John Harbaugh knows I belong in those press conferences. Eric DeCosta knows I belong in his locker room reporting on his players. If you see them on the streets, let them know you know, too.
I have been told that Chad Steele works for Sashi Brown, not for “the football side” which probably speaks more to how dysfunctional the whole place must be in Owings Mills if people like me are being mistreated without repercussions by a team president who doesn’t even know where Dundalk or Essex is located.
Or perhaps I’m also being wildly gaslit by DeCosta and Harbaugh as well, but I only know them to be far better and more honorable humans than the current P.R. director over the years. These are men who have supported me and my wife, personally, on the darkest days of her life. I would call them friends. I believed they would never allow these kind of shenanigans to continue, months and months after I made them aware of every aspect of what was happening and long before I was ultimately thrown out.
I’m stunned they are watching this and truly helpless. Or am I just naïve? These days, I don’t who or what to believe because it’s all so unbelievable. And sad.
That said, they should be ashamed of themselves and all of this – watching my media access and credibility burned at the stake by Steele.
And then expecting me to somehow, remain silent or parrot Steele’s lie about my credibility?
They know better. All of them.
8
It’s disgraceful.
The whole situation is so inherently dishonest that it insults me to have to recount it for my friends and community. The lie is built in: Chad Steele told me this month that I’m no longer a real Baltimore media member and that I don’t cover the team the right way, so I’m not allowed in the building anymore.
No journalist should ever be told how to do their job by a P.R. person. That’s not the way this works.
Here’s where I hope to educate every NFL fan about what’s been going on “off the field” regarding what’s left of the withering, intimidated local media.
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Let’s start with this question for all Ravens fans: How many reporters do you think are in front of John Harbaugh after a typical road game in 2022 when you’re tuning into that press conference after a win or a loss in Chicago or Las Vegas?
The answer: usually three, sometimes four, and I am always one of them.
8This time last season I was flying through Albuquerque to get to Las Vegas to cover the Ravens’ opener against the Raiders at the new Allegiant Stadium. When I arrived on the roof for the first game with real people in 19 months, only Jamison Hensley of ESPN and Jeff Zrebiec of The Athletic were on the press row with me. I have an old snapshot of me in a giant scrum at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego in front of Ted Marchibroda standing on what look like milk crates back in the 1990s, and I counted 20 familiar Baltimore media faces covering the post-game of the Michael McCrary “leverage” game.
Since The Baltimore Sun has shrunk as an entity, newspaper deadlines don’t exist, and local television stations rarely send a reporter on the road, late-night West Coast games don’t behave the same way on a news desk. Since the financial commitment to send reporters (and photographers) to games where the expense account might look like 5% of their annual paycheck, there’s just not as many reporters to cover pricey road games. As any fan who went to Mount Davis knows, Las Vegas was a very expensive trip.
I will also say that the only time I sat in an eerily empty stadium on the road in Houston two seasons ago during a tropical storm and a plague and before the vaccine, I was positioned on the roof with Jonas Shaffer of The Baltimore Sun – two cubes apart and fully masked with John McClain of The Houston Chronicle – to watch the most morose day of football I ever hope to witness. Shaffer is a good person and also travels when he is allowed, and sometimes Mike Preston is there, but not as much as 20 years ago. The Cleveland and Pittsburgh games are more driveable and bring perhaps 8-to-10 in the modern era. I always like seeing good people like Bo Smolka at these games. The bottom line is that every one of these media organizations takes their travel expense account very seriously and expects value from their reporters, who are often also leaving a wife and small children for three days to cover a football game during a plague. (We were all still wearing masks last September, even when it was 112 degrees that day in Las Vegas, trying to do our jobs.)
If you remember the end of the Ravens loss to the Raiders, you’ll remember the walk-off touchdown by Zay Jones and the 33-27 overtime defeat to start an ominous season in the desert. When the game ended, Hensley and I wound up in the bathroom before running down to the elevator to go to what we knew would be a typically somber, and sometimes confrontational losing press conference with head coach John Harbaugh. Zrebiec caught the first elevator. By the time Hensley and I arrived down the long pathway, there was no second elevator. We waited and waited. Finally, in a shiny new building where the elevator operator doesn’t know how to lock down floors to get the media to the bowels of the stadium, Hensley and I arrived quite panicked and began sprinting through the bowels of Mark Davis’ billion-dollar money machine trying to find the Ravens press conference. (Keep in mind, locker rooms were closed so all we were getting was whatever Chad Steele was going to give us, player-wise, anyway. The access was far from anything normal, as you’d expect.)
