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Ravens head coach
Brian Billick
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Here is precisely why the Ravens’ Brian Billick is one of the most interesting
head coaches in the NFL: He actually thinks the fact that his battered team has had to
play the entire season without injured standouts Jamal Lewis and Leon Searcy is pretty
darned exciting.
Don’t bother reading that paragraph over. It’s not a typo. Billick actually
is fired up about the fact that he has had to defend his club’s Super Bowl title
without his star running back and quality offensive right tackle.
"The challenge of dealing with adversity is kind of what keeps it fresh,"
Billick said. "Without sounding too arrogant here, had we stayed healthy with a Jamal
Lewis, with a Leon Searcy, with a Michael McCrary, this team could have been pretty scary.
We could have presented quite a dynamic profile to anybody we played. But that wasn’t
our fate.
"So when in training camp a Jamal Lewis goes down and then a Leon Searcy and then
a Michael McCrary, the last two weeks having to play without a Sam Adams, a Rob Burnett
and throwing those young guys in, it kind of energizes you as a coach because you really
believe, ‘You know what, this is where I can make a difference.’ This game is
about players. Has been, is now and always will be, but when you have a void in talent
because of injury, then that’s when coaching really kicks in, and I think that’s
when coaches maybe feel the most needed."
This quality is what makes Billick so intriguing. A lot of sportswriters and fans
criticize him for being arrogant, but I disagree mightily with that thinking. Billick is
not arrogant. He is supremely confident. There is a big difference, even though this is a
fine line.
Billick has the supreme confidence to have an avalanche of injuries thrown his way and
not back down one bit. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t whine. He doesn’t ask
for pity. I suspect he goes outside and screams up to the football gods, "Is that the
best you’ve got? You’ve got to come stronger than that! What doesn’t kill
me makes me stronger! Heck, I’m barely even bleeding! Give me your best shot!"
The man embraces obstacles rather than cower at their arrival. A team takes on the
personality of its coach, and that is why last season’s Ravens walked with such a
strut and why this year’s Ravens have not freaked out about their injury woes.
Identify the problem. Embrace the problem. Attack the problem.
It’s exactly what prompted Billick to allow HBO to go behind the scenes to do the
series "Hard Knocks," which provided a behind-the-scenes look at this
summer’s training camp.
He had two reasons for taking this unique path. He figured there was going to be such a
bright media spotlight this season on the defending Super Bowl champs that he might as
well get the team used to the blinding glare from Day One. The other reason was he had
heard from people that a defending Super Bowl champ tends to arrive at the next training
camp feeling too complacent.
"It provided me an opportunity to say, ‘All right, guys, if indeed
that’s true and the returning Super Bowl champ is complacent, you’re going to do
it with the whole world watching,’ " Billick said.
The man is Gen. Patton with a coach’s whistle. A man’s man. Bigger than life.
A leader.
As I write this, I am reminded of a conversation I had with Giants GM Ernie Accorsi
earlier this season. I had asked him what traits are found in good coaches. Accorsi
started with what he said were the obvious — knowledge, expertise, etc. Then he got
to the heart of what separates the good coaches from the rest.
"The difference is the mysterious intangible of leadership that people have,"
Accorsi said. "They are commanders in the battlefield. That’s what they are.
People like that are people that you have to trust, have confidence that they can lead you
to victory. … It’s the guy on the beach (during a war) that says,
‘Let’s go,’ and you follow him. And there are guys that you don’t
follow."
Billick is someone the Ravens follow. There is no team that reflects its coach more
than the Ravens. The team looks in the mirror and sees Billick. Billick looks in the
mirror and sees the team staring back.
You call Billick arrogant. I call him supremely confident. Call him what you will, the
Ravens act exactly the same way.
After the Ravens won the Super Bowl last season, LB Ray Lewis said, "One thing
about us … people said we were cocky all week. We weren’t cocky, it’s being
confident. We said all week we didn’t come here to lose."
Billick and the Ravens. They’re practically identical twins.
One more thing about the distinction between arrogance and supreme confidence: When I
was talking to Accorsi, I asked him what he looks for when he is interviewing a coaching
candidate.
"Command," he said. "Absolute, complete courage of your convictions and
belief. You know, there’s a fine line between blind stubbornness and the right
courage of your conviction. Blind stubbornness can blow up in your face. … But have
the conviction and patience to stay with something when you know it’s right and other
people don’t think it’s right. It’s a very, very fine line."
It’s a line Billick has walked perfectly. He is so confident as to be accused of
arrogance, and yet at the same time, he did not stubbornly and blindly stick to his
high-flying passing-game roots last year when he didn’t have a quarterback who fit
the style. Instead, Billick was flexible, and he parlayed great defense and a strong
running game into a championship. An arrogant coach would have tried to jam the round hole
of the passing game into a square peg.
This year Billick has had to go back to the pass because of the injury to Lewis, a
devastating injury that has not led Billick to back down the slightest bit. His team has
followed his lead, ignoring crushing injuries to stay in the hunt. If the Ravens go on to
make postseason noise, it will be because Billick had the supreme confidence to believe
that it was still possible. |
