With stadiums that are only thirty-five miles apart and fan bases that don’t especially like each other, it is natural the teams would not be especially close. But it went beyond that. Steve Bisciotti was already being called the anti-Snyder in NFL circles. Nothing happened in Redskinland without Snyder being in the middle of it. Every player signing featured Snyder and the player posing for photos. On draft day Snyder loved making a spectacle of flying the Redskins’ first-round pick to the team’s headquarters on his helicopter. Bisciotti could afford a helicopter, too. He didn’t have one. On draft day he sat upstairs in the draft room while Ozzie Newsome, Brian Billick, Phil Savage, and Eric DeCosta talked to the media. Bisciotti has said he wants to be the least-known owner in the NFL. Snyder may be the best known—and the least liked. When he does interviews, Bisciotti is honest and open. Snyder prefers whispering “off-the-record” leaks to his chosen few media sources.
There were a number of key Ravens who had a history with the Redskins. The most notable was Deion Sanders, who was ready to play and knew he would be resoundingly booed when he stepped onto the playing surface at FedEx Field. (The stadium had initially been named for Jack Kent Cooke, the late Redskins owner. Snyder’s first act as owner had been to take his name off the stadium. He called it Redskins Stadium until he could make his corporate deal.) Unlike a lot of people who had dealt with him, Sanders had no problems with Snyder. The same was true of Jim Fassel, who had interviewed for the Redskins job the previous January, only to lose out when Snyder was able to lure Washington icon Joe Gibbs out of retirement. “No hard feelings at all,” he said. “If I were Dan Snyder, I’d have hired Joe Gibbs, too.”
Mike Nolan’s memories of Snyder weren’t nearly as warm. The vanilla ice cream incident in 1999 had been symbolic of their relationship, or nonrelationship. Later in the season, when Nolan told the ice cream story to Leonard Shapiro of the Washington Post for a piece Shapiro was writing on the ups and downs of life as an NFL coordinator, Snyder’s spokesman Karl Swanson called both Shapiro and Shapiro’s boss to hotly deny the story and demand a correction. In the interest of fairness, Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, the Post’s sports editor, asked Mark Maske, who had covered the Redskins while Norv Turner had been the team’s head coach at the time of the incident, to call Turner, now the head coach in Oakland.
“Is there any way we should print a correction or an apology to Dan Snyder for this story?” he asked Turner.
“Absolutely not,” Turner answered. “Not only did he do it to Mike, he said to me the next year, ‘Do I have to send you ice cream, too?’”
Jeff FitzGerald, now the Ravens’ inside linebackers coach, was with the Redskins when the incident occurred. “I saw them wheeling the three canisters into Mike’s office,” he said after hearing about the denial.
When Swanson was contacted after the season for a comment on the ice cream incident, FitzGerald’s eyewitness account and Turner’s comment were included in the e-mail. A swift response came back: a statement from Redskins personnel director Vinny Cerrato saying he had been the one who had sent the ice cream. Cerrato went on to take a couple of swipes at Nolan, claiming the improvement in the Redskins’ defense during the 1999 season was the result of hiring Bill Arnsparger as a consultant.
At least now people in the NFL may have some understanding of why Cerrato remains on the Redskins’ payroll. He is both Snyder’s fall guy and hatchet man.
Nolan laughed when he heard that Cerrato was taking the fall for the ice cream. He long ago reached the point where he laughs when the story comes up. His concerns the first week in October had a lot more to do with Redskins running back Clinton Portis, Gibbs’s offense, and the 800 total yards his defense had given up the previous two weeks.
Billick believed his job—besides packing his desk—during the week was to restore the team’s confidence. The loss had been the kind that can make a good team question itself. Even though the final margin had been only 27-24, that score was deceiving. The Chiefs had clearly outplayed the Ravens on both lines, and their offense had been the dominant factor in the game. “We had a bad game, guys, and we still only lost by three points,” Billick told the players on Wednesday, choosing to leave out how the team had stayed close (punt return, trick play). “I’ve said before, I’ll say it again, we all know we have everything it takes to be a very good football team right here. Were we a good team last year? Well, last year we were 2-2 at this point and we’d given up eighty-four points. This year, we’ve given up eighty points. Everything we want is still out there. We can’t be 4-1 at the break like we hoped. But we can be 3-2.”
