. Jonathan Ogden was ready to play. The weather report for Sunday was good. The Ravens gathered, as they always did before a home game, at nine o’clock on Saturday night at the downtown Hyatt in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor to go through their pregame routines. There were four meetings each Saturday: special teams, offense, defense, and then the entire team together. All four usually took less than an hour in total. They were final reminders of what to look for. Most of the time, Matt Cavanaugh and Mike Nolan would ask the video people to put together some kind of inspirational tape for the end of their meeting. For music, the video guys had selected the hip-hop song “Let’s Get It Started,” which was becoming a pregame anthem in most NFL stadiums. The implication was clear: last week had not been a start. This week needed to be.
Billick rarely backed up his talk with any tape. In this case he made an exception, showing tape of the regular-season finale from 2003, the 13-10 overtime win. “The blueprint is there,” he said after showing them a series of successful plays. “You lived it. Now let’s go out and play it.”
The next day they did just that. During pregame warm-ups, Joey Porter approached
Billick, hand outstretched. “Coach, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t really call you stupid.”
“No problem, Joey,” Billick said, accepting the handshake. “I probably am stupid.”
The feeling in the locker room before the game was clearly different than in Cleveland. There, they had quietly hoped they would handle the circumstances: hostile stadium, no Ogden, questions to be answered about the offense. The questions were still there. But Ogden was back and the crowd would be very much in their corner as soon as they walked onto the field. Knowing what was at stake, the players were almost manic as they waited. Ray Lewis was screaming at the top of his lungs over and over: “This opportunity only comes around once in a lifetime, fellas! Once in a lifetime! I will tell you one thing for sure: We are not skipping that prayer!” Lewis and Billick had talked during the week about skipping the Lord’s Prayer in Cleveland. Billick had told him the minute they walked out the door without saying it, he felt as if something was wrong. So, it was back.
As Lewis screamed, Ed Hartwell, his partner at outside linebacker, kept doing push-ups, clearly seeking some kind of relief for the tension. Chris McAlister and Ed Reed, facing into their lockers, wore headphones and yelled lyrics out at the top of their lungs. Matt Stover lay flat on his back, feet on a stool, eyes closed, as if seeking some sort of Zen place where he could clear his mind. When Lewis wasn’t shouting, Corey Fuller and Harold Morrow were. “Fellas, you’ve got to realize we are God’s Chosen Few!” Morrow said. “Only a few get the chance to do this. It killed me to watch you guys on TV last week. We need to bring passion to every play today!”
One of the quietest people in the locker room, especially on the defensive side of the room—the defense dresses at one end of the room, the offense the other—was Deion Sanders. He sat quietly in front of his locker, watching and listening the way a teacher might observe his or her students at recess. Sanders had been involved in fifteen plays in Cleveland, and the ball had never been thrown his way. He didn’t think that would be the case in this game. He had lobbied Billick heavily during the week to put in a few plays for him at wide receiver. Billick was tempted—especially after the way the wideouts had played in Cleveland—but still thought it too soon. “He’s got qualities as a receiver our other guys don’t have,” he said. “But I’m afraid if I push too hard too soon, he’ll break down. I don’t want that to happen.”
During the pregame meal, Sanders sat down with David Shaw to again ask why Billick didn’t want to give him some plays on offense. “It isn’t that,” Shaw told him. “He just doesn’t want to go too fast. Be patient. It’s going to happen.”
“I’m thirty-seven,” Sanders said, smiling. “I’m too old to be patient.”
He did understand Billick’s reluctance to push him, but he also wanted more plays. He wasn’t used to watching. Ninety minutes before kickoff, Sanders had been approached by Kevin Byrne. For home games, the Ravens traditionally introduced twelve players—eleven from the offense or defense and a twelfth man, usually someone from special teams who they think will help fire up the crowd. Billick wanted Sanders to be the twelfth man introduced. When Byrne explained what Billick wanted, Sanders shook his head.
“Kevin, I haven’t done anything yet,” he said. “I don’t deserve to be introduced. Someone else should do it.”
Byrne said he understood, but Billick wanted to fire up the crowd. “Ray will fire up the crowd, you know that,” Sanders said. “Let me do something before I run out there and get cheered.”
Byrne told Sanders this wasn’t really a request. Reluctantly, Sanders agreed.
When the Ravens were introduced, Sanders burst out of the tunnel at the sound of his name, waving his arms at the crowd, circling to face all sides of the stadium, then leaping into the arms of his waiting teammates. It was as if he had stepped into a phone booth en route from the locker room to the field, taken off the clothes worn by the mild-mannered Deion, and emerged from the tunnel as Prime Time.
“That’s exactly right,” he said later, laughing. “The real me never wants to go out of the house. I like being at home with my wife and my kids. I spend all my time in sweats and have no need to go out and see people. But I understand business and there is a business aspect to all this. If I’m going out, I like to dress up. My daddy was like that, I guess I picked that up from him. And I know what people expect of me when it’s time to perform. I’d have preferred not to be introduced. But if they’re paying me and they ask me to do it, I’ll give them everything they want and expect from Prime Time.”