Hensley and I arrived pretty gassed after a long sprint to find a giant room with 150 empty chairs and Zrebiec and one other local Vegas reporter watching Coach Harbaugh storming off the podium after a less than two-minute version of nothingness in the aftermath of a devastating, season-opening loss.
Only three Baltimore reporters made the trip across three time zones knowing the locker room was closed and there would be less than a handful of players made available. Two of us were stuck in an elevator. And the press conference with John Harbaugh began and ended anyway without 2/3 of the traveling press contingent. During a plague. After a season of shutdown football. I thought it was the most unprofessional thing I’ve witnessed in almost 37 years of covering sports and games and press conferences across all kinds of professional and amateur sports. Bush league in its very spirit. And the fans at home thought it was like a real press conference? I suppose so.
It was the beginning of a rough season for both of us. I seriously injured my back two weeks later, and I needed a spinal injection in October. I was struggling to sit, stand or function for most of last football season, but after a traumatizing procedure and plenty of ice and physical therapy, I had a brief window where I felt well enough to get to Chicago for an important game with the Bears on November 21. There were five local media members there, and WJZ-TV sports director Mark Viviano was involved. On a day when backup Tyler Huntley played just well enough to beat the Bears, every media member wanted to know about the health of Lamar Jackson, who looked well enough to play on Friday, but somehow developed a mysterious illness. (In the modern era, I’m sure some gamblers might have some interest in all of this as well.) All of it felt weird, and Harbaugh wound up having to answer more questions about getting his MVP quarterback back on the field and the bizarre nature of No. 8 not playing in a huge game. At that point (and you can watch this at 8:07 into the press conference), Chad Steele stepped out in front of the media and said, “We won the game, let’s talk about that” to the minimal Baltimore press corps that flew to Chicago with legitimate questions about the health of the franchise quarterback.
8“We won the game. Let’s talk about that.” 8:07 into 8:21
I’ve been doing this for almost 37 years professionally, and I have never seen a legitimate public relations or communications official speak out in the middle of a professional sports press conference in an effort to interrupt his coach, and to redirect the line of questioning at a postgame podium about a legitimate subject. Again, it’s just bush league; unheard of in my line of work from anyone credible.
Lamar Jackson played poorly a week later in a victory over the Cleveland Browns, and then the Ravens never won another football game again last season.
Need another example of why having legitimate media members forces better questions and more accountable answers?
Two weeks before that Chicago win, the Ravens had a miraculous come-from-behind win over the Minnesota Vikings at home in an overtime game that saw Lamar Jackson run the ball 21 times for 120 yards in a wild 34-31 comeback victory on November 7.
It was a gritty, gutty, laborious win in a game marred with lots of mistakes and another uncanny comeback by Lamar Jackson with the offense on his back. It was also a day when quarterback Lamar Jackson ran the ball 21 times.
My question to Harbaugh, who bristled, was: “Can Lamar run too much? Is that sustainable?”
8Harbaugh ended a long answer about doing whatever you need to do to win the game, and he added some hot sauce for me by saying, “That’s a good question, Nestor. No, that was a really good question!” I’m still not sure if he was as pissed off as he looked by his jugular veins bulging, because I’ve never asked him, but it turned out to be the most important question of the season.
Watch it for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrQKJ_snbII
I also asked Lamar Jackson if 21 rushes in a victory was sustainable, and he redirected the question to ask me if he ran that much against Cincinnati the week before.
Four days later, the team stunk, and Lamar Jackson mostly stunk, and the Ravens got beat 22-10 by the Dolphins down in his homeland of Miami.
Asking relevant questions is important. Pissing off the coach with a legitimate question is part and parcel of the job. I don’t fear any of these people. Not even Chad Steele, even when he towers over me or shouts at me like a small school power forward barking at the water boy.
I have always afforded him the respect he deserves despite knowing for 20 years that I am not his cup of militarized purple tea.
I told him when I sat with him, and looked him in the eye – man to man, because I believe you can always find something kind to say – that I had deep respect for his job and watching him try to cool down seemingly invincible, heated professional athletes in the aftermath of a devastating loss and trying to prepare that crushed human to deliver something intelligent, heartfelt and “real” for the media is an art form.
8I said it twice to make sure he heard that I was sincere. I was and I am. That ain’t an easy gig.
You saw Ray Lewis, the hero. I saw him beaten down before the lights went on and crying after huge, dream-ending losses and being propped up to go to talk to ESPN.
You saw Terrell Suggs, the locker room WWE action figure. We sometimes saw racier and saucier versions, and things were said and done to reporters (like me) that we didn’t certainly appreciate and were inappropriate if not unprofessional and unacceptable.