Billick had mixed emotions about matching up with Joe Gibbs. His training-camp joke about Gibbs not having won a game in the twenty-first century was no longer true since the Redskins had won their opener against Tampa Bay. Most of Washington had started making Super Bowl plans after that game, but the town quickly came back to Earth when the Redskins proceeded to lose their next three games, to the Giants, Cowboys, and Browns. A little bit of the bloom was off the rose, but Billick knew playing at home on a Sunday night against the Ravens, trying to avoid a 1-4 start, the Redskins would be a dangerous team.
“They’re doing a lot of the same things he [Gibbs] did the first time around,” Billick said. “I think our defense will handle their offense. Their defense is really good, though, really good.”
Translation: he was still worried about his offense.
Kyle Boller had not played poorly in the season’s first four games and had in fact had some excellent moments. He was still being pilloried locally, though, especially after the offense had failed to move the ball at all in its last two possessions against Kansas City. Baltimore appeared to be equally divided: 50 percent of the fans thought Boller was a bust (after thirteen career starts); the other 50 percent thought (still) that Matt Cavanaugh should be fired. What no one ever brought up was how different life would be for both men if the team had a wide receiver who was a legitimate deep threat (as in Terrell Owens) or if Todd Heap were healthy. Owens was in Philadelphia wowing people, and Heap was still a few weeks away from even thinking about playing again.
As if the uncertainty following the Kansas City loss, the distractions of the move, and knowing just how much the Redskins were going to want to win the game weren’t enough, there was also Jamal Lewis’s absence from practice on Thursday. Missing one practice was hardly a big deal for Lewis. The reason he missed practice was what was disturbing: he had to fly to Atlanta to enter his guilty plea in court to complete the plea bargain that had been agreed to the previous week. Kevin Byrne went to Atlanta with Lewis, and Lewis spoke to the media after he finished in the courtroom.
“I made a mistake,” he said. “I hope young people understand that. I know I’m a role model for a lot of young people and I have to pay for the mistake I made.”
If his lines sounded scripted, it was only because he had been briefed the day before by his lawyers on how to handle his post-court comments. Any complaining about the prosecutor’s actions or what had gone on could anger the judge enough that he might not go along with the prosecution’s sentencing recommendations. That wasn’t likely, but there was no sense in taking any chances. What’s more, Lewis honestly believed he had made a mistake. He didn’t believe he should serve time in jail, but he understood why he was going to have to.
Byrne was with Lewis when he spoke to the media. His mother and other members of his family were not there. He had told them not to come. This was one moment in his life he didn’t want them to have to take part in.
Saturday was the team’s last practice at the old facility. It was a gorgeous morning and everyone was in a good mood. Four days of separation from Monday night certainly helped. So did the knowledge that they were about to get a break in the routine. The team had reported to camp on July 29—ten weeks earlier. There had been virtually no letup since then. The week off would do everyone good.
When practice ended, Billick briefed the players on the schedule for
the next night, then turned to leave. “Hey, Coach, did you forget?” several players, led by Adalius Thomas, yelled. Billick turned back, puzzled. “This is our last practice here.”
Billick laughed. “I did forget,” he said. “We should commemorate the moment. Listen, this field has served us well. Let’s go out there and put on a performance tomorrow worthy of that. And by the way, let’s also remember to thank the new guy [Bisciotti] for spending thirty-five million dollars [actually $31 million] on the new place.”
They came together one more time as a group before leaving the field. No one looked back. The city of Baltimore had sold the facility to nearby Villa Julie College. A lot of great football players had practiced on the field they were leaving behind. The athletes who would use it in the future would not be nearly as talented, nearly as famous, or nearly as well paid.
Joe Theismann was at practice. It was difficult to believe that it had been nineteen years since Theismann’s career had suddenly and horribly ended when Lawrence Taylor had snapped his leg while sacking him during a Monday night game. Theismann was now fifty-five, a grandfather. He still looked youthful enough to take a few snaps if need be. Theismann was part of ESPN’s Sunday night crew, sharing the booth with Paul Maguire and Mike Patrick. It could be argued that of all the networks’ on-air crews, the one on ESPN took itself the least seriously. Perhaps it was because the three men in the booth had been together long enough that they were completely comfortable, or because their producer, Jay Rothman, went against the ESPN/ABC prototype and looked at what he was doing as several notches below life-and-death.
