“Ozzie has incredible people skills,” said Hill. “And he has a way of finding out what kind of people he’s recruiting. He has a touch for understanding a person’s character. You either have it or you don’t, but you have to ask tough questions.”
Without question, picking Hall of Fame football players and winning Super Bowls enhances job security, but in the end there are a lot of so-called “savant” football personnel men who have made a career of moving from team to team, from city to city, from owner to owner because of personality issues or lack of productivity. Newsome says that infinite flexibility is the key to creating a happy front office.
“I think it’s having the right relationship with the coach, the owner and the president,” Newsome said. “I try to make myself available. I try to be very honest with any and everything that I try to tell them. They are my partners. Sometimes I have to bite my tongue and say, ‘OK, we need to do this, even though I don’t agree with it.’ There is a lot of give and take. Brian Billick and I were partners for nine years, and we’re still friends. You build a partnership just like I guess you do in a marriage.”
So with all of this “love” for Ozzie Newsome, someone out there must have something negative to say about him besides the cornerbacks, safeties and poor linebackers who were forced to cover him across the middle in the 1980s, right?
For the most part, NFL player agents despise Newsome. His candor offends them. His pre-negotiating by setting his price leaves them without room to negotiate. They have the same chance of changing Newsome’s value on a player for a salary cap number as Modell had in attempting to get him to pick a lower-ranked player on his draft board.
“Right player, right price” – if you’re a Baltimore Ravens fans, you’ve heard Newsome wear this out like a broken record.
“He’s almost very demeaning with us – it’s kinda a ‘take it or leave it’ kind of negotiation and that rubs people the wrong way,” said one agent, who as you can guess, didn’t want to be named. “Ozzie doesn’t sugar coat and some agents think his ego is over the top.”
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This is where cap specialist Pat Moriarty, another former Browns player who was also a Cleveland native and Modell devotee dating back to 1979 when he was a teammate of Newsome, steps in to do many contracts on behalf of the Ravens.
It’s a shrewd strategy that has worked. And the “franchise” vs. “agent” war is as old as football and contracts and players and owners. It’s never confrontational, but it’s never negotiable for Newsome when it comes to how much money he has in his salary cap.
Football scouting is his passion. Being in the foxhole of his office, watching tape, chatting with colleagues about players, and preparing for the next departure or opportunity is all Newsome does. The Baltimore Ravens media guide biography of Newsome says that his “methodical and disciplined” approach to the draft is the process. And that means hard work, long hours, and no short cuts in finding information or evaluating talent or situations.
“The process is simple – ask, listen and solve or decide,” Billick said. “And then you go with it. That’s consummate Ozzie Newsome and that’s not the way it works everywhere in this league.
“In some NFL organizations, ‘It’s gather, shut up and I’ll make the decision’ and that’s just never been the way Ozzie has done anything, which is why you see the continuity and the success over all these years.”
And then there’s the patience it takes to do it the hard way. Many other NFL teams subscribe to scouting services to begin their process in finding college talent. As long as the Ravens have been in Baltimore – and in no small part because of Art Modell’s belief in the draft and the meticulous nature of Bill Belichick who set the tone for the Ravens’ draft system in his final years in Cleveland, the Ravens use their internal staff for every facet of the draft.
And Newsome uses his scouts and coaches feedback constantly to evaluate how the team can get better and what players might become available on other rosters. As any fan of the NFL can tell you, the season never ends. Injuries and adjustments are life in the fall. The rest of the year you’re watching the salary cap, seeing the other 31 teams make roster adjustments and preparing for your draft.
8Or as Billick said: “It’s a full time job picking players. It’s like when I was an offensive coordinator – you’re thinking about it all the time or you’re not going to be successful. It’s 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and it’s all consuming. At 3 a.m. it’s all you’re thinking about. I know when I was the head coach I was glad that we had Ozzie Newsome up at 3 a.m. thinking about getting us better players.”
And yet despite all of the work, all of the accolades, praise, money, fame, and stature Ozzie Newsome has attracted over the years when the biggest stage finally came it was usually the semi-shy, quiet guy from Muscle Shoals who stayed in the shadow of his players and coaches.
On the evening the Baltimore Ravens defeated the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game when it came time to accept the Lamar Hunt Trophy and punch the franchise ticket to Super Bowl XLVII, Newsome was nowhere to be found. That’s a stage that makes him uncomfortable, accepting the individual credit that comes along with a team success
For Newsome, it’s savored viewing it from the outside, not necessarily from the dais on television.
“Evaluating players is one thing, doing contracts is another, going down to the principal’s office and spending time with Steve [Bisciotti], that’s another thing,” said Newsome. “But to be there with those guys and to watch those guys grow up, you can’t separate that. You can’t find anything better than that. So, I enjoy it.
“As a player, that’s something that you have to do as an individual. Football is the ultimate team sport, but if you want to achieve big, it’s something that has to come from within to get it done, and we see it in Ray Lewis. But from this standpoint, it’s not necessarily about what I can do as an individual. It’s about me having a collective group of people around me that see the game, who work at the game the same way that I work at it, have the same visions and goals that I do. So as a player, you can go out there and play [alone]. Tiger [Woods] can go out there and shoot 68; it’s Tiger [alone]. But when you’re a general manager, it’s not about you. It’s about all of the other good people that you have around you that help you and have the same vision and goals that you do.”
Newsome, who came to shores of the Chesapeake Bay when Art Modell moved the franchise and renamed it the Baltimore Ravens in early 1996, now has experienced a pair of Super Bowl wins and has been rightfully recognized as the architect of both championships.
Most believe he will be re-inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame sometime in the future for his work as an administrator.
