Purple Reign 2: Chapter 1 “Meet the new boss, not the same as the old boss”

Proverbs 29:18 says: ‘Where there is no vision the people perish.’ I guess that’s why I feel like we stuck to the vision and the team grew into it.”

– John Harbaugh (March 2013)

IT WASN’T EXACTLY A RESTFUL sleep for Baltimore Ravens head coach Brian Billick on the night of Dec. 30, 2007, but the 27-21 home victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers earlier that evening snapped a dismal nine-game losing streak to end the season on some semblance of a bright note and his agenda for beginning 2008 was clear after a disastrous 5-11 finish in a season that was steeped in promise with a 4-2 start.

Earlier that week, Billick sat for hours with Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti and General Manager Ozzie Newsome, as he frequently had, reviewing and evaluating the state of the Baltimore Ravens roster and future. After the final game with Pittsburgh, he visited emeritus owner and founder Art Modell in his box at the stadium feeling good about defeating the Ravens’ arch rival and snapping a nine-game losing streak to finish 2007 with a modicum of success and a hint of some future achievement.

The long, exhausting season was over, but while December 31, 2007 wasn’t officially 2008 just yet, Billick’s sleep deprivation had to do more with future planning than a future canning. He had repeatedly been told his job was safe during the agonizing losing streak and the team’s public relations machine moved earlier in the month to announce publicly that Billick wasn’t going to be fired. He was “safe.” Plus, he was only concluding the first of a four-year, $24 million contract he signed after the 2006 Ravens went 13-3, but suffered a tough loss to the Indianapolis Colts during the playoffs.

Yet, on what is always known around the NFL as “Black Monday” for its many coaching staff firings, many sports media outlets were still speculating about the state of Billick’s job security.

At 8:40 a.m., during a 25-minute phone call, he was insistent that his job security was, well, secure. Billick was always candid, always painfully honest and up-until-this-point, always “in the know” when it came to the state of the Ravens. Over the previous nine years, his integrity, honesty and information had been in his words “unfiltered” — meaning the unvarnished truth.

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At 10:10 a.m. the internet and local sports world exploded with multiple reports that Brian Billick was out as the coach of the Baltimore Ravens.

The shots heard round Owings Mills were not only unexpected by Billick, but by most of the media, many members of his coaching staff, and everyone else in the organization who reasoned that the three years left on his contract — still damp with just 11 months of tread on it and $18 million more of Baltimore Ravens’ owner Steve Bisciotti’s money guaranteed — made him amongst the safest coaches on the continent.

Sure, the Ravens had a bad year amidst a sea of injuries and another season of dreadful quarterback play with a broken down Steve McNair, an overmatched former Heisman Trophy winner in Troy Smith and the unfulfilled potential of 2003 first-round draft pick Kyle Boller, but firing a decorated coach was certainly a major risk (and expense) for Bisciotti.

Newsome was powerless and only became aware of Bisciotti’s intentions hours before. This was Steve’s decision and Steve’s alone.

The head coach who had led the Baltimore Ravens to the playoffs in four of his nine seasons and a 2001 Super Bowl title was unceremoniously fired and suddenly an NFL head coaching job was now available, where only moments before there was a franchise with a clear leader and a clear direction that had led the team to a 13-3 record just 11 months earlier.

Billick, whose self-parodied egotistical, arrogant and large personality, was now on the street with more money in his pocket than anyone in the history of the league with a terminated contract.

Such is life in the NFL. You’ve heard it before: NFL stands for “Not For Long.”

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Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti had made the most difficult – and expensive – decision of his brief ownership tenure in Baltimore after taking over for Art Modell in a 1999 sale that took five years to fully execute.

Now, to begin the 2008 calendar year and season, finally Bisciotti could hire his own coach, picked from scratch and molded by his ethics, policies, and vision.

Bisciotti’s entire corporate background and fortune were built by finding good people. His company, Aerotek, outsourced personnel in the technical & engineering industry and he built a $2 billion empire by knowing whom to hire. In 1999, he purchased a minority share of the Baltimore Ravens from financially struggling Art Modell after the move from Cleveland proved more costly and burdensome for one of the long-time patriarchs of the modern-day NFL, who bought the Cleveland Browns for $3 million in 1961. The sale price was $600 million but Bisciotti gave the Modells $275 million at the closing in 1999, which allowed the team to move out of debt and into the market for better football players.

Bisciotti’s investment directly affected the Ravens ability to recruit and keep the likes of Shannon Sharpe, Rod Woodson, Michael McCrary and others during the 2001 Super Bowl XXXV run headed by deposed head coach Brian Billick.

Bisciotti took full control of the Ravens in 2004 and immediately named Dick Cass, a close confidant of Jerry Jones and the man who did numerous sales transactions in the NFL involving the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins to replace David Modell, the son of Art Modell, who had grown from a ball boy in Cleveland in the 1970’s into the team’s President when the Ravens won the 2001 Super Bowl in Tampa.

In December 2008, Bisciotti directed the Ravens P.R. director Kevin Byrne to inform the media early in the month that Billick was “safe” even though it was clear from midseason that the team’s 4-2 start was disintegrating amidst a sea of defensive injuries and an ugly string of losses to AFC North rivals in November. Billick’s fate might’ve changed forever in December when the Ravens went to Miami and lost a humiliating overtime game to a winless Dolphins team lead by soon-to-be-fired-himself Cam Cameron and the losing streak reached nine games by Christmas week.

There was tension inside the walls of the Ravens’ facility in Owings Mills. Billick was getting second-guessed at every turn and factions were building to oust him. This was a turning point for the franchise and a clear direction moving forward wasn’t as clear to Bisciotti, who was privately second-guessing and agonizing over his decision to give Billick a four-year extension earlier in 2007.

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There had long been rumored friction between the two dominant personalities and Bisciotti famously demanded changes from Billick in front of reporters in early 2006 during one of his first forays with the media as the full-time owner of the Ravens.

To understand how the Ravens won Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans in January 2013 you must first understand Bisciotti’s situation with the team.

Bisciotti, who has now been a part of two Super Bowl wins in 14 seasons as an NFL owner, is a very approachable figure in Owings Mills, where the Ravens practice in the state-of-the-art Under Armour Performance Training Center that the team entered in 2004. In a building that looks more like a Castle than a workplace, he knows virtually everyone in the building and while he’s not an “everyday to practice” or “9-5” owner, he’s a presence within the company and most everyone calls him “Steve” because that’s the way he likes it.

Despite originally being hired by Art Modell and his staff in the 1990’s, many holdovers continue from the Cleveland Browns days as well as “first in” hires of the Baltimore Ravens in 1995-96. Bisciotti hasn’t made or mandated one change anywhere on the scouting or player personnel side of the Ravens that Ozzie Newsome essentially founded when the Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996. Over the last 25 years, the Ravens might be the most stable office staff in the NFL, especially given the move from Cleveland to Baltimore in November 1995.

And while Steve Bisciotti did ink his coach to a four-year, $24 million extension, he didn’t originally hire or pick Brian Billick. He inherited him. And Bisciotti didn’t like what he was seeing in December 2007 and clearly didn’t have the right feeling about Billick moving forward.

In 2004, Bisciotti and Billick made an offer to longtime Washington Post sportswriter John Feinstein to write a book following the team at every step, in every meeting and in every breath it seemed. In the book, “Next Man Up,” an outstanding view of an NFL franchise with dashed expectations and various dramas, Bisciotti acknowledged that some things about Billick rubbed him the wrong way.

He openly said he thought Billick had “bad habits” and was “disrespectful.” Billick addressed him (and most everyone else) as “young man” which Bisciotti didn’t find to be nearly as endearing as Billick did. They clashed over Matt Cavanaugh’s role in the offense. Bisciotti didn’t like Billick’s demeanor with the Ravens’ scouts and the way he allegedly used his height to intimidate smaller people.

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Billick even hinted that the two might have too much in common on the personality side. “It occurred to me that Steve reminded me of somebody: Me. He came right at you, told you what he thought and if you didn’t like it, tough!”

No one saw them as best pals, soul mates or even closely matched confidants but most believed that a four-year extension for a Super Bowl-winning coach coming off a 13-3 season was as ringing of a long-term endorsement as you can find in the NFL. There was no doubt that Bisciotti respected Billick’s abilities and track record as an NFL head coach. And there was no doubt that Billick wanted to win, and that was a quality that Steve appreciated.

But Bisciotti – and specifically, Cass – didn’t like what they were seeing and hearing inside their building during December 2007 when the Ravens were in a rare position of “playing out the string” of meaningless, dreadfully cold home games.

Bisciotti and Cass didn’t like the preseason feeling of Christmas week games. They felt that Brian had lost his way and began examining all aspects of the franchise during that holiday season. And the feedback they got and the feelings they created cried out for change in their minds.

This is what they were hearing:

Players stopped believing in Brian’s message. The assistant coaches Billick was hiring weren’t of the caliber they were a decade earlier. Rex Ryan had his own fiefdom on the defensive side of the ball, and the defense didn’t respect Billick. Billick had no relationship with the defense because he was too busy being the offensive coordinator. Billick was involved in too many other issues inside the building that weren’t football related.

By all accounts, Bisciotti believed it was a fractured room, a fractured building and a fractured culture. And at some point during December 2007, Bisciotti stopped believing the Ravens could win a Super Bowl again with Brian Billick.

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Bisciotti was very succinct and emotional at a somber press conference on Dec. 31, 2007 announcing the firing of Brian Billick.

