It was overcast when the game started, and the first quarter didn’t brighten anyone’s spirits. As Billick had feared, the team came out with little fire and quickly played down to the level of the Cowboys. The only person seen smiling even a little bit in the first quarter was Nick Murphy, who made his NFL debut after the offense quickly went three-and-out the first time it touched the ball. Murphy wobbled a low 41-yard kick to the Dallas 20 that was returned 18 yards by Lance Frazier—one of the last cuts the Ravens had made in training camp. Along with tight end Brett Pierce, another late cut, he had caught on with the Cowboys and was now a starting cornerback.
Murphy was greeted coming off the field by Stover. “Hey,” he said, “you caught the ball, you kicked it, and you didn’t get it blocked. Congratulations.”
Murphy managed a smile. “I’m just glad it’s over with,” he said. “Now maybe I can start breathing.”
On the Ravens’ third series, things really began to unravel. On first down, Jamal Lewis picked up 4 yards running left and came up limping. He hobbled to the sideline, cursing in frustration. “Not again,” he moaned as he was helped to the bench. “Not again.”
While the doctors were making their way over to Lewis, Boller completed a short pass to Travis Taylor, who was hit by Frazier and fumbled. Frazier recovered the ball at the Ravens’ 15. The defense held, but Billy Cundiff came in to kick a 19-yard field goal and the Cowboys led, 3-0. The boobirds could be heard warming up in the stands.
The offense finally began to move the ball on the next series. On the first play, Boller went right back to Taylor, who hung on for a 13-yard gain to the 35. Three plays later, on third-and-1, Musa Smith broke through a hole on the right side and charged into Dallas territory, picking up 12 yards and a first down at the 44 before safety Roy Williams brought him down.
But as Williams, coming up from behind Smith, made the tackle, everyone on the Ravens’ sideline let out a gasp of horror. With Smith going forward and Williams pulling him backward, Smith’s leg literally snapped—his body going one way, his leg going the other. You could hear the sound from the bench. Several players, seeing Smith fall backward and hearing the sound, ran away from the scene, screaming, “Oh my God!” Ray Walls, the backup safety, standing only a few feet from the play, ran back to the bench, buried his head in his hands, and kept screaming, “Oh no, oh no, oh no.”
It was one of those football injuries that brings the game and the entire stadium to a halt. Almost before Smith could roll over on his back, the doctors were on the field. Once the horrified reaction from the Ravens’ bench had subsided, the stadium became eerily silent. The injury was reminiscent of what had happened to Joe Theismann nineteen years earlier, not that different from what had happened to Trent Smith in the exhibition game a little more than a year ago. Standing on the sideline, Trent Smith shook his head and said quietly, “I just hope he’s in shock like I was and not feeling the pain yet.”
The doctors immobilized the leg immediately and put it in a temporary cast. Smith was helped by several teammates and the trainers onto the back of a cart that would take him out of the stadium to a helicopter that would fly him to the hospital. Surgery would be performed within hours. The only reason for the wait was to allow the swelling to go down. Roy Williams and fellow cornerback Terence Newman stood by the cart as Smith was loaded onto it and offered their hands and a pat on the back. Ray Lewis was kneeling on the sideline, head down, praying.
Musa Smith would say later that he was in shock during those first few moments. “I knew right away that it was bad,” he said. “I looked down and I could see the bone sticking out of my leg. No one had to tell me how bad it was. But the pain then wasn’t too awful. I just remember guys coming over and wishing me luck when they got me up on the cart.”
Smith may have been the quietest man on the team. He had a unique family background, one he didn’t like to talk about. Several years earlier, his father had been arrested and charged with allowing terrorist groups to use his Pennsylvania farm as a training ground. Smith also had two brothers, both of them in the marines. One was home, having lost part of his leg the previous spring in Iraq. The other was still in Iraq. “If I hadn’t been a football player, I would have gone into the marines, too,” he said.
