The Ravens’ starting quarterback, Tony Banks, would say after the game at The Barn the following night, “This is the first time in my career where it’s been that way where Saturday night you’re thinking about the game and you’re expecting to come out and crunch that Pittsburgh team. Nothing against Pittsburgh, but that’s how confident we are.”
The crunch didn’t come on the offensive side of the ball, however. It was the defense – surprise, surprise – that shut down the Steelers’ offense and took the Terrible Towel wavers completely out of the game from kickoff in their final home opener at Three Rivers Stadium. The Ravens’ offense would produce just one touchdown that day – a 53-yard connection from Banks to wide receiver Qadry Ismail that was reminiscent of the three bombs for scores that he caught just nine months earlier in Pittsburgh – and Matt Stover added three short field goals of 23, 26 and 33 yards to lift the team to a 16-0 walkover to start the season.
The defense showed its first of many devastating efforts in what would be a championship season. The front four, led by its newest member Sam Adams, stopped Jerome Bettis cold, holding him to just eight yards on nine carries. On the day the defense surrendered just 30 yards rushing and 12 of those came on one run by Richard Huntley during an impressive 16-play, 88-yard drive.
That was the failed drive, ironically, that would seal their demise.
The Ravens’ defense simply denied the guys in black and gold the goal line. Once the Steelers marched inside the 5-yard line, the defense stiffened, stopping the Steelers on seven consecutive attempts. Despite getting a questionable pass interference penalty as a bonus opportunity, the Steelers couldn’t penetrate the end zone, eventually falling short on a fourth-and-3.
“The defense showed me that they had picked up right where they left off (in 1999),” said Billick, who singled out Adams’ play in the middle immediately. “I think if Sam can continue to give us the kind of play he did against the Steelers, I think that people will quickly talk about him in the vein that they do a Warren Sapp.”
The conservative offensive effort – especially kicking field goals when the team was deep into the red zone – would be a forbearer of problems that would only intensify in the coming weeks.
Billick soft-pedaled his quarterback’s role the following day on “Nasty Nationwide,” telling me, “We put Tony in a rough bind yesterday because it was one of the things where we wanted a nice tight game plan. At all costs, we wanted to avoid turnovers. We felt like our defense would have a good day. We did not want to put them on a short field. And yet with that mentality, it’s now, ‘Go out and throw the ball around and make big plays.’ So what Tony did do is run an efficient game offensively. He made a number of good calls for us. He did not turn the ball over. Maybe he opted to be a little conservative at times so as not to turn the ball over, particularly after, like I said, we scored on the opening drive in the second half and saw that it would take three scores to beat us. But he implemented the game plan very well and I’m pleased with the way he played.”
In particular, Banks missed several opportunities to blow the game open with overthrows and underthrows to the Ravens’ newest weapon, tight end Shannon Sharpe. For all of the impact the future Hall of Famer would have in a championship season, Sharpe ended his first game in purple with no receptions and no yards.
“There are some things I wish I had hit,” Banks told me at The Barn the next night. “Shannon expressed to me there were some things that I should have hit. Shannon is a good winner, but he’s a better winner when he makes five catches for 100 yards. I missed some passes that I make in my sleep to Shannon.”
Billick now admits that seeing Banks struggle that day and watching the wrath of the fans fall on Steelers quarterback Kordell Stewart, who was booed lustily and mercilessly on the first and only snap he took from center that day at Three Rivers Stadium, made a lasting impression.
“Watching the crowd boo Kordell, it occurred to me at the time that there would be obstacles that Tony would have to face down the line,” Billick said after the season. “There are going to be tough spots and handling that would be important.”
After a season-opening shutout, Billick sensed that this would be the Ravens’ and the Modells’ final visit to what had been a graveyard for the entire franchise. Three Rivers Stadium would be destroyed at season’s end after nearly 30 years of dominance to make way for a new home for the Steelers just a block away to the south. And the Steelers probably wouldn’t be hosting any playoff football at the conclusion of the 2000 season.
It was very rich with irony that as the beaten team in black and gold walked off the field, several thousand Ravens’ fans who had made the 258-mile sojourn to Western Pennsylvania were taunting them with chants of “Steelers Suck” and “Na, Na, Na, Na, Hey, Hey, Hey, Goodbye.” Most of the Pittsburghers had left the stadium after the seven-play goal line stand and the place was virtually empty by the two-minute warning, except for a tiny sea of purple that had descended from the 600-level down to the field area. The “Pittsburgh Is Ravens Country” sign had been modified during the off-season to become a full-length, professionally produced sign that was draped across the north exit of the field, the entrance to the Ravens’ locker room.
The next day on “Nasty Nationwide,” I set Billick up for his best line of the season.
“I think you again said yesterday that you’ve never lost a game at Three Rivers Stadium and yet they are ripping it down on you, Brian,” I commented.
Never one to miss a golden opportunity for a quip, Billick said, “Well, I think it’s a conspiracy. You know, once you get something good going someplace, someone wants to come and tear it down.”
Good things were happening for the Ravens, and even Banks started talking about “doing a radio show from Tampa somewhere in January” the following night. But before anyone could seriously talk about Super Bowl aspirations, the team had more demons to be vanquished the following weekend.
“We’ve made no secret of it and have not tried to hide behind the fact that Jacksonville’s a team we need to beat,” Billick said as the team anticipated its home opener against the defending AFC Central champion Jaguars. “This organization has not beaten Jacksonville. We had two tight games with them last year. We need to win those type of games this year if we’re going to be a playoff team.”
On a personal note, it was a very emotional week for me as well. Besides knowing this would be a huge game for the Ravens and a big weekend for the fans, I knew early in the week that the former radio station that I had operated for 16 months (from July 1998 to October 1999) and lost for the following 11 months, WNST-AM 1570, would be coming back on the air that weekend under my control. In addition to doing my national show for One On One Sports and preparing for the game, my partner Steve Hennessey and I were trying to get a marketing push together for the home opener to promote our station’s re-emergence.
We worked literally around the clock for 72 hours before the game. Early in the morning on game day, we flooded the streets with friends handing out fliers and information about the all-new WNST, Nasty 1570 Sports. We had literally hundreds of well-wishers stop by the Nasty Van prior to game time and folks flooded into Section 513 – the Nasty Section – to see if the news was true. We even flew an airplane over the stadium during the national anthem and kickoff announcing, “Welcome Back Nasty 1570 Sports, WNST!”
It was a day of amazing impact in my life. I was doing the number one sports talk show in the country on the biggest sports radio network in the world, and now my beloved radio station had come back on the air just in time for the home opener of the Ravens’ season. I was truly on top of the world and feeling very blessed and lucky. Even the weather was perfect that day!
Now, Hennessey and I joked, all we need is for the damned football team to finish the job and finally beat Jacksonville and go to 2-0.
Our seemingly boundless enthusiasm was quickly squashed.
Again, the Jaguars struck early and often. After a seven play, 48-yard drive ended in a Mike Hollis field goal, quarterback Mark Brunell quickly began to exploit the Ravens’ secondary, hitting wide receiver Jimmy Smith with a pair of touchdown passes of 45 and 43 yards to give the Jags a 17-0 advantage just 12:28 into the game. Ravens cornerback Duane Starks was being used on the edge, getting beaten by a half step at every turn.
By halftime, the Jags had managed a 23-7 lead and the crowd was reciting the “same old Ravens” speech during the intermission.
Billick was angry and disappointed but remained amazingly calm during his halftime speech to the players.
“It was not a time to rant and rave,” he would later say.
Instead, the future Super Bowl champion coach gave a quiet, heartfelt lecture about character, determination and fortitude.