No one understood that better than Mike Patrick. This would be his first game back since undergoing open-heart surgery during the summer. A longtime smoker, Patrick had finally paid the price. There are few people in the business better liked than Patrick. Each of the Ravens invited into the production meeting that day made a point of giving him a hug and welcoming him back.
An ESPN production meeting is unlike those of the other networks. It is far less formal. There is no particular order to it. In fact, when Rothman, Maguire, Patrick, and sideline reporter Suzy Kolber were a couple of minutes late, Theismann began talking to Jamal Lewis, the first Raven in the room, by himself. He started with straight football questions and waited until everyone else arrived before getting into questions about his day in court. It was Rothman who asked if he thought the two-game suspension—which had been announced the day before—was unfair.
“Unfair?” Lewis said. “Hell no, it wasn’t unfair.”
Would he appeal?
“No. I’ll serve my two games and that will be the end of it.”
That was the way he wanted it. It was also the unofficial deal Cass had made with the league.
The last player ESPN had requested was Chris McAlister. Theismann asked him if not having a contract bothered him at all. “I’d be lying if I told you it didn’t bother me,” McAlister said. “I’d like to feel certain I’m going to be here for a long time. There’s a definite feeling of insecurity because of the situation.”
While McAlister was speaking, Newsome was upstairs finalizing a deal with McAlister’s agent. Two hours later the deal was sealed. The following morning it was announced: it would be for seven years, $60 million, with a $12 million signing bonus. The Ravens—Bisciotti, Cass, Newsome, and Billick—had decided that McAlister’s willingness to commit to a longer-term deal than a year ago, along with the maturity he had shown since returning to the team, made signing him a worthwhile gamble, even if it was an expensive one. McAlister had been counseled by Deion Sanders to stay with the Ravens rather than wait them out and go the free-agent route.
“I told him he didn’t want to go someplace where he would have to go in and be the Man because he was the highest-paid player on the team,” Sanders said. “Sure, maybe Champ Bailey was getting paid a little more [in Denver] because he’s expected to come in there and be the star of their defense. I’ve been in that position, I know what it’s like, and it isn’t easy. I told him here everyone knows him. They know his strengths and his weaknesses, and that’s good. He wouldn’t have to prove himself to a whole new group of people. Plus, here he’s got Ray, he’s got Ed Reed, he’s got a great defense. It isn’t all on him.”
McAlister listened to Sanders, although the Ravens’ willingness to pay him top cornerback money undoubtedly had more to do with his decision to commit to the team long-term than anything else. Saturday was a hectic day for him. After practice—and before his meeting with ESPN—the defensive backs decided to hold a rare players-only meeting among themselves after their normal post-practice meeting with their coaches, Johnnie Lynn and Dennis Thurman.
They all knew that Sanders’s absence in the last two games had been a factor in their inability to come up with enough plays, but they also knew they had to play better. Ed Reed had produced two interceptions in the Cincinnati game, but McAlister and Gary Baxter had been burned on the inside frequently by the Cincinnati receivers. Against Kansas City, the malaise had stricken all of them. They had given up key receptions all over the field and hadn’t done enough to help stop the running game. A lot of attention had been focused during the week on Madden’s shot at Ray Lewis. The DBs, notably Reed, who was closer to Lewis than anyone on the team, thought it unfair that so much of the heat had been focused on Lewis. The meeting wasn’t long, but the consensus was clear: “We’ve got too much talent to be giving up so many plays,” Reed said. “It needs to change. Now.”
That meeting ended at 12:30, and McAlister’s ten minutes with ESPN ended at 1:30. Shortly after three o’clock he had a new contract that made him a very wealthy young man. “You won’t regret this,” he said to Ozzie Newsome.
Newsome hoped those words would prove to be true.
There may not be a less-appealing stadium in football than FedEx Field.
“Reminds me of a hot dog stand stuck in the middle of nowhere” was Ravens assistant coach Mike Pettine’s apt description.