He was an excellent football player who had starred at Georgia even while fending off questions about his father, who was now back on the farm in Pennsylvania. The Ravens had drafted him two years earlier in the third round and he had become a more-than-competent backup running back and a very good special teams player. The summer had been difficult for him: his wife had suffered a miscarriage, but he had been looking forward to getting a chance to play more in the fall. Now his season had ended in an instant, one frightening moment that left him wondering about his future. “All I remember,” he said later, “was being angry. It didn’t really hurt then. Only later.”
Later, in the hospital, he would think dark thoughts, thinking that his football career was over and that it was all too unfair. But he soon talked himself out of that, vowing to come back and play again. “It wasn’t easy, though,” he said. “I just couldn’t figure out why it had to happen.”
It happened because awful injuries happen in football. Billick knew there was nothing he could say or do to lessen the shock of what everyone had just witnessed. The potential for injuries like the one Smith had suffered is there on every play in every football game. Worse things can happen—and have. Every year there are stories about players being paralyzed playing football; there are also stories about football players dying, usually on the practice field. More often than not, it happens to high school or college athletes who aren’t in the kind of shape professional athletes are. But everyone in the NFL remembered the training camp death in 2001 of Minnesota Vikings offensive tackle Kory Stringer. Mike Solwold, the long snapper who had been released during training camp, had been standing a few feet from Stringer when he collapsed. Gary Zauner had been the special teams coach. Both men still had vivid, frightening memories of that day.
This wasn’t nearly at that level. But the unspoken fear on the sideline was that Smith’s career might have just ended at the age of twenty-two. Theismann’s career had ended on that night in Washington. Trent Smith still wasn’t back on the field sixteen months after his injury. Leigh Ann Curl’s initial report was somewhat promising: “It looks like a clean break,” she said. “If it is, he could be back next season.”
At that moment, all anyone could do was hope.
The rest of the first half was as dreary as the first few minutes had been. Billick and Matt Cavanaugh tried the Boller-to-Hymes-to-Boller throwback play three plays after Smith’s injury, perhaps hoping to get everyone back into the spirit of the game. Unfortunately, the Cowboys read the play and Hymes was lucky to have time to throw the ball away. A last-minute attempt to drive for a tieing field goal was cut short when Kevin Johnson fumbled on the Dallas 43. It was 3-0 at halftime.
Billick decided to go the calm route during the break. They had done nothing on offense, but neither had Dallas. When the offensive coaches gathered in his office, he listened as they threw ideas back and forth for a minute and then he said, “Listen, fellas, you’ve got a rookie cornerback out there [Lance Frazier] and you aren’t working him at all. I think you’re letting him off the hook.”
He thought about saying something about Smith’s injury but decided against it. “There was nothing to say,” he said. “We all felt badly, we were all concerned. But it wasn’t the time for a ‘win one for the Gipper’ speech. We just had to get our act together and play like a good football team.”
Eventually, they did. With Jamal Lewis down for the day—he had injured his foot—and Musa Smith out, they were down to one running back, unless Harold Morrow, who had last carried the ball in a game in 2001, was pressed into duty. What’s more, with Terry Jones inactive, there was no true backup fullback if something were to happen to starter Alan Ricard. All of that meant one thing: Kyle Boller had
to throw the ball. On the second series of the second half the Ravens went 78 yards for a touchdown—74 of those yards in the air. What was more remarkable was who was catching the ball: Dan Wilcox, the late-spring free-agent pickup who had been cut six times in his career, made a spectacular catch over the middle for a 20-yard gain. And Darnell Dinkins, who had been home watching football on TV when the season began, made three catches, including a 17-yarder for the touchdown that put the Ravens ahead, 7-3.
Dinkins had been a George Kokinis/Jim Fassel discovery. Fassel had coached Dinkins in New York, keeping him on the team as a special teams player because he was so impressed by his intensity and enthusiasm. He had originally been signed by the Giants as a fourth-string quarterback but played with such abandon on special teams that Fassel kept him around. Cut during camp by new coach Tom Coughlin because he was injured, he had been sitting at home in Pittsburgh when Kokinis called and asked him if he wanted to try out for the practice squad. He had been so impressive that he had been moved up to the active roster for the Eagles game and was now getting a lot of snaps at tight end.