“I started my business at 23 years old and in order to be successful you have to take chances and in order take chances you have to listen to your heart and go with your gut and you believe with a track record that when you get the answer you go with it,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you don’t pray on it and it doesn’t mean you don’t fear being wrong. I do fear being wrong. I could be three coaches past Brian Billick nine years from now and trying to solve this puzzle. It’s such a difficult business. All I have to be is better than my competitors in the other industry that I spent 20-some years in. In this, I’ve got 32 players going for one prize, every year and how much blame you put on different people and how much you hold yourself responsible is something that is new to me and I hope that over time that Baltimore views me as the same quality of an owner as Brian Billick was as a head football coach. I’ve got some catching up to do to the man I’ve just asked to step down today. The jury is out on me. Brian already has gotten his Super Bowl. I’ll try to make y’all proud.”

Clearly, with one day left in 2007, the franchise was now at a crossroads.

Bisciotti felt like he had the right personnel man in Ozzie Newsome and the right staff. He felt like he had a cupboard full of quality players in Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, Terrell Suggs, Haloti Ngata, Derrick Mason, Todd Heap and Chris McAlister – all Pro Bowl, if not Hall of Fame, caliber talent.

So, how could this group manage a 5-11 record in 2007?

Any coach in the NFL will tell you the same story: “If you have no quarterback, you have no chance.”

“Five years later – with some clarity – I can understand where Steve was coming from in that I didn’t develop a quarterback in the nine years,” Billick said after the Ravens’ Super Bowl XLVII win. “He saw that having a coach and a quarterback develop together and build together was a good strategy in other places.”

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But from the outside, Bisciotti encountered a mixed bag of feedback on “changing his mind” regarding firing an always-well-respected Billick and the first time he’d really felt pressure from the fan base as the sole owner – and prime decision maker — of the Baltimore Ravens.

This was as much of a public — and quite expensive — admission of a failure or hiring mistake publicly as you’ll ever see an NFL owner make in firing a Super Bowl-winning coach. And everything in the building changed and it certainly shook up the entire organization, which was its intent.

It was pretty clear that wasted money wasn’t an issue for Bisciotti. He wanted a younger leader to grow with the team. He wanted a new voice. He wanted a fresh message. He wanted to win a Super Bowl and that’s all that he’s ever pointed to with any decision over his first decade as the Ravens’ owner.

As Bisciotti later said: “I made a very, very difficult decision to part ways with Brian. And then I found my equilibrium.”

Bisciotti enacted a search committee that was a fairly unorthodox process by NFL standards. There are as many different flow charts across the NFL as there are teams, it seems, and ways and methods that owners hire football personnel evaluators and coaches. Sometimes it’s the owner’s pick, done on the porch of his estate after you’re flown in on a private jet. Sometimes it’s a corporate decision made in a boardroom with a series of meetings across the organization with a timed agenda. Sometimes, when it’s an established winning coach like Bill Parcells, who famously said he wanted to pick the groceries when he’s making a meal, you are finding out about personnel power on and off the field as much as picking just a true head coach.

There is no standard way to hire an NFL head coach. And looking at the power structures that have won Super Bowls over the past decade, there are indeed many different personalities and many different ideologies and personnel packages that could claim victory.

And no matter who is on the committee or how the search is executed there are only so many kinds of candidates to be a head coach in the NFL. Usually there are three ways to become a “hot” candidate to get interviewed or considered by NFL ownership: be a former NFL head coach, be a winning offensive or defensive coordinator for a playoff team, or be a big-time college head coach with NFL experience ready to move back to the professional game.

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What Bisciotti learned was that the success rate over the past decade had been identical for all three. There was no foolproof methodology for finding a successful NFL head coach.

And instead of a more traditional three-man search committee (along with Dick Cass and Ozzie Newsome), Bisciotti instead insisted on an eight-man committee of senior management and football personnel advisors to be a part of his search for the next head coach of the Baltimore Ravens.

After the initial shock of Billick’s firing dissipated, Biscotti named his search team. Along with him at the head of the table, Newsome, President Dick Cass, Senior VP of Public Relations and longtime Art Modell confidant Kevin Byrne, VP of Football Administration Pat Moriarty, Assistant GM Eric DeCosta, Director of Pro Personnel Vince Newsome and Senior Personnel Assistant George Kokinis were all charged with finding the best candidates for the job and would be heavily involved in the intelligence gathering and interviewing process over the next two weeks. Many of these men were also annually involved in the selection of NFL players via the draft each April so they were now scouting seasoned coaches instead of green college kids.

Despite the availability of a bevy of Super Bowl-winning coaches, Bisciotti was adamant about finding someone off the radar, someone new. He reiterated many times that he was looking to find the “next Hall of Fame head coach” for the Ravens.

There were more than 40 names on the first long list and by the time the search team had met for two days, it was narrowed down to six men to be interviewed on the short list:

Bryan Schottenheimer – An interesting pick because his father Marty Schottenheimer was also in the market after being fired by the San Diego Chargers after a third run of great success in winning regular season games. The younger Schottenheimer, just 34 years old, was the offensive coordinator of the New York Jets.

Tony Sparano – The 2007 offensive mind of the Dallas Cowboys under Bill Parcells, who wound up taking the Miami Dolphins job that Cam Cameron was fired from in the same timeframe.

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Jim Caldwell – The quiet quarterbacks coach of the Indianapolis Colts and confidant of Peyton Manning, who was just a year removed from winning the Super Bowl.

John Harbaugh – The long-time special teams coordinator for the Philadelphia Eagles, who moved to coach defensive backs in 2007 to improve his chances of getting a college head coaching job. Harbaugh had just finished as a runner-up to Rick Neuheisel for the UCLA opening on December 29, 2007.

Rex Ryan – The incumbent Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator and “in house” candidate who had a year remaining on his contract. Ryan was the players’ choice to be the head coach and several players publicly endorsed him for the job. He had been with the franchise for nine years including the defensive line coach for the 2001 Super Bowl XXXV champs.

Jason Garrett – The offensive coordinator for the Cowboys and longtime backup quarterback for Troy Aikman’s teams of the mid 1990’s, Garrett was a favorite of Dallas owner Jerry Jones, who saw him as a perfect mentor for franchise quarterback Tony Romo.

By any measurement, the initial round of interviews and subsequent intelligence gathering were exhausting for the committee. There was an air of excitement and anticipation at the thought of finding the next head coach of the Baltimore Ravens, but there were also other coaching dramas playing out as other teams, including Miami and Atlanta, were also hoping to find the next Bill Walsh in January 2008 and the process includes a wide array of possibilities and opportunities for many coordinators and position coaches around the NFL. It’s literally a feeding frenzy for coaches and a chance to get a promotion or for those on the street, a chance to get back into the game. It’s made even harder for candidates whose teams are still in the playoffs in January and they’re trying to focus on winning a Super Bowl while their email and texts light up from other coaches around the league trying to get a promotion or a new job.

After the original round of intensive all-day interviews, the committee was smitten with two candidates – Harbaugh and Garrett – but it was clear that Bisciotti was going to make Garrett his first choice and with good reason.

Bisciotti liked that he was a hot name and had the implied blessing of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who he considered his best friend in the NFL ownership circle. Cass also shared a strong bond with Jones and Garrett, who came from some the best stock in the world – Princeton was also Cass’ alma mater. One of Bisciotti’s local advisors, legendary agent Ron Shapiro’s son Mark Shapiro was the general manager of the Cleveland Indians and had gone to Princeton with Garrett in the late 1980’s.

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It didn’t take long for Bisciotti to get plenty of intelligence and insider information on Garrett and he loved everything he’d heard.

On the evening of January 14, 2008, Garrett flew into Baltimore with his wife, Brill, also an Ivy Leaguer with a Harvard Law School degree. The courting began in earnest the next day when his wife was being driven around the local community looking at houses. Stories about his every move in Owings Mills were being documented in a newly created social media space on the internet, the closest Baltimore has come to a paparazzi trail.

Meanwhile, Bisciotti’s search committee quizzed Garrett and tried to make him feel comfortable all at the same time in the impressive offices of the Baltimore Ravens, which more closely resembles a European castle than an American football training facility.

A dual Ivy Leaguer, who played at Princeton until his father Jim Garrett became the head coach at Columbia and he followed him into New York, Jason Garrett had just one year of experience as the offensive coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys, but it seems he spent a lifetime with a blue and silver star on his cranium as the backup quarterback during the Troy Aikman era. He also played briefly with New Orleans, the New York Giants, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Miami Dolphins but Garrett was always associated with the silver star in Big D and was a favorite of owner Jerry Jones, who also acts as the football personnel man for his Dallas Cowboys.

Garrett was young and impressive. He had spent his entire adult life in the NFL but despite his Ivy League pedigree, found his way through the adversity of coming in after taking a tour through the World League of American Football in San Antonio and then to the Canadian Football League with the Ottawa Rough Riders.

Despite resembling Opie from Mayberry, there was certainly toughness and some tenacity to go along with the intelligence and obvious credentials that Garrett brought to the Ravens that day. Garrett’s credentials were impressive: three Super Bowl rings as Aikman’s understudy in Dallas and was actually on the losing side of the Ravens’ Super Bowl XXXV title as Kerry Collins’ backup; played for Jimmy Johnson, Barry Switzer, Jim Fassel and Jon Gruden; coached with Nick Saban and Wade Phillips; grew up in a family of all football people, including his dad who was a Cleveland Browns coach and his brothers who were coaching in Dallas and St. Louis; grew up in suburban Cleveland, which makes football a part of his DNA.