It was a bad idea to begin with—built, as Pettine said—in the middle of nowhere, with too few access roads leading to and from the Washington Beltway, a highway choked by traffic under normal conditions, a complete disaster with 90,000 people trying to get into or out of a stadium located a couple of miles away. If Dan Snyder wasn’t especially gifted when it came to human relations, he did know how to squeeze every last dollar out of a business deal. Since buying the team, he had expanded the capacity of the stadium to include obstructed-view seats (and then became furious when the Washington Post wrote about fans who weren’t happy with them) and seating behind the end zones that came dangerously close to the playing field. Snyder had even tried to prevent fans from parking on the other side of the Beltway (without paying his $25 parking fee) by claiming it was too dangerous for them to walk to the stadium from there. Only a court ruling—after several fans brought a lawsuit—had stopped him from continuing that charade. Fans were urged to “be in their seats early” for the simple reason that if you weren’t, you might spend the first half trying to get into the parking lot.
Nonetheless, people still came to see the Redskins play. Because Washington had been without a baseball team since 1971 and the hockey and basketball teams had had little success, the Redskins were an even bigger deal in Washington than the NFL team is in most cities. When Joe Gibbs returned—most Redskins fans believed he had descended from eleven years in heaven, where God had been sitting at his right hand—the local TV stations broke into programming to cover his press conference live. On the first day of minicamp the Washington Post put the story on the front page. Not the front page of the sports section, the front page of the newspaper. One giddy Post columnist all but handed the team the Super Bowl trophy that day.
Reality was now beginning to set in. There was even some soft grumbling about Gibbs’s key off-season acquisition, veteran quarterback Mark Brunell. The Ravens knew a lot about Brunell, having played against him frequently when they were in the same division as
Jacksonville. They had great respect for his toughness and smarts, but the Brunell they had seen on tape in a Redskins uniform didn’t resemble the young Brunell they had faced in Jacksonville. “He still worries me,” Mike Nolan said. “It’s only four games. Give him time and he can still cause a team a lot of problems.”
The key was not to give him time. The best way to do that was to force the Washington offense into passing situations, and that meant bottling up Gibbs’s other important off-season acquisition, running back Clinton Portis. Like the rest of the team, Portis had looked great on opening day, mediocre since. “He’s very shifty and he can make you miss,” Nolan told the defense. “But if you hit him, he’ll go down. He’s not going to break a lot of tackles. Tackle smart and we’ll get him on the ground.”
The pregame atmosphere on the field was almost as festive as Monday night in Baltimore. Steve Bisciotti was on the field prior to the game, feeling a little bit like a football player in that he was about to undergo neck surgery that he had put off until the bye week. “The doctor says I have to do it,” he said. “I’ll probably be in rough shape for a few days, so this way I won’t miss a game next weekend. I should be able to make it to the Buffalo game in two weeks if all goes well.”
The first person Bisciotti saw when he walked onto the field was McAlister, who came over to him, threw his arms around him in a hug, and said, “Thank you.”
Gary Baxter was a step behind McAlister and said to Bisciotti, “Me next.”
“You mean you want a hug, too?” Bisciotti asked.
Baxter laughed. He wasn’t talking about a hug, he was talking about a contract. His was up at the end of the season, and unlike several players whom the team planned to let walk, Baxter’s Ravens future was still being debated. Everyone in the organization liked him personally. He had a great attitude and loved playing on a winning team, having played on horrible teams during his college career at Baylor. The question was whether he was worth big-time cornerback money when the team had just committed huge money to McAlister and would undoubtedly be paying Ed Reed a lot in the near future when he reached free agency. There was one other unwanted issue: Ray Lewis’s contract had been redone two years earlier, seemingly locking him up for seven years. He now had a new agent who was telling the team that Lewis needed a new contract in the wake of his being chosen the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year in 2003. The team felt it had given Lewis an $18 million signing bonus and an annual salary of close to $10 million a year because they felt he was the best defensive player in football and there was no need to pay him again. What’s more, giving him a raise would throw their salary cap structure into chaos. And yet, because it was so important to keep Lewis happy, they couldn’t just tell the agent to take a hike.
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