He was truly grateful to get another chance to play pro football. After college, undrafted and uninvited to any camp as a free agent, he had worked as a juvenile counselor for kids in trouble in Pittsburgh. He had thought that was going to be his career path before the Giants offered him the chance to try out. They sent him to NFL Europe, where he made enough of an impression on special teams to get a serious look from Fassel and his coaches. His attitude toward the game had been best summed up by what he had said to Wade Harman before going out to warm up before his first home game, the game against the Browns. Harman always gathers his tight ends for a final word and a hug by the locker room door before they go out. When he went to Dinkins, his new tight end said to him, “Can you believe this, Coach? It’s a beautiful night and I’m getting paid to play football on national TV in a stadium like this. How can anyone be more blessed?”
The Ravens felt pretty blessed to have found Dinkins.
His touchdown opened the floodgates. On the next Dallas series, Ed Reed intercepted Testaverde at the Ravens’ 35. Six plays later, Boller found Kevin Johnson isolated on Lance Frazier and threw right over him for a 31-yard touchdown to make it 14-3. Stover added a 50-yard field goal early in the fourth quarter. Testaverde then threw a strike—to Chad Williams, who returned it 44 yards for a touchdown. That was enough for Parcells. He yanked Testaverde in favor of Drew Henson. On his first play, Henson was sacked by Marques Douglas and fumbled. Terrell Suggs fell on it on the 1-yard line. Chester Taylor scored from there and, even though Murphy bobbled the snap and Stover didn’t get to try the extra point, it was 30-3. The Ravens had scored 30 points in twelve minutes and seven seconds after failing to score for thirty-eight minutes and seven seconds. They had turned an ugly afternoon into an easy victory. The Cowboys scored a consolation touchdown late, and the final was 30-10.
Billick resisted the urge to say anything to Parcells during their brief handshake. Walking off the field, he heard the PA announcer say something that surprised him: “The Ravens 7-3 record is their best record after ten games in franchise history.” Granted, the franchise was only nine years old. Still, Billick hadn’t known that. He pointed it out to the players—admitting he hadn’t known it—and told them they were now in a position to do something really special, going to play the Super Bowl champions on the road the following week.
“Championships are won on the road,” he said. “This will be a great way to start doing that.”
Not all the postgame news was good. Clean break or no, Musa Smith was done for the year. Jamal Lewis appeared likely to be down for at least a week, perhaps two. Several other players had been nicked during the game. Orlando Brown’s knee was sore. Travis Taylor had suffered a minor concussion on the play in the first quarter when he had fumbled, but he hadn’t told anyone until late in the game.
There was also another issue: Corey Fuller. With Sanders and McAlister down, Fuller had apparently expected to play most of the game. Mike Nolan and the defensive backs coaches, Johnnie Lynn and Dennis Thurman, had opted to use Ray Walls more often in the second half. At one point, when Lynn told Fuller that Walls was going to be in during the next series, Fuller screamed that he had been told earlier he was going to be in on the next series and insisted he was going into the game.
It was Sanders who stepped in at that point. “You do what the coaches tell you,” he said to Fuller.
“But, Deion, I’m supposed to be in. . . .”
“I don’t care what’s supposed to be, I only care what is. He says you aren’t in, you aren’t in. You know that.”
Fuller knew that. But he didn’t like it.
When the game ended, Fuller went after Nolan in the locker room, telling him that he had been unfair and that he had disrespected him by playing Walls ahead of him. Nolan told him the locker room wasn’t the place and this wasn’t the time for an argument, especially after a 20-point win. He then went in to tell Billick he could expect a visit from Fuller. Before he was finished, Fuller was knocking on the door.
Fuller was angry, frustrated, flailing. “If you don’t respect me, just cut me,” he said at one point.
“Corey, I want you to calm down,” Billick said. “No one here disrespects you. That’s not what this is about. It’s about what is best for the team and clearly defining roles. I promise you by Wednesday your role will be clearly defined.”
They went around in circles for twenty solid minutes. Billick felt bad for both men.