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To put it mildly, Bisciotti was impressed. He loved everything about Jason Garrett.

The Ravens’ search committee could tell how smitten Bisciotti was with Garrett, and they knew an offer was imminent. But, they also knew there was a strong chance Garrett would be going back to Dallas and not taking any job outside the Cowboys’ kingdom. They also knew that this was Bisciotti’s way – he was a born salesman and he loved trying to win with the long shot. They thought Bisciotti might somehow find a way to lure Garrett to Baltimore despite the obvious relationship he had with Jerry Jones and whispers and promises of a future as the Dallas Cowboys head coach.

Garrett met with the media briefly, said all of the right things, and left Baltimore on the afternoon on January 15 for an interview with the Atlanta Falcons.

Garrett was already among the highest paid offensive coordinators in the NFL and taking a tour of other NFL facilities and interviewing for head coaching jobs could only strengthen his negotiating position in Dallas, where many believed his heart was steering him. Jerry Jones was telling him, “You’re going to be my guy.” Jones was adamant that Garrett was the guy to mentor Tony Romo to bring a Lombardi Trophy back to Dallas.

Meanwhile, Billick had just been fired and Garrett was sitting in front of the Ravens search committee because the franchise had been so frustrated by the lack of a franchise quarterback. Garrett believed in Romo, but just how much? Enough to walk away from an NFL head coaching job and inheriting Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, Terrell Suggs, Haloti Ngata and company in Baltimore?

The money and the contract weren’t really the issue for Garrett. He was already reportedly making almost $3 million per year as a coordinator. Assistant coaches’ contracts are the one part of the NFL that still remain mostly a mystery. They don’t file the numbers with the league office. It’s almost a private matter and most importantly, it has no bearing on the league’s salary cap for players, which creates a level playing field across all 32 teams. But when it comes to coaches and their staffs, it’s true capitalism. There are no caps. There are no limits.

Any coach in the NFL would tell you that the most significant item on your shopping list as a head coach would be a quarterback. If your franchise doesn’t have a top-shelf signal caller, you’re probably not going to remain a head coach very long in the NFL.

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It was clear that the Baltimore Ravens didn’t have anything resembling a franchise quarterback and were sitting with the 8^th pick in the April 2008 draft. Hotshot Matt Ryan from Boston College wouldn’t make it that far down to be picked by Ozzie Newsome’s crew, and the team didn’t have the draft firepower or conviction to go and get him.

For Garrett, this wasn’t about money or the opportunity to be a head coach – it was apparent he was going to get a job somewhere sometime soon – it was more about the ability to win and the perception of the talent he was inheriting. And, really, where he and his wife wanted to be and build a career as an NFL head coach.

Garrett had as many questions for Bisciotti, Newsome and the Ravens’ search committee as they did for him. Some media organizations began hinting that Garrett was ready to sign on to become the head coach and Baltimore was buzzing with anticipation and doing its homework on the stranger from Dallas via Princeton.

The next morning, after Garrett visited with the Atlanta Falcons to interview for their head coaching position, it was apparent that the Ravens would need to continue their search.

Garrett called Bisciotti and declined his offer to become head coach of the Baltimore Ravens, opting as was originally expected to remain in Dallas as the offensive coordinator and head-coach-in-waiting for Jerry Jones and the Cowboys.

Bisciotti, in offering a 1-in-32 chance of a lifetime to become an NFL head coach, had been rebuffed in his first offer of marriage to a “hot coordinator.”

“We weren’t wrong in looking at Jason Garrett, “ Bisciotti later said. “I don’t want anybody to think we feel jilted by Jason. Jason is an honorable guy and was in as difficult and unique a set of circumstances that any coach has ever been put in. Jason did what he thought was right at the end of the day. Jason is a man of character. He did not come here and go to Atlanta to just milk Jerry Jones. I know Jerry. And I know how persuasive he is. People here were worried if he left the building that Jerry would talk him into staying and we wouldn’t get him. I said, ‘Look, if Jerry can talk him into staying then I don’t want him.’ It has to be great for Jason. He’s a wonderful guy and he’s going to make a great coach and it seems to me it’s going to be for the Dallas Cowboys.”

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It was time for Bisciotti and his crew to circle back to the other candidates and find the next head coach of the Baltimore Ravens.

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THE MORNING AFTER HE WAS fired, New Year’s Day 2008, Brian Billick came to Owings Mills one final time. He came in that awkward way to sadly, and for him, shockingly, clean out his office. His nine years as the Baltimore Ravens head coach were over and someone else would be taking over his view overlooking the fields in Owings Mills and overseeing the future of the franchise. Taking those memories off the wall was one of the darkest days of Brian Billick’s life.

Meanwhile, on a day that is a holiday to virtually everyone else in Baltimore, one of Billick’s best friends in the building and confidant Ozzie Newsome was in the office across the hallway early in the morning trying to put together a list of candidates for his all-too-surprising search for a head coach. Despite being in charge of player personnel since the Ravens’ inception in 1996, this was his first real search because the previous mission that ended with the hiring of Billick was led more by David Modell in late 1998 as a liaison to Art Modell.

Newsome was intimately familiar with personnel – he had been a Hall of Fame player, a short-term coach and a scout of talent on the field – but he had never really been in charge of finding coaches. That had always been Billick’s department. Clearly, Newsome would have some expertise in what criteria he wanted, but not as much with actual personalities because he probably never put much energy into thinking about whom he’d be replacing Billick with because Brian wasn’t about to be fired — not with $18 million left on his contract.

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Newsome and Billick had forged a bond together over the previous decade of meetings, late nights, wins and losses over the years and they shared in Super Bowl XXXV glory. Newsome truly believed that Billick had a knack for picking great coaches and his resume is impeccable. Six Billick assistants from his era as Baltimore Ravens’ head coach went on to become NFL head coaches – Marvin Lewis, Jack Del Rio, Mike Smith, Mike Nolan, Mike Singletary and Rex Ryan. Billick also had ties to the coaching community and fraternity because he had been at the game so long and learned it from his mentors, Bill Walsh and Denny Green.

Billick kept one of the NFL’s most active rolodex with coaching prospects and was originally headed to Miami the next day to try to hire Cam Cameron as his next offensive coordinator for the Ravens before he was fired less than 24 hours earlier. Billick always had a plan, always knew whose contracts were up and what every assistant coach in the league was doing to move up the NFL coaching ladder – the same way he did 15 years earlier in Minnesota when he was the assistant trying to earn a promotion to head coach.

While in the office together lamenting the end of their working relationship, Newsome prodded a shell-shocked Billick for a recommendation for a successor less than 24 hours after he’d been fired. Billick recommended he call his old BYU pal Andy Reid and ask about Philadelphia Eagles special teams and defensive backs coach John Harbaugh.

The name Harbaugh had forever been famous in NFL circles, ever since Jim Harbaugh, John’s younger brother by 15 months, quarterbacked the Chicago Bears in the waning days of the Mike Ditka era in the late 1980’s. Jim also led the Michigan Wolverines to the 1987 Rose Bowl and came a tipped ball away from leading the Indianapolis Colts to the Super Bowl in January 1996 as the Baltimore Ravens were being birthed from the Cleveland Browns amidst a sea of litigation. Jim Harbaugh also later became the starting quarterback of the 1998 Baltimore Ravens in the first season John Harbaugh was the special teams coach of the Eagles.

The name “Harbaugh” meant something to everyone in Baltimore who knew anything about football. There were still plenty of purple No. 4 Harbaugh jerseys floating around Baltimore from Ted Marchibroda’s final 5-11 campaign.

Both of the Harbaugh boys would owe their football lives and experiences to their dad, Jack, who was a lifer Midwestern coach mostly for Bo Schembechler at Michigan in the mid 1970’s and later as head coach at Western Kentucky and Western Michigan. Jack Harbaugh took his boys to practice frequently and showed them what life was like in the game. Jack Harbaugh coached every fall of his life from 1964 until 2006 and still got called out of retirement in Stanford in 2009 by his son Jim, who was the head coach in Palo Alto before becoming head coach of the San Francisco 49ers.

The Harbaugh family is all about football – it’s all father Jack, and his boys Jim and John ever did in their adult work history. They all ate, slept and worked the football life. They knew of no other life.

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John Harbaugh, who many believed was destined to get a head coaching job at a big-time college program, had just interviewed for the top UCLA post two weeks earlier and came from the Eagles coaching tree of Andy Reid that had seen a fantastic run of success. While in Philadelphia, Harbaugh had been coaching in January six out of the past eight years and involved in four NFC Championship Games and a Super Bowl loss over 10 seasons.

But Harbaugh was not the sexy candidate to be the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens – far from it. He was a special teams coach. He was an outlier. Special teams coaches don’t usually get the keys to the big office in the NFL.

“I knew it was going to take a pretty special guy to hire me as a head coach in the NFL,” Harbaugh said. “It wasn’t a normal path. It would be hard for an owner or anyone in the NFL to think that way.”

He wasn’t a member of any of the three categories of usual suspects – hot coordinator, former NFL coach or college head coach. Like his boss, Reid, who came to Philadelphia in 1999 as a quarterback coach from the Green Bay Packers and had never been an offensive or defensive coordinator. He had never “called a play.”

