For the longest time I was a big supporter of Brian Billick. In 2002 he skillfully led the Ravens and kept a salary cap ravaged team competing throughout the season, hanging on to playoff hopes through 15 games.
In 2006 he responded to Steve Bisciotti’s woodshed beating from 2005 and guided his club to a 13-3 regular season.
And of course his defining season – 2000. Then he was masterful in the way he handled the touchdown drought, successfully keeping his team together. And who could forget the proverbial bullet he took for Ray Lewis when the national media did its best to dredge up the murder trial that took place less than one year earlier?
But today’s Brian Billick has outworn his usefulness. His message is lost on his players and nowadays they openly disrespect his decision making while on the field and along the sidelines.
Veteran players will tell you how great it is to play for Billick yet what would you expect them to say? During the twilight of their careers, why would players like Trevor Pryce and Gary Stills and Mike Flynn say anything but positive things about a man who helps sustain their careers and place millions more in their pockets?
That is not the way you want your football team managed Baltimore. The situation is toeing the line of the fat cat style embraced by Orioles’ management in the late ‘90’s and it is a recipe for mediocrity if not disaster.
Billick’s decision making is too influenced by fear. He’s afraid to reprimand the veterans or call them out publicly. He’s afraid to challenge the team’s veteran leadership, continually massaging their egos with expressions like, “he played very, very well†when we all know “he†didn’t. Or Billick will mention his high degree of comfort with the team’s collective character yet they throw in the towel against the Colts.
And then there’s the fearful play calling, time management and decision making that unfortunately has become a staple of Brian Billick’s.
Steve Bisciotti has said repeatedly that he doesn’t want to manage the team through short cycles of windows of opportunity opening and closing. He prefers instead to keep that window permanently wedged open but under Billick’s guiding hand, one has to wonder if that window might remain permanently shut.
Off the record players are suggesting that they aren’t buying into Billick’s message any more and the doubters appear to be growing. So what will happen if 2008 gets off to a slow start? What will happen if Kyle Boller is Billick’s man under center again?
The NFL has changed since Super Bowl XXXV. It is a league far more offensively oriented. The Billick formula doesn’t work any more and unless he can think outside of his own heavily armored box or stretch the parameters or pacing or metrics of his deeply entrenched management style, at worst he will continue to fail in Baltimore and at best the team will experience the up and down seasons like they have since 2004.
There’s little evidence suggesting that Billick will change and that is something that Bisciotti is obviously banking on again.
The Ravens’ owner has a chance to be part of the team’s solution by admitting Billick’s four year extension was a mistake. Instead Bisciotti is closer to becoming part of the problem. Billick has shown his stubbornness far too often over the years, particularly in 2007. Is that stubbornness contagious? It’s beginning to look a lot like Bisciotti is pulling an Angelos and wants to prove the world wrong by sticking with Billick and hoping that his coach can turn it around.
But that is a dangerous proposition.
What if he doesn’t turn it around?
There will be fewer fans attending. Fewer concessions sold; fewer corporate sponsors and advertisers; fewer t-shirts and hoodies and hats sold as a result of waning interest and the lack of national exposure. Once again M&T will be invaded by Steelers’ fans as Ravens PSL owners look to salvage something in the way of personal gain as tickets will surely flood Ebay. M&T will then become the equivalent of Camden Yards during an O’s v. Yankees or O’s v. Red Sox.
Is all this worth sacrificing just because there’s 15 million more out there due to Billick over the next three years? Isn’t it time for Bisciotti to cut his losses?
To borrow from Billick, clearly that would be the prudent thing to do – unless of course Bisciotti knows something about Brian Billick that the rest of us don’t know.
Let’s all hope so.
