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Ravens head coach
Brian Billick
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Super Bowl XXXV was the best thing that ever happened to the XFL. Heat up those smoke
machines, Vince McMahon. You’ve just been given a mighty sendoff.
We’re talking borr-r-r-ring. As many punts as there were in XXXV, 21, they might
have lost count in Florida, where counting can be as clumsy as the Giants’ offense.
This was a game that appealed only to those who thrill to seeing guys drop into punt
formation.
I’ve seen some Super Bowls, XXXIII now, and to me this was the least of them.
Yeah, I’m aware that in IX, Pittsburgh and Minnesota offered one in which at halftime
the Steelers led 2-0 before eventually winning 16-6, but it could not have been any more
tedious than the Ravens’ 34-7 triumph over a Giants team that seemed intimidated from
the get-go.
What kind of a game is it, anyway, when with just over three minutes before halftime,
there have been more punts than pass completions? When the teams’ total yards from
scrimmage (396) fail to equal the 414 for which the Rams’ Kurt Warner passed in
XXXIV?
The game was heralded by the NFL as one of the most competitive of the series. Instead,
it was a mismatch from the beginning. The New Yorkers never challenged. Big Blue, indeed.
Big Nothing. The Giants permitted themselves to be bullied by Ray Lewis and his pals.
The image that is going to cling in my mind is of Kerry Collins sliding to a stop yards
before the first-down marker. Collins is a 250-pounder. He might have been able to run
over some guys, but he didn’t even try. Collins impressed a great many people with
his conduct during the week of the Super Bowl when he made a frank and touching disclosure
of his problems with alcohol, but on Sunday he impressed no one.
Half a team won this one. The Ravens have no offense. They didn’t need one. They
have Lewis, properly named the MVP, and the others on a defense that might be the finest
the game has seen, although I would prefer the Pittsburgh defense of the Steelers’
Super Bowl years in the 1970s.
Consider this: In ’74, the Steelers had to deal with O.J. Simpson, Ken Stabler and
Fran Tarkenton during the playoffs. The Ravens had only to get through Gus Frerotte, Steve
McNair, Rich Gannon and Collins. Some difference.
As for Lewis, I must say he has my sympathies. The media was brutal to him during the
preparation for the Super Bowl. One Florida publication announced he was "in
denial." In June, he was absolved of guilt in a double murder that occurred on the
night of Super Bowl XXXIV, and he had the matter, in effect, retried in Tampa.
Why? Because he was there. There is no other reason. The linebacker is not the most
commendable of persons. But no person should be treated as shabbily by the press as he
was.
The guy who came off the strongest in Tampa was Brian Billick.
From assistant director of public relations with the 49ers to coach of the NFL’s
champions. Talk about progressions!
You have to understand what an assistant P.R. guy does. He turns cranks on copy
machines. He writes releases. When a reporter wants to interview a player, he is the guy
who has to tap the player on the shoulder and tell him, "Hey, so and so wants to talk
to you." Not a pleasant assignment because NFL players, being members of a privileged
class, do not appreciate sharing their enormously valuable time with some potbellied
wretch.
Brian Billick did these things. From 1979 to ’80, he was a member of the
49ers’ P.R. staff, a position he had accepted because he wanted to sit at the feet of
Bill Walsh — genius. As people who were around the 49ers at that time remember,
Billick’s principal duty was to act as O.J.’s chauffeur.
"But it was like a two-year sabbatical — to allow me to watch the workings of
the league and the administrative aspect," Billick said. "I have said before
that one of the things that allows Ozzie Newsome (the Ravens’ personnel chief) and I
to work well together is that Ozzie has been in coaching and understands my perspective,
and me having been around the administrative side a little bit allows us to work better
together.
"Yeah, I’ve used those two years. They’ve been huge in my development. I
did the Pro magazine, I did the advancing of the games, I did the whole stinking
detail."
Billick is a highly articulate man. Words just stream from him.
Possibly for this reason, he is widely thought of as arrogant. Beginning his remarks on
the day following the Super Bowl, he said, "If you thought I was arrogant before,
whoa! Wait until you get a load of me now."
A little arrogance is no bad thing, I would suggest, in a coach. You think Vince
Lombardi wasn’t arrogant? Jimmy Johnson? Bill Parcells?
Billick, though, sublimated his recognized offensive expertise for the greater good of
the Ravens, giving the team a defensive thrust that was rewarded in Raymond James Stadium.
"Coaching is a huge part of this game; I wouldn’t be in this profession if it
wasn’t," he said. "But the pure X’s and O’s of it are somewhere
down the chain of what it takes to be successful. This game is not about schemes. Trust
me, it’s not. It’s about personnel and putting them in the best position you can
to optimize their abilities."
NFL coaches are terrible copycats. When the Steelers were in their heyday, everybody
was going to trap blocking, which the Steelers did so well. The 49ers’ success caused
the so-called "West Coast offense" to become a vogue. The Rams, winners of Super
Bowl XXXIV, created interest in spreading the field and sprinkling passes around. What
does Billick expect he has inspired?
"I think you will have a whole bunch of coaches turn into arrogant, egotistical
bastards," Billick said.
I think he was talking in jest.
Jerry Magee has covered pro football for the San Diego Union-Tribune since 1961 and for
PFW since its inception in 1967. |
