Needless to say, my provincial ways made my otherwise clear vision a bit more muddled on Monday morning. The bus ride home was excruciating, and the Redskins fans who had been so quiet and polite, sipping their expensive wines and reading The Washington Post prior to game time, were like animals upon the exit of the stadium that afternoon. Several fights, instigated by the formerly quiet fans, ensued. It was an all-time low point for many Ravens fans. You only get so many chances to beat the Redskins, and when your defense holds them to 10 points and you have the ball first and goal from the 1, you have to cash in.
The Ravens hadn’t scored a touchdown in three games, and it was becoming embarrassing watching Banks and the offense fumble about.
For my part, I took Billick to task the next morning on the air for even attempting to throw the ball on the goal line again.
He had a desperate quarterback, who no matter what the previously agreed to instructions would be regarding disposing of the ball under pressure – spiking the ball, throwing it out of bounds or into the stands – was going to force a pass inbounds. The mindset of Banks was that settling for three points down that close would cost him his job. And he was probably right.
“That play call on the goal line was criticized,” Billick said. “And, in retrospect, there are probably some valid arguments on that play.”
Billick must have gotten wind of my criticism on the air the following morning. I was in classic form, ranting and raving, pissed as hell that the team had lost a shot to go to 6-1 and a chance to kick the Redskins in the teeth when they were beaten. Most of the callers just wanted to torch Banks and give Trent Dilfer or Chris Redman the reigns of the offense. It was getting harder to defend the play of Banks but easier to criticize the coach for the play calling.
Billick never let me forget about my rants of the morning of Oct. 16.
His battle cry after every game, and more specifically the wins, was, “Great win, huh? Does it get me on the national show tomorrow? Or are you too big time for me now?”
Several times it did get Billick on “Nasty Nationwide” or “NFL Monster Monday,” the Monday afternoon version of my show, co-hosted by former NFL lineman Brian Baldinger.
Beginning that week, after every win – and there would 11 more before season’s end, including the Super Bowl – Billick would good-naturedly torch me with a new addition to the “Can I come on the national show” line. He now added the tag: “Does that make up for beating the Redskins?” or “Good win, but not as big of a victory as winning in Washington.”
Always Billick. Always the smart ass.
That week the pressure to score a touchdown began to really mount.
The team was finally coming home to PSI Net Stadium after playing an extraordinarily difficult first segment of the season – five of their first seven games were on the road – with a very respectable 5-2 record. But Billick knew Banks was in trouble, and he wasn’t going to allow the season to shrivel up with interceptions and sacks and trips and fumbles at the 1-yard line.
The Tennessee Titans were coming to Baltimore for the first time since playing in Super Bowl XXXIV. The last time they came to PSI Net Stadium the Ravens whipped them, 41-14, in a game that wasn’t even as close as the final score. After losing their first game of the season to Buffalo, the Titans had won five in a row so this would be a battle for first place, with Jacksonville squarely being kicked off the throne in the AFC Central.
The Ravens kicked a pair of field goals early and led 6-0 nearing halftime. After the two-minute warning, Kyle Richardson let off a booming punt from deep in his own territory that Titans punt returner Derrick Mason brought back 21 yards to the Ravens’ 38-yard line. Five plays later, quarterback Steve McNair hit Rodney Thomas with a 9-yard touchdown pass to put the Titans ahead, 7-6, at the half.
After yet another half without a touchdown, Banks really began to press in the second half, sensing the crowd’s disenchantment and his imminent benching.
On the Ravens’ first offensive play of the second half, Banks hit Titans’ linebacker Randall Godfrey in the numbers, and Godfrey took the ball 25 yards into the end zone, giving the Titans a 14-6 lead.
“I gave Tony a promise in training camp that I was going to stick with him as long as I possibly could,” said Billick, who never spent time threatening his quarterback or his fragile ego. “It sounds crazy now, but I had to let Tony throw one more interception.”
And he did. Actually, he threw two more.
With yet another red zone march at hand, Banks faded back from the 12-yard line and threw into the end zone. Again, he found a white Titan jersey, this time safety Dainon Sidney.
“You knew they were coming, it’s blocked up, just deliver it to ’em Tony,” Billick could be heard telling Banks after the play on NFL Films. “We gotta let Trent try to do something here now. We’ve got to, Tony.”
Billick had gone as far as he could with a player with a loaded arm and unlimited potential, a quarterback who would end his Ravens career with an 11-7 record as a starter, certainly not shabby for a franchise that is 36-43-1 in the regular season over its five years.
But there was a lot about being an NFL quarterback that Banks didn’t ever grasp, intrinsic qualities about leadership that many of his coaches and teammates criticized privately. There was the tempo in the huddle, the pacing. He didn’t have the ability to properly study film and interact with teammates nor the sense of urgency that’s necessary to win games. Obviously, he had it in the Jacksonville game in Baltimore earlier in the season, but it was fleeting, to say the least.
For Dilfer, it was the chance he had been looking for, the reason he came to Baltimore and met with Billick six months earlier. All he wanted was a chance.
“Part of the reason to make the change was to give Trent a game at home to get on a roll,” Billick said. “We had Pittsburgh coming in the next week and then we were going on the road for two weeks. We needed to get Trent ready to make a little run.”