Harbaugh’s only real entrée and introduction to Bisciotti had been at a symposium for NFL coaches two years earlier when he’d heard the Ravens owner speak and he’d met him briefly on the field before a preseason game in 2006 when his pal Frank Gansz Jr. was the special teams coach for the Ravens.

“Steve came up to me on the field and joked with me that the Ravens would be running fakes in the preseason,” Harbaugh laughed. “I knew then that he was in tune with the game and had a sense of humor.”

But it was the speech at the 2005 symposium that really caught Harbaugh’s attention and put Bisciotti on his radar as a candidate to be his boss.

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“A lot of coaches didn’t like what he had to say,” Harbaugh said. “It was almost controversial. He was straightforward about it being a tough profession with long hours and total commitment. He talked about the short life span of football coaches in jobs and moving families and what he had witnessed and how different it was from his business outside of football. He said, ‘With opportunity comes risk and with risk comes opportunity.’ He basically said you can’t have opportunity and security at the same time in this profession. It was clear he had an appreciation for football coaches and what we did and what it was like for our families to move so much.”

Bisciotti’s message was so impressive to John Harbaugh that when he got back to Philadelphia that spring he sat at his desk and wrote Bisciotti a hand-written note and said that he learned a lot during the speech.

Harbaugh never heard back from Bisciotti.

“It’s strange because I remember thinking, ‘If I ever get a head coaching job in the NFL it’s going to have to be a guy like that because he’s the kind of risk taker who would hire a guy like me,” Harbaugh said.

So who was this guy John Harbaugh, besides being a long-time NFL special teams coordinator with a more famous brother who was just wrapping up his successful first season as the head coach at Stanford?

John Harbaugh spent most of his elementary school time as a nomadic coach’s kid going from Morehead State to Bowling Green to Iowa before Jack and Jackie Harbaugh settled in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1973, coaching the defensive backs for legendary Bo Schembechler at the University of Michigan. Schembechler was known for his fiery disposition and playing fundamentally sound, tough football.

Ask anyone in the state of Michigan and they’ll tell you that Bo Schembechler was a man’s man. “When my Dad got the call to take that job at Michigan our family was sky high,” Harbaugh said. “We were in awe. It was the top of the world.”

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Harbaugh was 10 years old when he met Coach Schembechler and spent the rest of his childhood through high school graduation around the Michigan program. He and his brother became hooked on Big Blue football and saw the game through the eyes of their father.

“We’d sit in the coaches locker room all the time,” Harbaugh said. “We were around the players, the film room. Everywhere our Dad went we kinda went, too. We were in the middle of everything that was going on. And we loved it.”

By his own admission, he was never a great football player. He was an undersized but hardnosed defensive back and attended Miami of Ohio, where his idol Schembechler coached in the mid-1960’s. He was not an NFL prospect, but he loved every aspect of football and immediately went into coaching in 1984 as a running backs coach for his father, who got the head coaching job at Western Michigan two years earlier. During those four years in Kalamazoo, while he was coaching for his dad and earning his Master’s Degree in Physical Education, his brother Jim was 103 miles away in his hometown of Ann Arbor setting records with Schembechler and finishing 3^rd in the Heisman Trophy balloting in 1986 while leading the Wolverines to the Rose Bowl.

In the spring of 1987, the Chicago Bears made Jim Harbaugh the 26^th pick of the first round of the NFL Draft. In the spring of 1987, John went with Jack to the University of Pittsburgh to become the tight ends coach for head coach Mike Gottfried, who is a cousin.

Harbaugh got his first paying job at Morehead State in 1988 as the secondary coach. Because he had been exposed to Scott O’Brien’s special teams schemes at Pittsburgh with Gottfried, he also became the special teams coordinator at Morehead because he was the only one of the staff who knew anything about it. “I think they also looked at me and said, ‘Hey kid, you look like you lift weights,” Harbaugh laughed. “Why don’t you be our strength and conditioning coach, too.” Such was life as a defensive assistant at Morehead State.

He quickly left for a job on Tim Murphy’s staff at the University of Cincinnati in the spring of 1989. He survived Murphy’s exit in 1994 and remained with new Bearcats’ head coach Rick Minter through 1996 when he took a job as the special teams coordinator and defensive backs coach for the University of Indiana under head coach Cam Cameron.

Cameron came from the same tree, earning his first job at the University of Michigan as a graduate assistant and then as a wide receivers and quarterbacks coach for Schembechler in his last days as the head coach in Ann Arbor. Cameron and Jim Harbaugh were also very close friends and had been since their time together on campus.

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“I loved being at Cincinnati,” Harbaugh said. “That’s why I stayed so long. It was a big city. It was close to my family. I always loved recruiting and sitting on kid’s couches and telling them that the University of Cincinnati is a sleeping giant! I always felt like the basketball program there was amazing and the football program would be great someday.”

Despite Harbaugh’s enthusiasm, the Bearcats never played in a bowl game during his lengthy tenure in Cincinnati.

Meanwhile, Harbaugh had fallen in love with Bloomington, Indiana and never wanted to leave.

“The minute my wife and I drove onto that campus we were hooked,” said Harbaugh, who loved the college atmosphere and had literally spent his whole life in that Midwestern environment of academia and hard-nosed football. “I really wanted that job and enjoyed working with Cam so much. (My wife) Ingrid and I told each other we’d be in Bloomington forever unless the NFL calls.”

But much like most football seasons in Bloomington, the 1997 campaign was not kind on the field for Cameron and Harbaugh as the Hoosiers finished 2-9 and lost three games in October to Michigan, Ohio State and Iowa by a combined score of 130-0.

But, somehow, that magical first call from the NFL still came in March 1998.

Newly hired Philadelphia Eagles pro personnel director Mike Lombardi was at the NFL combine in Indianapolis and looking to help head coach Ray Rhodes fill his staff for the 1998 season and they needed a special teams coordinator and wanted a young, fresh face. There’s no doubt that Harbaugh’s famous last name kicked open a door and at least made his name recognizable.

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Cameron told Lombardi: “I see you found my guy Harbaugh, but you’ll never get him outta Bloomington. He loves it here.”

Harbaugh was summoned to the Crowne Plaza in Indianapolis at 7:30 a.m. and drove up from Bloomington to meet with the Eagles’ brass.

“There was a bed in the middle of this hotel room and we had to carry it into the hallway to meet,” Harbaugh laughed. “There were like seven people in the room including their owner, Jeffrie Lurie. It was intimidating and they went after me hard for like six or seven hours.”

It turned out that it was Scott O’Brien, who was then the Baltimore Ravens special teams coach for Ted Marchibroda, who recommended Harbaugh to Lombardi. The oft-traveled Lombardi was O’Brien’s boss during the Bill Belichick-Browns regime and served on the same staff with Ozzie Newsome during Art Modell’s waning days in Cleveland.

Harbaugh went to the Hoosier Dome and watched the wide receivers run and talked about Big 10 players like Tim Dwight that he was very familiar with to Ray Rhodes, Joe Banner, special teams coach Danny Smith and other Eagles personnel.

“It was kind of surreal,” Harbaugh said, “because I never really thought I’d be in the NFL. I was really happy in the Big 10, and we loved our life at Indiana.”

Later that week, the Eagles flew Harbaugh to Philadelphia with his wife Ingrid and toured all aspects of the job. It was like a dream trip and despite being in love with their lives in Bloomington they were intoxicated with the notion that the NFL could be calling.

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“Cam really wanted me to stay and Ingrid was really excited about the chance to be in the NFL,” Harbaugh said. “I was in a no-lose situation. I’d always dreamed of coaching in the NFL, but we were building something at Indiana. I started talking myself into thinking we were going to Philadelphia.”

Harbaugh didn’t realize it at the time but the Eagles were also heavily courting Clemson special teams coach Rich Bisaccia, who had been with the Tigers for five seasons after two at South Carolina. He was a seasoned, big-time special teams coach who was also well qualified to make a jump to the NFL.

That Saturday morning at 10 a.m., Harbaugh got a call in Bloomington from Lombardi that he had finished in second place. The Eagles were offering the job to Bisaccia.

John and Ingrid were heartbroken.

Somehow over the previous few days of interviews in Indy and flights to Philly, the Harbaughs really believed they were headed to the NFL and had sets their sights on that goal and its significance. Ingrid was inconsolable.

Almost two hours later, the phone rang again.

It was Lombardi.

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Amidst some tears and some hopeful thoughts about their good fortunes at Indiana and the Big 10, Lombardi called to say that the Eagles had reconsidered and wanted to offer Harbaugh the job.

Harbaugh was floored. He was headed to the NFL as the special teams coach of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Turns out that some powers inside the Eagles’ brass knew that Bisaccia had four small children and felt very leery about Ray Rhodes’ tenure in Philly and were concerned about displacing a gainfully employed special teams coach with a family at Clemson and felt better about bringing in Harbaugh because he didn’t have kids. In case the 1998 Eagles season didn’t work out for Rhodes and his staff, they felt Harbaugh would be more likely to get a job next year if he were back on the street.

Harbaugh essentially got the job because he didn’t have kids. Go figure.

“You couldn’t go wrong hiring either guy,” said one person who was involved in the Eagles hiring process. “But you have to realize how hard it is to move people around when they get fired in this business. It was essentially a one-year job with no promises, no stability. Guys in this business don’t want to take a job with a lame duck coach with one year left on his deal if they have kids and if they already have a good job. Fans don’t know about what these firings do to coaches and families. It’s a brutal business for that, and if you have any heart you consider it because it’s real. Not every job is the right job and no job is long-term. You just accept that when you get into the business.”