“Mike has to be the bad guy in this for Corey,” he said. “Corey’s emotionally committed to me, and Mike’s his boss day-to-day. He badly wants to be a contributor, but it’s hard for him now. I’ve never seen a player who knows when the time has come to move on. If Corey’s not there, he’s very close. He certainly can’t be an every-down back, he can’t really be a nickel corner. He can be a backup safety, and that’s about it. But it’s tough telling that to him. He’s a proud man, a competitor.
“Mike has to feel like a whipped dog right now. He’s trying so hard to hold the defense together. We go out, beat up in the secondary the way we were, and shut them down completely. So, what happens? I’m trying to get him in to talk to the media to get him some attention and we have to spend twenty minutes shouting about Corey Fuller.”
Billick sighed. “We’re 7-3. Best record in franchise history. So why do I feel so damn tired?”
23
Mud Bowl
THE BEGINNING OF A NEW WEEK did not mean the end of the Corey Fuller incident even if both Thanksgiving and a game against the Super Bowl champions were both on the upcoming calendar.
When Mike Nolan looked at the game tape, he counted thirty-four snaps for Ray Walls and thirty for Fuller. He had believed the numbers were more lopsided in Walls’s favor and was even angrier about the outburst when he saw how much Fuller had played in the game. Exactly how to handle him would have to be discussed again during Monday’s personnel meeting.
Player-coach confrontations occur in football all the time. Occasionally, they are brief shouting matches. When they occur on the sidelines, on camera, they become a big deal. The most memorable Ravens coach-player confrontation had occurred a year earlier, when Jim Colletto had been trying to make a point about blocking schemes to Orlando Brown at halftime of a game against the Miami Dolphins. Brown, six foot seven and 360 pounds, had started screaming at Colletto, who was almost a foot shorter, weighed about 180 pounds less, and was twenty-six years older.
Brown was so frustrated that he began tearing apart his locker, yelling, “Just let me play the game!” at Colletto over and over again. Figuring that anything he said at that moment would further inflame Brown, Colletto called Billick over. Billick ordered Brown to sit down and calm down. “Look at me,” he said. “If you can’t look at me and you can’t calm down, you can’t play. He’s only trying to help you play better. You should know that.”
Brown calmed down,
and nothing further was said. This was different. For one thing, Brown was a starter the Ravens had invested a lot of money in, so a brief blowup wasn’t about to get him into serious trouble with the coaching staff. What’s more, they all understood he was high-strung. Billick had learned after the incident in the Cleveland game (when Brown had been hit with a personal foul call on the two-point conversion after Ed Reed’s clinching touchdown) that Brown’s eyes had been affected by medication he was taking for a sore knee, which was part of the reason he had exploded when hit there on the play.
Fuller was different. He was clinging to his spot on the roster for dear life. There was a lot of feeling within the coaching staff that he should have been cut early in the season. What had kept him around was Billick’s respect for him and that he had always been a good locker-room guy, someone who said the right things and did the right things. Now that was no longer the case.
“What upset me,” Nolan said when the subject came up at the Monday meeting, “was when I looked at the film, he only had four less plays than Ray. On Sunday I thought it was more skewed than that and maybe he had a legitimate gripe, given that we had told both guys we were going to alternate them. That’s essentially what we did.”
Both defensive backs coaches, Johnnie Lynn and Dennis Thurman, said they thought Walls was the better player right now. “I love Corey,” said Thurman, who had played defensive back in the league for nine years and knew how much tougher it became as you got older. “But I just don’t think, at thirty-three, he can do the job anymore.”
Everyone in the room expected Billick to support Fuller, and ultimately, his vote would be the final one. No one really expected Fuller to be cut at this stage of the season, but the issue appeared to be hanging in the air when Vince Newsome spoke up. Newsome (no relation to Ozzie) was the team’s assistant director of pro scouting. He had also been a defensive back in the league, playing for ten years before a spinal injury had ended his career. He was soft-spoken, someone who voiced an opinion only when he felt strongly. Now he felt the need to speak up. “I think there’s still value in Corey,” he said. “Before you throw him out the door, I think you should consider the fact that you may need him again before the season’s over.”
Next Man Up Page 47