Dilfer actually contributed to the mess in the fourth quarter, throwing yet another interception, but eventually he got the team within striking distance in the waning moments of the game. On a fourth and 22 from the Titans’ 32-yard line, Dilfer threw a wobbly pass into the left corner of the end zone to Qadry Ismail. Ismail came down with the ball, but the pass was ruled incomplete. Upon review, the initial call stood and the Ravens would lose, 14-6, in a game that they clearly dominated in every statistical category.
They had amassed 368 yards of total offense and had racked up 24 first downs in scoring just six points. The Ravens’ defense hammered star running back Eddie George on his first carry, knocking him out of the game with a leg injury almost immediately. Behind the rushing of back-up running back Rodney Thomas, the Titans managed just seven first downs on the day and McNair’s offense totaled just 191 yards.
And yet, the Ravens fell to 5-3 that afternoon with a red-hot Steelers team coming into PSI Net, where they had never lost.
The offense on Oct. 29, 2000 didn’t look much different with Dilfer at the helm than it did under Banks the few previous weeks. Dilfer moved the team on its first possession of the game deep into Steelers’ territory, marching 64 yards in nine plays down to the 9-yard line. Dilfer, taking a page from Banks’ scrapbook, then fumbled the snap and safety Lee Flowers fell on the ball at the 13. It was the only time the Ravens would penetrate the red zone in a 9-6 loss.
“If you’re Trent, you don’t come right back in and pick up where you left off,” Billick said. “It takes a while to make things click.”
The offense was obviously sputtering badly yet again, managing just a pair of field goals.
Dilfer was 11 of 24 for 152 yards and running back Jamal Lewis ran 19 times for 93 yards but it was mainly a futile effort to flee poor field position all day.
The Ravens defense was its usual dominating self, sacking Kordell Stewart five times and forcing a pair of fumbles.
Losing to Washington and Tennessee was hurtful but explainable: they were both first-place teams. A hot, yet beatable, Pittsburgh squad was another story.
It was the third loss to the Steelers at PSI Net Stadium and the fourth in a row overall in Baltimore. The game was so ugly from the Ravens’ perspective that a very macabre legend about the Pittsburgh-Baltimore rivalry, at least in terms of the PSI Net side of the matchup, had to be acknowledged.
During the building of the stadium, while the team was playing its games at old Memorial Stadium on 33rd Street uptown, there were not a myriad of Ravens fans in Baltimore. The stadium was going up early into the team’s first season in 1996 and many Baltimoreans had adopted other teams during the 13 seasons when the town was dormant as an NFL city. I had become a huge Houston Oilers fan in the interim but for some strange reason, many fans adopted the Pittsburgh Steelers. Baltimore was also loaded with Pittsburgh transplants, who fled Western Pennsylvania looking for work in Maryland.
Late in the Ravens’ first season at Memorial Stadium, the Ravens beat the Steelers, 31-17, eventually knocking them out of a home-field advantage in the playoffs where they eventually went into New England and lost on a foggy day in January 1997.
Legend has it that an angry construction worker, who was a fan of the Steelers, buried a Terrible Towel into the concrete foundation of PSI Net Stadium that spring to cast a spell on the Ravens when the Steelers came to visit.
Three trips into Baltimore later, the Ravens were still looking for their first win against the Steelers at PSI Net Stadium. With Halloween just two days away after the most recent disaster, it was a time for morbid reflection. The losses to the Steelers in Baltimore were getting more grotesque by the year. Perhaps the stadium was built on some ancient Steelers burial ground?
After the game the media and fans began to pry about a budding division of the team’s locker room. How can the defense not be getting chippy when the offense obviously isn’t doing its job week after week? At what point will this touchdown drought boil over into a war in the locker room?
The players heard all of the questions and they weren’t biting.
Perhaps the greatest and most difficult task that Billick would perform all year as a leader of men was holding this group together the week after the Pittsburgh loss.
The team hadn’t scored a touchdown in five full games – nearly a third of the season. It had managed every single way possible to blow chances. Interceptions in the end zone, fumbles by skill position players, a bad exchange of a snap, penalties nullifying scores – this offense had seen it all. In the three losses, they had outgained the opposition’s offense in two of those games and owned the time of possession.
“The offense wasn’t turning the ball over and they were moving the ball,” said defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis. “They didn’t put us on a short field very often. We were making first downs, so the guys on defense could see the progress. It was just a matter of time. Matt (Stover) was doing an excellent job of hitting his kicks and we had won the first few games of the drought. We knew it would get better if we just stuck together.”
Billick kept preaching the obvious but difficult: stick together and remain a family. Winning will not be the result of division.
“Sometimes I pointed out players on other teams who would rip their teammates and then try to sell it as a motivational tactic,” Billick told Sports Illustrated. “But what they’re really saying is, ‘What’s wrong isn’t me.’ I told our players that that might provide momentary comfort, give you a momentary release, but that, ultimately, they’d regret it for the rest of their lives. I know that we became a better team, having gone through that adversity, having stared into that abyss.”
Dilfer gave all of the credit to Billick for surviving the 21-quarter touchdown drought, which would end the following week in Cincinnati.
“Brian deserves unlimited credit, because we could easily have gone in a different direction,” Dilfer told Sports Illustrated. “He got us to the point where we could endure the highs and lows, because of our mental toughness. All year long he touted the importance of having a family environment. He always said we couldn’t let outside circumstances dictate how we live with one another. He laid the groundwork for what held us together.
“During October, he never panicked and he didn’t try to jam new things down our throats. He was quick to point out that we just weren’t executing in the red zone, but things overall were fine. The genius of Brian is letting us stay who we were and constantly pushing preparation.”