Turns out, Bisaccia was hired the following year at Mississippi by David Cutcliffe and wound up becoming an NFL special teams coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2002 under Jon Gruden and immediately got his Super Bowl ring that January in San Diego. Bisaccia went to the San Diego Chargers in 2010 and will be the special teams coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys in 2013.

“To be honest with you I didn’t even realize that Ray Rhodes was in trouble,” Harbaugh said. “I wasn’t sophisticated enough about the politics and all of that. I just knew it was a job in the NFL and that if I did a good job someone would want me and the letters ‘N-F-L’ would be on my resume. And if the worst thing is that I have to go back and get a college job again, I would be fine with that. I loved college football.”

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Harbaugh joined Rhodes’ staff that included future New Orleans Saints head coaches Sean Payton and Joe Vitt. The Eagles played great on special teams despite a 3-13 campaign and Harbaugh learned early about the value of a franchise quarterback after watching Bobby Hoying, Koy Detmer and Rodney Peete struggle through the 1998 season.

Despite the record, he liked his young core of guys led by Ike Reese. But as predicted or even expected, Rhodes did get fired nine months later and Harbaugh managed to remain on Andy Reid’s staff as one of four holdover coaches because he had done such a good job and had impressed the Eagles’ personnel men who made the transition through Rhodes’ departure.

Along with Reid, John Harbaugh put together a fantastic run in Philadelphia, staying with the same head coach in the same place for a decade in the NFL with incredible success and continuity and the likes of kicker David Akers, punter Sean Landeta (whose roots were in Baltimore and at Towson State) and returner Brian Mitchell.

Harbaugh was the special teams coach for the Eagles for nine seasons and began looking to expand his resume after his Donovan McNabb-led team nearly beat Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville in 2005.

Harbaugh, much like his father and his brother, wanted to be a head coach. He had watched his brother Jim quickly work his way through the ladder of coaching as an offensive assistant for the Oakland Raiders’ Super Bowl team in 2002 with Rich Gannon to become the head coach of the San Diego Toreros 1-AA program in 2004 and was en route to Stanford in 2007 as a Big 10 head coach.

John Harbaugh started putting together some slide shows and binder presentations and wanted to pad his resume to work toward becoming a college head coach. He loved coaching special teams, but he knew it was a difficult psychological stretch for an NFL owner or an athletic director or school president to see their head coach coming in as a special teams coordinator.

Harbaugh had a whole binder for Duke University. He had twice dabbled with the notion of becoming the head coach at the University of Cincinnati. There were rumors about Western Michigan, where he and his father began in 1984. Ball State was a possibility at one point. Maybe even his alma mater, Miami of Ohio, would welcome him back with open arms at some point if that was a place he’d want to settle with his family? He also dreamed of working with his brother again and they discussed Stanford and some options when Jim arrived in Palo Alto.

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But after a decade in the NFL and life in the professional ranks, it’d be hard to take a job at the college level that wasn’t at a major program and wasn’t as a head coach.

Harbaugh’s closest approach was an interview a year earlier in 2007 for the head coaching position at Boston College that eventually went to Jeff Jagodzinski.

Harbaugh knew that being branded as a “special team coach” would hurt his chances of getting a college head coach job if he didn’t branch out. Eagles head coach Andy Reid offered Harbaugh a chance to coach the defensive backs in 2007 and he jumped at the opportunity to work with defensive coordinator Jim Johnson.

The 2007 Philadelphia Eagles were nothing special on either side of the ball and during the second week of December with the Eagles struggling at 5-8, Harbaugh got a call from Bill Reese, who was heading up a search committee to find the next head coach of the UCLA Bruins.

“I was surprised that I had a shot, to be honest with you,” Harbaugh said. “They came to Philly and interviewed me because it was in the middle of the season. My brother was already at Stanford by then so the whole thing was strange, being in the same conference. By Thursday, I was in Los Angeles doing the second interview and it felt like I had a real chance.

“Their athletic director had flown me back to California. I was supposed to meet with the president and then it wasn’t going to happen. And then I finally met with him and he was hammering me about having never been a head coach, which is something I had heard at every interview I’d ever had. It’s all we talked about.”

Harbaugh thought that answer was easy: “Everybody who’s ever been a head coach had to get their first job, right?”

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UCLA said they would call at noon on Saturday. That morning Harbaugh was watching the morning sports ticker and there were reports out of Los Angeles that he was getting the job and he actually saw a television crawl with “John Harbaugh to be named UCLA coach” on it and thought to himself, “Well, we’re gonna find out soon if that’s true.”

At noon, the phone rang. Bruins’ athletic director Dan Guerrero had decided to go with then-Baltimore Ravens quarterbacks coach and legacy UCLA quarterback Rick Neuheisel as the new head coach in Westwood, leaving Harbaugh as a college head coaching bridesmaid once again.

“I understand why they went with Rick, really,” Harbaugh said. “By the time I had gone through the process I was honestly relieved that I didn’t get the job. It was like, ‘Thank god!’ The more I’d thought about it and competing against my brother for recruits in California and the feel of the thing when I was there, whew, it was like a weight off my shoulders when they gave Neuheisel the job. It was a great job, but it never felt like the right job for me.”

The next day the Eagles ended the season with an 8-8 mark on the high of a three-game winning streak after beating the Buffalo Bills, 17-9, in Philadelphia and the not-too-disappointed Harbaugh went to work on the offseason of trying to get better as he’d done for a decade.

Forty-eight hours later, on Billick’s advice earlier that day, Andy Reid received a phone call from Ozzie Newsome.

“I was kinda taken aback at first,” Reid recalled. “John had a few interviews to be a college head coach and that UCLA thing seemed like it was close and it made sense there so I said some nice things about John initially, but I was surprised to get a call about him as a candidate from an NFL team.”

Reid called his pal Billick back later in the day and said, “I don’t think I’ve done a good enough job stressing to Ozzie what a good candidate I think John is. Can you give me Ozzie’s cell number so I can call him again and talk more about John?”

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“The more I thought about it the more I thought it was genius and I wanted to tell Ozzie that,” Reid said. “No one is a bigger John Harbaugh fan than I am. He’s very thorough with an amazing attention to detail. He’s smart, tough. It really surprises me that there aren’t more special teams coaches considered to be head coaches because no one does more preparation or has more facets of the game to worry about. I told Ozzie he was a genius.”

Harbaugh knew that the Ravens were “calling around” about him, but he also knew he was an absolute long shot. He was a special teams coach. What NFL owner was going to trust his billion-dollar franchise to a special teams coach?

Steve Bisciotti and his search committee called at least 30 different references on all five of the men they considered in addition to Rex Ryan, who they felt they knew intimately.

So, Harbaugh was getting an earful from his many contacts and moles around the league and the more calls that went out the more he believed he might be in the running to at least get an interview because it was clear that the Ravens were being thorough in calling every person in the business who would give them intelligence on him.

Meanwhile, after losing out on the UCLA job the previous weekend in Westwood near Los Angeles, John was again flying westward to Palo Alto in Northern California to see his brother Jim and be a part of the rehearsal dinner for his marriage.

“I know I’m a long shot and of course my brother knows that I’m a little excited because the Ravens are calling around about me,” Harbaugh said. “But trust me I was very low key about it because it didn’t feel like I had a real chance.”

During the toast that evening at Stanford Stadium, Jim Harbaugh was anything but low key. He decided it was the perfect time to give his big brother a shout out and introduced him to the room as “the next coach of the Baltimore Ravens.”

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“He was just being a total wise ass,” John said. “That’s so him!”

That was Saturday night.

The next morning, while standing at the San Francisco airport waiting for a flight with his five-year old daughter Alison, Harbaugh’s cell phone rang. It was Ozzie Newsome.

“John,” Newsome said, “we’d like to interview you for the head coaching job of the Baltimore Ravens.”

Harbaugh flew back and used Monday to get ready to interview for an NFL head coaching job. Meanwhile, Reid called Billick and asked if he’d speak with Harbaugh to get him better prepared for the interview for his old job.

“I knew Brian a little bit,” Harbaugh said. “He was always really cordial, and I knew he and Andy were close. Brian was just really honest about the situation. He never really let it get awkward. He was really trying to help me. He was supportive about everything and he said a few times that he really thought that I could do a good job of connecting with the players. He was very straightforward about what I was going to find and the challenges here and he also thought Ozzie and I would work well together.”

Unlike David Modell’s three-page list of “Baltimore Ravens Head Coach Profile” that was listed in great detail in “Purple Reign: Diary of a Raven Maniac,” the Steve Bisciotti-led search committee didn’t formally itemize every characteristic of their ideal candidate on a sheet of paper or have a “requirements” list.

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Of course, if any of the “Big 3” criteria – college head coach, hot offensive or defensive coordinator or former NFL head coach — were a deal breaker, Newsome wouldn’t have been calling Harbaugh in the first place.

Many times when NFL teams fire head coaches they hire the opposite of what they had in the previous regime. In general, you don’t fire one offensive coordinator to hire another one. And as Billick had said many times, the same expertise you’re hired for will be the same characteristic that inevitably gets you fired.

Bisciotti had a laundry list of expectations, but the initial concerns he saw after firing Billick were his hot buttons:

He strongly disliked the imbalance on the team, which featured a mouthy, powerful defense that looked to intimidate and frighten the offense. Bisciotti wanted a balanced team – on and off the field.