The team proceeded to do the same thing. On the opening series of the game, the offense did what it hadn’t done in sixty minutes in Cleveland: put together a sustained drive that ended in a touchdown. The defense gave the Steelers almost nothing. The only real setback of the first twenty-eight minutes of the game was almost comical: offensive line coach Jim Colletto got so excited during a long run by Chester Taylor that he got too close to the sideline and accidentally clipped the side judge running past him with the pen he was carrying. Colletto was whistled for a 15-yard penalty for interfering with the official—intent was irrelevant—and Jeff Friday felt miserable that he had failed in his job as get-back coach.
The last two minutes of the half didn’t go nearly as well.
With the Steelers trailing, 10-0, and needing a jolt, quarterback Tommy Maddox decided it was time to test Sanders. On third-and-long, with Sanders in single coverage against the speedy Plaxico Burress, Maddox tried to find him deep. Forced to run all-out in a game situation for the first time, Sanders sprinted back and just got into position at the last second to knock the ball away. But he came up limping badly. He came out of the game and went directly to the locker room, with Leigh Ann Curl right behind him. “I tore my hamstrings,” he told her. As soon as Sanders got his uniform pants off, Curl could see that Sanders’s self-diagnosis had been accurate. Both hamstrings were already discolored badly. Sanders was done for the day, probably a good deal longer than that.
The lead was still 10-0 when the offense again pushed deep into Pittsburgh territory in the final minute. Trying to get into position for a field goal, Lewis went off left tackle. Somehow, in the pileup, Todd Heap’s ankle got rolled and stepped on. No one really knows exactly what happens in pileups, but the chances were almost 100 percent that it was an accident. What happened next was not. Heap limped to his feet and, with the Ravens out of time-outs, tried to line up so Kyle Boller could spike the ball to stop the clock for a Stover field goal attempt. He was clearly hurt; everyone in the stadium could see that. As soon as the ball was snapped, Boller spiked it. At the same moment, Joey Porter slammed into Heap, knocking him backward and off his feet.
The Ravens’ sideline went crazy. Porter hadn’t done any further damage to Heap, but everyone saw it as a cheap shot. Billick and Porter’s newfound friendship was clearly over. While Heap was being helped off, Billick took turns screaming at the officials to throw Porter out of the game for unsportsmanlike conduct and at Porter. Stover came in and made the field goal for a 13-0 lead as time expired and the fans let Porter know their thoughts on his conduct as he left the field. Billick was still steaming in the locker room.
“We are going to go out there and show these guys what we think of them!” he yelled. “All my years in football, that’s the cheapest, dirtiest, most bullshit play I’ve ever seen. I don’t want any retaliation, we can’t let them get to us that way, but let’s let them know how we feel about what happened.”
The Steelers never really challenged in the second half. Late in the third quarter Terrell Suggs sacked Tommy Maddox, who came up hurt, forcing the Steelers to bring in Ben Roethlisberger, their rookie quarterback. Roethlisberger had been the eleventh pick in the draft, taken after Eli Manning and after Philip Rivers. The Steelers saw him as their future, not necessarily the present. He was shaky when he came in but got lucky when a pass that Ed Reed would have returned for a touchdown slipped through Reed’s hands and was caught by Burress,
who took it to the 1-yard line. The Steelers scored from there, which didn’t make anyone happy. What made Billick even more unhappy was Reed getting whistled for an unsportsmanlike penalty for taking his helmet off in frustration after the Pittsburgh touchdown. It was the second penalty on a Raven for taking a helmet off in the game: Sanders had returned a punt in the first half and, after taking the ball to the Steelers 31, had taken his helmet off—an automatic penalty in the NFL because the rule-makers consider that showing off and attempting to show up the other team.
Another touchdown brought the Steelers to within 23-13, but a Chris McAlister interception returned for a touchdown sealed the deal late in the fourth quarter, allowing everyone to breathe a sigh of relief. They had made too many mental errors to count, and two key players—Heap and Sanders—had left the game injured. But they had the victory they absolutely had to have against a bitter rival.
“I swear to God, I’m going to have your helmets glued to your heads if I have to,” Billick said, able to smile in the locker room when it was over. “I told you that was the team we needed to play, and you guys went out and showed what kind of team we really have here.”
Billick was holding a football as he spoke, standing as always in the middle of the locker room, with most of the players and team personnel kneeling around him. Normally, game balls are decided on by the coordinators and handed out later in the week during meetings. Billick had already presented one game ball—to Fassel in the Meadowlands. Now he wanted to present another one. “I think our new owner deserves this ball, don’t you guys?” he said, flipping the ball to Steve Bisciotti, who was standing outside the circle. “He’s building us a great new facility and we all know how hard he’s worked to give us the best possible chance to compete.”
Next Man Up Page 32