All of their futures would depend on finding the right quarterback.
Newsome decided that he wasn’t going to draft another player that the coaches weren’t fully on board with because it never seemed to work. They needed to find that DNA match – a player the scouts and the coaches all liked.
Harbaugh was adamant about the franchise’s goal when appearing at WNST.net in March 2008.
“This is a team process,” Harbaugh said. “We’ve got Cam, Ozzie, Eric and Hue Jackson. We have guys who know what they’re looking for. You lean on those guys. I like to look at tape. Whoever plays quarterback is going to have to perform. Steve McNair. Kyle Boller. Troy Smith. We’re going to find a quarterback who can play for us. No stone will be unturned. No avenue will be untraveled. We’re going to find a way to get great play out of our quarterbacks.”
In late January 2008, the new Ravens coaches flew with the scouts to the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, an annual feeding frenzy for coaches looking for jobs, but also a chance to watch more than 100 of the best draft-eligible players compete in drills, practices, and a game later in the week.
There were six quarterbacks in Mobile that week: Andre Woodson (Kentucky), Eric Ainge (Tennessee) and Colt Brennan (Hawaii) were on the South squad coached by former Ravens defensive coordinator and then-San Francisco 49ers head coach Mike Nolan with his staff; John David Booty (USC), Chad Henne (Michigan) and Joe Flacco (Delaware) were on the North team coached by Lane Kiffin of the Oakland Raiders. Incidentally, it was supposed to be Cam Cameron’s Dolphins’ staff assigned to the Senior Bowl, but after his firing four weeks earlier along with all but two assistants, it got reassigned to the Raiders’ staff.
Cameron, alongside Jackson and the rest of the Ravens scouting team, would be a very interested observer of this quarterback group. As is the custom for the absolute best players in the country with less to prove, Matt Ryan declined a Senior Bowl invitation, which almost certainly paved the way for Flacco to get an invite. It was almost unprecedented that any Division I-AA quarterback would be in Mobile, and only eight total small school attendees were invited.
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Flacco was glad to take Ryan’s seat at the premier event to have scouts and coaches gather to watch him play against the best talent in the land. He had just won a skills competition in Arizona against some of these and other quarterbacks, winning two of three events with obstacle courses and other tests of agility and throwing ability.
“I’m pretty sure that they were saying, ‘Who in the hell is this kid from Delaware?’ ” Flacco said. “’He can’t possibly be very good!’ It was kinda cool to be the kid from Delaware but I always felt a little out of place. I knew I fit when I threw the ball, but I was definitely a little bit of an outcast that week. I didn’t know anybody else, and it’s a little bit of a club. And I definitely wasn’t part of it.”
In general, the Senior Bowl experience is one of the loosest weeks of the year for NFL coaches. They relax, gossip, talk about the season, players, job openings, and try to meet some of these kids for the first time in a semi-social setting. They all arrive on Sunday and by Wednesday evening most NFL executives and head coaches want to get out of Mobile and back to their home cities to resume their offseason.
The Ravens scouts, always going the extra mile, have never left early. “We stay because we want to get as many looks as possible to see kids in every circumstance,” DeCosta said.
On Thursday, January 28, 2008, the circumstance was dreadful. It was raining sideways in Mobile and the wind was gusting to 20 miles per hour. The North squad took the field late in the day in uncomfortable conditions and Kiffin had them going through their regiment with drill sergeant focus.
There were only a handful of scouts braving the weather and the Ravens scouts were huddled underneath a dripping press box when they watched Flacco’s most impressive workout yet.
“It was a wet, cold, nasty day in Mobile and Flacco was throwing darts,” Douglas said. “Andy [Weidl] and I knew Joe, but this was a chance for the rest of our team to see what he could do because we had bragged about him.”