Bisciotti knew the defense had such strong personalities that it was going to take a stern disciplinarian to lead the team and everyone wondered aloud whether Rex Ryan was the right guy to remain with the defensive unit because he was so popular with the core group of players. Not to mention that his idiosyncrasies would be tough to coach out of that unit. But, they all knew he had the ears of the players and he was a world-class coach and defensive tactician. He was, simply, the best in the business.

Despite the acknowledgement of Ryan’s assets, in general, the organization felt that Billick’s second group of assistant coaching hires weren’t up to par with his initial 1999 group and the 2006 mid-season firing of Jim Fassel and the inability for Neuheisel to serve as Billick’s offensive coordinator after Billick hired him were some of the causes for the 5-11 campaign. Sure there were injuries, but the Ravens had better talent than a nine-game losing streak and Bisciotti wanted a coach who could get the best out of his $116 million per year payroll on the field. You don’t get to be a billionaire without valuing your investments and maximizing your assets.

Bisciotti was also looking for a major change in style, a major change in discipline and most importantly a new way of communicating inside the building in his corporate flow chart and to change the culture from the top down.

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“All I imagined was: Do I think that this guy can be effective and believable and trusted standing in front of the players, because that’s where the rubber meets the road,” Bisciotti said about his early goal in the search. “I was looking for a leader who shows a baseline of confidence and a baseline of humility. A man is built with those two qualities. Some have too much of one and don’t have enough of the other. Where is that dividing line? You’re looking for as close to the middle as possible. We’ve always looked at this as we’ve built the business. If you have a ton of humility and not a ton of confidence, you’re not strong enough to be a leader. If you had not enough humility and way too much confidence, then it’s arrogance.”

In his mind, he’d just made an $18 million mistake and was now looking for, in his own words, “to find the next Hall of Fame NFL head coach.”

Inside the Baltimore Ravens’ search committee, it was Director of Player Personnel Eric DeCosta who was the biggest champion of John Harbaugh.

But when the calls got made from inside the committee, it was Steve Bisciotti who took a random call from three-time Super Bowl-winning head coach Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots. Belichick, who is known to have a keen eye for talent and a hard-charging style as a manager of coaches, players and the game plan, openly volunteered a ringing endorsement of Harbaugh to Bisciotti based on conversations they’d shared at the NFL combine each year in Indianapolis.

“Belichick called and said, ‘I understand you’re interviewing John Harbaugh and I think he’s one of the brightest guys I’ve ever met,’” Bisciotti said. “He said, ‘We sit together at the combine every year and I don’t waste my time with guys who don’t teach me something. It never fails that John teaches me something.’ He then said, ‘I don’t have any skin in the game, but I want you to know that this obscure guy is not so obscure in league circles. I have a personal relationship with this guy and I think he’s ready, he’s right.’ “

When Bisciotti finally met Harbaugh for the interview on January 18, 2008, there was an instant, natural conversation and genuine warmth when he said “call me Steve.”

Once again it was an exhaustive interview process, but Harbaugh and Bisciotti were having more fun talking about the possibilities and Harbaugh’s vision of leadership as the conversation continued to expand and meander.

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Harbaugh’s thoughts on football, Bo Schembechler, his family, his family’s values and background in football, his faith in God, his respect for Andy Reid, his ability to obtain and lead quality coaches, who his ideal candidates were for coordinator and position coaches, his role with the media and in the community.

It was all discussed.

“The more we threw at him the more he enjoyed it,” DeCosta said. “It was obvious that everyone would enjoy working with him. Everyone just liked him and it was very natural.”

He talked about growing up a coach’s kid. He talked about Doyt Perry, Earl Blaik, Fielding Yost and football philosophy and history and coaching theory. He studied it and told Bisciotti and the committee that it’s how he was raised with his brother and sister.

All of the mantras and values he’d later try to instill in Baltimore Ravens players he brought to the table in what several in the room called “the best job interview I’ve ever seen.”

“There are no secrets,” Harbaugh told the room. “There are no geniuses — coaching or playing. It was about hard work, being a team, taking care of one another, having each others’ backs and raising each other up. And working really hard, every day. My message will be clear: stay loose, stay focused and be accountable.”

And he said it all in a voice like he’d said – and heard – this speech thousands of times already in the voice of Schembechler or Harbaugh Sr., affectionately known as “Dad” around the house.

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More and more the men in the room – all of them – pictured what Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh would really look like in front of their room and on their sidelines and in their building every day. And they liked what they’d seen and heard and liked every reference they had on this impressive football lifer.

Bisciotti left the room.

Twenty minutes later, Bisciotti came back into the room and said to John Harbaugh: “What kind of head coach will you be for the Baltimore Ravens?”

Harbaugh told him. “If I’m the head coach of the Ravens, it’ll be all about the team, the team, the team.”

Bisciotti said: “Then, I want you to be my head coach.”

And with a handshake and a smile, it was done.

“Part of why I got hired was that Steve and I just hit it off,” Harbaugh said. “When I showed up here I really didn’t think I was getting the job. Then, I felt like I had made a friend. I loved what he was saying and what he stood for and what he wanted the Baltimore Ravens to be moving forward. We knew we wanted the same things and that made it comfortable.”

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Harbaugh signed a reported four-year, $8 million deal to be the new head coach of the Baltimore Ravens and went about moving his family to Owings Mills and attempting to hire a robust coaching staff. After moving into his new office, maintaining Rex Ryan as the defensive coordinator was the first order of business.

There was no doubt that Ryan was crushed to not get the head coaching job of the Ravens after the firing of Billick and this would be a very sensitive meeting. Ryan had also unsuccessfully interviewed for the vacant head coaching jobs in Atlanta and Miami that would be filled by former Ravens assistant Mike Smith and another Ravens shortlist candidate Tony Sparano.

But in hiring Harbaugh as the head coach, the Ravens felt they gave the organization the best chance to move forward and still retain a semi-dejected Ryan in the organization and keep the defensive schemes and progress in place for 2008.

Ryan was an old friend and colleague of Harbaugh, and if there were ever twins in a football snapshot sense, it was these two guys. Not only had their paths crossed in Cincinnati where they were on the same 1996 Bearcats’ staff, but the intersection of their careers is almost uncanny when you put them on a timeline.

Both of their fathers were famous coaches. Both of their brothers are coaches. Both of them had spent a life in and around football – playing it, learning it, teaching it, coaching it, living it. Ryan was at Eastern Kentucky while Harbaugh was at Western Michigan. Harbaugh was at Morehead State in 1988, Ryan coached at Morehead State from 1990-93. Harbaugh went to Indiana and arrived in the NFL in 1998 in Philadelphia. Rex dabbled in the NFL with his father Buddy Ryan in 1994-95 but went to Oklahoma and Kansas State before finally getting his chance with Billick in Baltimore in 1999.

Rex lived in the shadow of a larger-than-life father. John lived in the shadow of the All-American boy quarterback and hero brother.

Both, it was obvious, wanted to make their own mark on the world as NFL coaches and further advance the family name for winning championships. Both had been frustrated in previous seasons because they wanted promotions and wanted to run their programs.

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Bisciotti was very careful in the interview process to be candid yet gentle with Ryan, who painted a less than flattering portrait of the Billick era from the inside. After all, Ryan was a part of the same program that had just gotten the head coach fired so there was some accountability and answers that management wanted inside The Castle from Ryan and the defense in a 5-11 season.

But it was Ryan’s side of the ball where games were won throughout the tenure of Billick, who was brought in from Minnesota in 1998 to be the offensive mastermind of the Ravens. While Ryan’s defenses (and Mike Nolan and Marvin Lewis before that) were led by two Hall of Famers in their primes with Ray Lewis and Ed Reed, there was even a little extra “Primetime” for two years when legendary Deion Sanders returned to play nickel back and troll the secondary alongside Chris McAlister, who was headed for the House of Unfulfilled Potential in the Hall of Very Good after signing a 7-year, $55 million deal in 2004.

Over the years it was Ryan’s side of the ball – or perhaps we could call it Ray Lewis’ side of the ball – that always seemed to always be the beneficiary of draft day gifts as pass rush specialist Terrell Suggs and defensive tackle Haloti Ngata allowed him the artillery to create fits for Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Ben Roethislisberger on a weekly basis.

It wasn’t just lip service. The bullying extended itself to the practice field, where Ryan’s defenses always seemed to intimidate the offenses during the week and it carried over into the confidence of the team as a whole. While Billick seemed to handle the offensive adversity well during the 2000 season when the offense didn’t score a touchdown for a month but still rallied behind the greatest defense in the history of the game to win Super Bowl XXXV, by the end of 2007 he was calling the plays, running the offense and still didn’t have a franchise quarterback or much of a core group on that side of the ball.

The team was lopsided. And the defense was chippy and felt like it was doing too much and each week members wondered aloud how the offense would score enough points to win.

There was certainly a lack of discipline and some of the reason for the lack of continuity fell to Ryan, who was all but untouched by Billick because the defensive side of the ball was placed in his hands, for better or worse. Bisciotti had essentially seen Billick, by the end, as the coach of the offense and Ryan as the coach of the defense and he wanted that to become more balanced under the Harbaugh regime, but could he achieve that with the strong personality of Ryan and the even stronger personalities of some of the defensive personnel led by arguably the greatest leader in the history of the NFL in Ray Lewis?

How would things change moving forward? Could Ryan really fall in line with the “Harbaugh Program” now that he didn’t get the job as head coach?