Today, you see happy Hall of Famer Ed Reed drinking, thinking and looking grandfatherly. I saw Ed Reed despondent and withdrawn after many losses and disinterested in speaking with the media. (By the way, I love the “Happy Ed” more and the beard is awesome!)
But seeing some more of the emotional sorts like Steve Smith or Cary Williams highly agitated after tough losses and corralling and quelling them was a job Steele did exceedingly well. World class. Best in show. He won awards for it and deserves them.
There have been some very competitive, very aggressive, very strong and large men towering over reporters in some not-so-good ways over the years, and Steele is supposed to be there to calm that down, professionally, and I’ve seen him in action.
However, I’m not one of them, and I’m not a member of Chad Steele’s Army.
8I’m a member of the legitimate, local media who should be treated with far more respect over the years than what I have been afforded, and I’ve expressed that to Kevin Byrne and Dick Cass many times over the years.
Here’s the point: what’s been done to me, my wife, my company and my reputation is not right.
I cover the team the right way. When credentials are left, I claim them. I sit where I’m told. I follow the rules. I attend practices and press conferences when they add value. I ask pertinent questions. In general, I get along well with good people and have a lifetime of evidence that supports my professionalism over 31 years on Baltimore airwaves and as a successful local media entrepreneur.
And there’s a world of proof of how I’ve always handled myself with coaches, athletes, and professionals in any walk of life across all industries and people with Baltimore Positive initiatives.
Chad Steele has always disliked me and has never hidden that from anyone who matters in the franchise. My wife knows it. My son knows it. Kevin Byrne and Dick Cass know about his disdain for me. Over two decades, I have left him alone because he didn’t like me, never wanted to like (or assist) me and projected an unusually natural arrogance that probably would’ve created much more negative energy than I cared to inject into my world. I have been barked at by him in my professional workspace for two decades. Far more than I’ve ever allowed anyone, in any walk of life, to bark at me and speak to me like I don’t deserve the space I’m occupying. That said, I also never had a cross word with him because it’s just not my style. Really, what’s the upside of picking a fight with him? I’ve watched my wife almost die twice and have lived a nice long, successful life because I have chosen to not spend my spare time fighting with the likes of Chad Steele. And to be honest, my wife and I spent more time one afternoon in the cancer center at Johns Hopkins randomly talking to Chad Steele’s father than we’ve ever spent talking to his son, who never even asked me or Jenn how she was doing over three seasons of her being bald and fighting for her life. His father was delightful, by the way, a wonderful man.
But here’s the truth: Chad Steele, over twenty years, has never afforded me one word of kindness. Ever.
And with the very little time I’ve spent with him in an engaged conversation, it’s become pretty clear he knows very little about me, my work, my audience, my history or my content. He has zero curiosity in what I do – even though it’s his job to know what I do.
8Honestly, one of the reasons I probably never attempted to bother befriending him, like I have literally thousands of others in the NFL working space over a quarter of a century, is because I always saw him as a guy who was capable of pulling off a stunt like this because he always treated me poorly and didn’t care who knew it. He treated me with disregard in front of Brian Billick many times two decades ago just simply asking for game stats in the locker room after a game.
This is NOT the way anyone else in the building in Owings Mills has EVER treated me.
And in Steele’s world, we’re “media”, so we’re an existential threat and are treated like the invaders that we apparently are perceived to be in the locker room. I think they call it “rat poison” in the Nick Saban-Alabama football circles.
He would call it being a “brand protector” when I asked him his primary role with the Baltimore Ravens.
That said, as a media professional on either side of the fence, you don’t have to like everyone. I accept as a fact that not everyone is going to love me, but if there’s a chance they might at least seek to understand me, I’ll certainly make an honest effort. Chad Steele was never, ever going to like me or make any effort because he made his mind up a long time ago about my insignificance. And I don’t like arrogant bullies in general and certainly don’t like multi-faced personalities who create a caste system for how humans are treated. It reminds me of the old Muhammad Ali quote about learning all you need to know about a person by seeing how they treat the waiter in a restaurant. I have witnessed this for two decades: the national network and visiting media are treated like royalty. Team websites and local media “partners” get all of the access and do all of the cheerleading. And what’s left of the local media are led down the hallway like cattle and herded out of a mostly empty locker room after an hour. And oft-times jeered by the players upon exit. I was actually thrown out of the heated doorway area that I’ve stood in hundreds of times on a 30-degree day back out into the cold in December three years ago just trying to stay warm because it was two minutes before the locker room opened.
