In 1994, passed over for a promotion onto the staff of the Browns main coaching unit, he was given the less-than-glamorous assignment of jumping into a van and driving across the country to scout the small black college players of America. Instead of flying first-class to the big cities and big schools, Savage would drive and stay in budget motels all across America. The trek – visiting more than 30 schools in eight weeks, all driving in a van by himself from Houston to Delaware – would make or break Savage’s career.
“I didn’t find many NFL football players but I learned one thing about myself,” Savage said. “I loved scouting. I loved the freedom of it. I loved being out of the office. It was like I was my own boss for the first time. I didn’t ever want to go back to Cleveland and work in an office again.”
Savage was then named the West Coast scout for the 1995 season, moved his home back to Fairhope, Ala., and was in the midst of planning the scouting that would be the future Ravens’ first-ever draft when all hell broke loose in Cleveland, on and off the field.
Defensive coordinator Rick Venturi had some health problems early in training camp, dealing with exhaustion, and Savage was called upon to spend his weekdays scouting major college campuses and his weekends with the Browns for game day preparation in whatever city they were in that week.
“That whole season is like a blur to me now,” Savage said. “All I remember is landing one Friday night in Cleveland and the place is going nuts because Art Modell was moving the franchise to Baltimore. We had bomb threats at the facility (in Berea). We had little old ladies picketing in front of the facility when we went to work. It was crazy, really.”
By the time of the Senior Bowl in January 1996, the franchise was headed to Baltimore and Belichick and Lombardi were scouting a draft that they would never preside over. It was business as usual, but everyone feared the move to Baltimore and their job security.
Savage was among the many who thought his days in the Modell franchise were numbered, especially coming off a disastrous 4-12 season with a fresh start in a new town. The results of the 1995 draft debacle were also coming clear.
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At the combine in February 1996, Savage bumped into Newsome en route to the bathroom on the concourse of the RCA Dome in Indianapolis – Baltimoreans can insert the appropriate irony or joke here – and asked him point blank if he knew what was going to happen once the team landed in Baltimore.
“Ozzie, am I going to have a job?” Savage said.
“Don’t worry, you’re going to have a job,” Newsome replied. “Things are going to be fine for you.”
Less than a week later, Newsome, the newly appointed Vice President of Player Personnel, called Savage at his home in Alabama and said, “Phil, I hope you’re ready because I’m going to need your help.”
In the first 15 days of February 1996, the Modell franchise had endured a litany of lawsuits in Cleveland, a tenuous negotiation with the league over moving the team, dicey politics in the Maryland state house over stadium funding, and now would have a new coach, a new personnel leader and a new head of college scouting heading into the draft.
At the time, Art Modell was a beleaguered, beaten, sad man. Upon moving to Baltimore, there were precious few people he could turn to and trust. He had been burned and betrayed. He had a new city and a new team – a bright future no doubt – but many of his friends had abandoned him. There was no blueprint to turn to for answers. Some of the folks he would turn to for counsel and advice in the past weren’t even returning his calls. He was a modern-day pariah to all in the football world.
He turned to the one person in the world he could trust: Ozzie Newsome.
8Ozzie Newsome stuck by Art Modell, at one point during the darkest of times in Cleveland telling his longtime boss, “Whatever happens, I’m with you. You can count on me.”
Newsome’s on-field football credentials are beyond reproach. Perhaps the best tight end to ever play in the NFL, Newsome ended his career as the fourth-leading receiver of all time. He earned three Pro Bowl invitations and his streak of 150 consecutive games with a receptions is the second longest in NFL history. Newsome would be voted into Pro Football’s Hall of Fame in 1999.
Newsome had been serving as the team’s director of pro personnel since 1994, a nebulous title that included some scouting and some on-field work with the Browns and Belichick during practice.
In a traditional sense, Newsome was hardly qualified to be running the entire organization so quickly. But much like he took to picking up blocking schemes and pass patterns coming out of Alabama as a first-round pick, Newsome quickly adapted to his role and flourished.
“I’ve seen some former players who can’t make the transition to the front office,” owner Art Modell now says. “That’s not been the case with Ozzie. He attacks the job the same way he became a great player – by working harder than those around him and by learning everything he needs to know to be successful.”
On Feb. 17, 1996, just two days after the hiring of head coach Ted Marchibroda, Savage and Newsome met with the man who four weeks earlier came a foot away from taking the Indianapolis Colts to their first Super Bowl. Marchibroda had a contract dispute with Bill Tobin and Jimmy Irsay after the season, and Modell – again hiring with his heart and fondness for long-term relationships – gobbled him up for what he thought would be a triumphant return to Baltimore for the one-time Baltimore Colts coach during the glory years of the mid-1970s.
Marchibroda, it was later learned by Modell, wasn’t nearly as popular in Baltimore as his memory served him. Many Baltimoreans had a “here we go again” attitude toward the affable, grandfatherly Marchibroda. Despite the fact that Marchibroda was responsible for several Buffalo Bills Super Bowl appearances during the early 1990s with a liberal offense that included the famous “K-Gun” under Jim Kelly, most of Charm City’s football faithful remembered the conservative approach of “Hey Diddle, Diddle, Lydell up the middle,” which limited then-quarterback Bert Jones’ down-the-field approach in favor of the running game of Lydell Mitchell. In other words, folks in Baltimore wouldn’t be buying season tickets to watch the second coming of Teddy Ball. They bought tickets because it was the NFL and it said Baltimore on the jerseys.