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Even Ozzie Newsome would acknowledge that over his tenure the draft days had been more unkind to the Ravens on the offensive side of the ball, especially with later round draft picks, wide receivers and the ever-elusive franchise quarterback that inevitably cost the team missed playoff chances, and ultimately, cost Billick his job.

But the offense had always been a patchwork of ways to win without allowing the quarterback gamble away the game. For a few years, the running game led by Jamal Lewis was enough. In 2006, at least for one season, Billick had veteran Steve McNair in the October of his career to protect the ball and make some plays in leading the Ravens to a 13-3 finish before a devastating playoff ouster to the Colts in a game where Baltimore couldn’t manage a late touchdown at home to win a close game after a bye week.

It had almost become a franchise mantra of “winning with defense” while making excuses and future promises about when the offense would finally begin to carry its weight.

After long meetings and a heart-to-heart between Ryan and Harbaugh, everyone agreed to come together and make 2008 strong. Rex Ryan would stay on to be the defensive coordinator of Harbaugh’s rookie year as coach for the Ravens.

On the offensive side of the ball there were some rumors about Harbaugh attempting to bring Pat Shurmur and some other friends from Philadelphia, but without a doubt Cam Cameron was the first choice and he was a natural fit. Cameron was just fired by the Miami Dolphins after a disastrous 1-15 initial season as an NFL head coach after five tremendously productive offensive seasons as the offensive coordinator of the San Diego Chargers with quarterbacks Drew Brees and Philip Rivers. His only NFL head coaching win of the 2007 season for the ‘Fins’ was on December 16 over the Ravens in a 22-16 overtime outcome that in some minds sealed the fate of Billick’s firing on December 31.

Now, less than three weeks later, Harbaugh was bringing in Cam Cameron – the same plan Billick was looking to execute on the morning he was executed – to lead the Ravens’ offense and call plays on game day and to help the franchise and the scouts find a franchise quarterback in the 2008 draft.

Like many of Harbaugh’s initial targets, there was a deep relationship and lineage with Cameron, who got his first job with Schembechler at Michigan and was the college boss Harbaugh never wanted to leave in Indiana in 1998 when the Philadelphia Eagles called to come to the NFL.

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It was a reunion for these two friends and you could tell from the way Harbaugh filled out the rest of his staff that roots to his father and Bo Schembechler would be easy to find. Harbaugh had a strategy and knew what he wanted from his coaches.

“My Dad and my brother, they’ve told me what to look for,” Harbaugh said. “Plus, I’ve known coaches since we were little kids. Rex Ryan is a great example. Coach’s kid. Half our staff is made up of guys who are coach’s kids.”

Andy Moeller coached the offensive line and was a Michigan legacy through his father. Several like Craig Ver Steeg from Rutgers, had been a coordinator elsewhere. Greg Mattison worked with Harbaugh at Western Michigan in 1984. Dean Pees coached at Miami of Ohio in 1983. Special teams coordinator Jerry Rosburg was tied to Harbaugh through Western Michigan and they were on the same staff at Cinncinati in the early 1990’s.

Harbaugh managed to attract a mixed staff of older and younger coaches as well as some who came from college and others who had already coaches and played in the NFL like Wilbert Montgomery. Harbaugh hired Ted Monachino, who was Terrell Suggs’ coach at Arizona State, and Chuck Pagano whose roots went back to Ed Reed at the University of Miami at the turn of the century.

But Harbaugh knew it was the coaching staff that would create the atmosphere and energy for the team to stay focused and improve. He visited the WNST.net studio in March 2008 and spoke about his plan and vision.

“One thing my brother Jim taught me is that players don’t understand what coaches do,” Harbaugh said. “It’s a two way street. They’re not living it like a coach is on Monday and Tuesday. You always expect that player to be ready to go. You spent 2 ½ days (and nights) building a game plan till all hours of the night breaking down film. When we have that first meeting on Wednesday morning at 8 a.m., I want that guy with his feet on the floor, I want that pencil in his hand, I want him bright-eyed and bushy tailed and ready to learn because we’ve got a lot to get over here.”

It didn’t take long for Harbaugh to lay down the law:

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“If guy comes in with that bad body language, he’s been partying the night before and he’s not ready to work that’s not going to work for the coaches,” Harbaugh said. “But when guys need rest we’re going to give it to them. Sometimes coaches don’t give players enough credit. This game is like a train wreck on a body. Physically, these guys get beat up and they get worn out. As coaches, we didn’t get in a car wreck every Sunday. So it’s a two-way street. We’ll always have mutual respect and communication.”

But discipline was what Bisciotti wanted Harbaugh to instill, and he was looking for a new set of rules, a new way of doing things in Owings Mills and a new culture for the Ravens moving forward. Bisciotti wanted more open communication in the building at every level.

Harbaugh’s first target? He shook up the locker room – literally and figuratively. He randomly (if not strategically in some cases) moved players’ lockers and made strangers find new next-door neighbors in the workspace in Owings Mills. “It’s a tangible expression as to what we’re going to be about as a football team,” Harbaugh said. “It’s human nature, right? In any business or social setting we tend to hang around the people we’re most comfortable with. As people, we’re cliquey. The offensive line hangs with the offensive line. And that goes on all over the team. It’s natural. But we want defensive backs next to offensive lineman and special teamers next to the quarterbacks and linebackers next to running backs. I want them to say, ‘That’s my brother. That’s my locker guy. That’s my guy.’

“It isn’t earth-shattering. To me, it makes perfect sense. I want the guys to know one another and learn to trust one another.”

At every level, Harbaugh’s message was about “family” and “trust.” And there were more than a few references to God and spirituality. To some ears, after the years of the transparent candor and psychology of Billick and the “he treats us like men” mentality, the new Harbaugh mantra was collegiate if not Old Testament in some ways. For many veteran players, they initially saw this as an almost high school sort of mentality that they didn’t understand or want to participate in at first.

Harbaugh started calling his group “mighty men” in chatting with the media. It was so hokey, so 1950’s Beaver Cleaver-esque, that it was immortalized with a whole set of stitched gear that said “53 Mighty Men” in purple that was gifted to the players when they made the squad. Harbaugh’s use of it was later explained as a biblical metaphor for David’s Mighty Men, something that offensive assistant Craig Ver Steeg brought to him in 2008. It caught on and the players loved the swag and wore it constantly. It was like an Owings Mills uniform of sorts during lounge time.

As you can imagine, changing a group of 53 “mighty men” led by several multi-millionaires and future Hall of Famers who just participated in getting their head coach fired was not the most pliable group to deal with for Harbaugh in the early going. As much as his message made sense in an ethical and righteous way, it wasn’t tremendously different than what Billick wanted in 2007. But the deposed coach didn’t fight with the veteran players on their wishes as long as they showed up and played hard on Sunday. Billick was known as the ultimate “player’s coach” in regard to easier practices, plenty of rest for veterans and a laissez faire attitude toward the militaristic side of clothing requirements or curfews. Billick took care of the players’ bodies, and the veterans in particular always seemed to appreciate it. He trusted the players.

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Billick was proud of his “act like men and we’ll treat you like men” philosophy, which won him a Super Bowl with a responsible, veteran group in 2000 led by Hall of Famers like Shannon Sharpe and Rod Woodson who acted as policemen and leaders among the soldiers.

But that group was long gone by 2008 and Harbaugh inherited a locker room that featured future Hall of Famer Ed Reed putting his locker literally around the corner in the last stall of the facility past all of the developmental squad players who never made it to the field. Reed was by his nature very moody and oft-times detached from the scene and rarely addressed the media or had strong interactions with his teammates. Harbaugh had huge expectations already set by Ray Lewis coming to the end of his era in Baltimore and a pending huge payday coming for Terrell Suggs, who struggled with maturity at every level. Harbaugh also inherited a room with an aging, cranky Chris McAlister, who had already made more than $40 million playing football and whose attitude rubbed Harbaugh the wrong way, especially considering his salary cap number.

“He inherited a divided team,” one Ravens’ executive said. “There were agendas in the building.”

Most of the money and most of the talent was on the defensive side of the ball and it had taken a decade to build up that base and that reputation. But in Rex Ryan, Harbaugh had a coaching staff ally that already had a deep relationship with half of the team but trying to change the rules after a decade of one system and one set of expectations was hard enough, but finding a way to manage Ryan was its own challenge given their mutual desire for control.

“I liked Rex, and we always had a good relationship,” Harbaugh said. “Keeping the defensive system was essential and the easy part, but it was difficult at first because of the players. In some ways, for some of the guys who had been there, if they did it my way they were kind of being disloyal to Rex so we were always trying to get a buy in from some guys.”

Some guys, like McAlister, who Billick always had trouble reigning in, never bought in and were quickly jettisoned by Harbaugh. And other guys like Todd Heap and Matt Stover were big fans of Billick and were upset that he had been so summarily dismissed.

Meanwhile there was a pervasive arrogance on the defensive side of the ball, and it was easy to blame the offense for losing because it had been that way for so long. Everything, it seemed, was met with some level of skepticism at first.

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By the time the 2008 squad made it to the fields at McDaniel College in Westminster, Harbaugh knew he was going to have a lot of work to do making the team see his philosophies and vision. And the remaining players who finished 5-11 the previous year were going to feel Harbaugh’s stick instead of Billick’s carrot.

In the 90-degree heat, Harbaugh made sure guys tongues were hanging out. He wasn’t afraid of them bitching or complaining. He almost wanted to make it too hard to see where the edge was with every player. It was almost like, “Let’s break these guys down and see who can handle it.”

In some cases, that even furthered the divide between the Rex Ryan the defense loved and the taskmaster that John Harbaugh was going to be in Baltimore.

By the summer of 2008, the Ravens came to camp with three quarterbacks – Kyle Boller, Troy Smith and Joe Flacco. The palpable difference on the field was Cameron, who saw the imbalance right away when the defensive players were outwardly disrespectful to the offense, which was trying to work and improve.

“Cam was a tough guy,” Harbaugh said. “He was a big enough personality to take on the defense. And our offense got some spine that summer and got tough.”

Cameron had no problem telling the defense: “Back up, shut up and play defense.”

Harbaugh had a ballyhooed confrontation with Jarret Johnson at one point early in their relationship and he was one of the better “team first” soldiers in purple. The only problem in the early days of Harbaugh’s reign was that “team” usually implied the defensive unit when it was spoken in the defensive huddle. It was Harbaugh’s heavy task of solving that major psychological, but very real, issue of bringing the team together as one.

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“Sure, there were guys in our first meeting sitting sideways,” Harbaugh said. “I was trying to create change. It wasn’t easy. I was trying hard to sell them on my way, but then it just became a pride point. I never backed down from anything I believed to be right. And once they found out that I wasn’t going to change my values – and that we could win this way — I started to get buy-ins.”

For all of the sweet, nice, All American guy looks wholesome John Harbaugh brings at the podium, there’s a ball cap and whistle side of Coach Harbaugh on the back fields in practice that brings a prickly, aggressive ball coach out in the eyes of his players or anyone within earshot.

Anyone who has spent time around Harbaugh would tell you that he has an “edge” about him. No one ever doubts his sincerity or the integrity of his vision, but he can be as tough, stern and emotional as any coach in the NFL.

As one member of the Ravens organization said early: “He almost wants confrontation so he knows where you stand and what you believe in. I think it’s the same relationship he has with his brother. He’s just so ultra competitive that he can’t help it.”

This was immediately apparent to the media with the first series of almost awkward press conferences and lines of questioning, especially once the season began. Harbaugh comes from the Andy Reid school of media relations, and no one has it tougher than the coach of the Philadelphia Eagles amidst the toughest and most legendarily raucous fan base in the NFL.

In media circles, Harbaugh quickly earned his reputation as “Hard Ball.” Or even in some cases, “Hard Ass.”

This is when Harbaugh began channeling his inner Bo Schembechler or at least a little Bill Belichick when dealing with the media. There were strange moments of silence, questions that made Harbaugh bristle and retort and in some cases even go on the attack like after a game in Cincinnati when he shot back at a reporter, “Where are you from?” after a simple question about an offensive strategy.

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Part of the “old school” in Harbaugh was his view on the media and access and the exchange of any information that could compromise his football team. Injuries, questions about plays, formations, packages or anything tactical not only ruffled his feathers, but would also often garner some heated exchanges.

Harbaugh didn’t trust the media an iota. He didn’t want to be asked questions about his game plan or injuries. It was a strategic issue and a private matter. Every facet of Harbaugh’s game plan was treated as a top secret. And, in general, it was all very new to him and especially anything that felt like second-guessing from the media or fans would be met with resistance.

For all of his bravado and toughness, Harbaugh was incredibly sensitive to criticism or doubters and used it as ammunition right through January 2013 when the Ravens were underdogs at every step on their road to a Super Bowl 47 win in New Orleans.

As a special teams coordinator for most of his career, Harbaugh didn’t deal with a mob scene or reporters at his locker after an Eagles game or do a bunch of podium visits with questions coming from every angle about everything. And most of the time, the media is looking for opinions on players and situations or are asking for evaluations and observations. Harbaugh just doesn’t like saying anything that could or would be used against him later – tactically or otherwise.

Certainly, over the first five years in Baltimore he made major strides with his media responsibilities and was viewed far more favorably than his brother during the Super Bowl XLVII week festivities. And he was even an engaging guest on “The David Letterman Show” after the Super Bowl win. His first five seasons of nothing but winning football have made him very popular amongst the fans. Giving entertaining press conferences is not a part of Harbaugh’s makeup or personality, but he’s more likely to crack a joke in 2013 than he was in 2008 when every briefing was treated like a bit of a nuisance.

And after living in the shadow of his brother in a lot of ways for much of his adult life, it was his brother’s chilly façade in New Orleans that made John appear to be the softer, fuzzier Harbaugh during Super Bowl week.

And it was clear that even though the two brothers grew up in the same bedroom with the same values that their public personas were polar opposites and that was OK with their father, Jack Harbaugh. “The one thing that we watch and take great pride in is that both of them are themselves,” Jack said at the Super Bowl. “We were around Bo Schembechler for a long time and there were a lot of coaches that tried to emulate him. The first time you weren’t yourself, you were exposed and somewhat of a fraud. So, always be who you are and not follow anyone else.”

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John Harbaugh’s favorite phrase is right over the door in Owings Mills as the players begin their work day: “W.I.N.” which stands for “What’s Important Now?”

“To me that’s always the goal,” Harbaugh said. “Get in the moment and ask yourself, ‘What do I have to get done right now? What’s important today? What do I have to get done in this meeting or this weightlifting session or this film study?’ Let me be the very best I can be in this moment and the rest will take care of itself.”

And Harbaugh’s open-door policy with the players caught on over the last five years. Players routinely visit and Harbaugh’s leadership council knows the way to the principal’s office each week.

When Ravens’ general manager Ozzie Newsome was asked why John Harbaugh handles adversity so well he said: “No. 1, he faces everything head on. He recognizes there are issues, and he deals with those issues. He doesn’t let those issues dictate where we’re going and how we’re going to get there. If there’s a problem, we deal with the problem, but then we move on. You don’t just sit there, and he doesn’t allow a problem to bring him down and bring his football team down.”

Thoroughly organized and detail-oriented, Harbaugh is just as hard on his coaches and as hard on himself as he is on the players. But over the five years of unparalleled success – and the proof is in the results with five trips to the playoffs in five years, 3 AFC Championship Games and a Super Bowl win – the stubbornness of his vision has come to be appreciated by those around him, especially those who saw his vision accepted after initially being rebuffed and starting the 2008 season with a 2-3 record.

In the end, Harbaugh got the “buy in” he was looking for and the success of a Super Bowl championship. Guys like Ed Reed, Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs saw he was invested.

Harbaugh’s players saw that he was carrying ownership’s message and that the franchise wanted to win. In the end, all NFL players really want is to be coached and to be in the best position to win. When they see that what you’re doing works, they buy in. Player vs. coach has been the oldest struggle there is in sports and players don’t always love the personality of Bill Belichick, but they “buy in” and play hard and do what he asks because they know he’s smart. They respect his intelligence. They respect his vision. And they feel like they have the best chance to win.

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Or as one NFL scout said: “No one is saying I don’t want to play in Baltimore because the coach is too tough. NFL players want to win, and John Harbaugh can show them how to do that.”

And from Bisciotti’s point of view, Harbaugh is still improving each year.

“He’s got this inquisitiveness,” Bisciotti said. “John’s kind of an opposite of a ‘know-it-all.’ He is engaging. He’s constantly interested in what I think, Ozzie, Dick, Kevin, coaches – what we all think. That’s not changed. That’s special. He doesn’t seem like he has the ‘I’ve got it now’ in his makeup. In life when you say you’ve ‘got it’ you’re closed to learning. That’s the beginning of the end for people when they’re trying to become great.”

Newsome says there’s a personal touch about Harbaugh that makes him special and moves him closer to players. “He’s eager to learn, and he’s willing to talk about things,” Newsome said. “One thing about John, he lets you know right away he’s not the smartest guy in the room. I’ve been around people that say every time you see them they think they’re the smartest guy in the room. John doesn’t carry himself that way. But, I don’t know if anybody works as hard as John. And you know what? John has a unique talent about him. I don’t know how great he is in front of a group, but in a one-on-one setting, there’s none better. To watch John operate here in the cafeteria, walking out on the field with a player, in the weight room with a player, and to see him spend five or 10 minutes with a guy, and how important that is, I don’t think you can put a measure on it.”

For all of the success, Harbaugh still bristles at the notion that he’s changed.

“I don’t think I’ve changed,” Harbaugh said. “That perception is funny. I’ve stood my ground. I’ve gotten better. I’ve grown into the job. I know where to spend my time and where not to spend it. But I have a vision and in that first year it was contentious sometimes. But I said, ‘I know what this looks like. We’re going to get there no matter how long it takes.’

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“Over five years, that picture I had – this (2012) team had it. My vision became their way of looking at things. I learned a lot from Ed (Reed) and Ray (Lewis) and we built it together. It’s a world-view, a way of looking at things. It’s a belief system. It’s a culture, a value system.

“The team has taken on a value system. We’re always preparing, getting on same page, understanding it is hard work and that there will be disappointment and triumph. Saying they’ve ‘bought in’ doesn’t do it justice. It’s more like they’ve grown into it. You can’t just get in front of the room and say, ‘This is how it’s gonna be!’ You have to build trust, go through things and struggle together. ”

In March 2008, Harbaugh sat in the WNST.net studio and ended his first long-form interview as head coach with this thought in regard to what he wanted to achieve as the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens:

“We want to win Super Bowls. We want to make history. We want to do things that have never been done in the NFL before,” Harbaugh said.

“Don’t we all want that in life? Don’t we all have dreams?”