It’s hard not to be impressed with the management of the Baltimore Ravens, particularly the player personnel side. And really it all starts with the Big 4 – Messrs. Bisciotti, Newsome, DeCosta and Harbaugh.
Continuity is important. It allows organizations to mature together. It enables working relationships to blossom and it paves the way to bringing to reality, the concept of “The Whole is Greater Than The Sum of Its Parts.”
In a way the Big 4 are a bit like the Fab 4. Each of The Beatles was vastly talented individually but together they rose to unprecedented heights, each challenged the other to stretch their minds and explore new boundaries. Egos were checked at the door and the best idea was the best idea, regardless of the author.
All of The Beatles after the band split up, said that the thing they missed most outside of the friendships, was the way they could play together. Because of the camaraderie and familiarity, each could feed off the other and understand without a spoken word what direction one wanted to go in with a song they were playing.
In sports you see it all the time on the field. A play breaks down but because of a well-defined rapport, the byproduct of repetition and hard work, a receiver knows where to go to bail out his quarterback and from a potentially disastrous play they discover opportunity. Similarly the Ravens Big 4 directs a franchise.
Harbaugh is the guy in the trenches. He’s the communicative link to the coaching staff and the players, regularly connecting with their individual needs within the framework of TEAM. The more engaged a coach or player is, the more they invest – they have skin in the game. Harbaugh is the conductor. TEAM becomes a mantra and that’s why it’s important for him to have dedicated and intelligent guys who play with passion.
This affects what Newsome and DeCosta do. They seek talent that will commit to the vision – commit to TEAM. You hear DeCosta preach often about how they seek players who are coachable, fast, smart, tough and love the game.
“Coach Harbaugh has a tough team – tough-minded, we handle adversity, we play physical on the field and we’re good in December and the playoffs; all that goes into it. You look for a lot of different things on tape. You look at guys that are playing just as hard in the fourth quarter of a blowout game as they would be in the first quarter of a tight game. You’re looking for guys that tackle consistently on defense. You’re looking for guys that play through pain, durable players that don’t miss games because of injuries; that practice all the time even if they are banged up.”
Perhaps that explains why the Ravens have a unique ability to win on the road in January. It boils down to having the right kind of guys in place with a common goal and the desire to get better. And that ambition extends to the front office.
“I think the strongest aspect of [our success] is that we challenge each other”, explains Newsome.
“John challenges me, Eric challenges me, Eric challenges Joe [Hortiz], Joe challenges the scouts. John will be challenging the scouts next week. And I think that’s where the strength comes in is that we all go in very open-minded willing to listen and learn, willing to get criticized. I get criticized, because I don’t have scriptures on my tongue either. I think that’s the strength of us. And then we have Steve who has some ideas, and he has his input also as to what he would like. But the ability for us to challenge one another, I think, is the strength of what we do.”
I’ve heard Paul McCartney say similar things about he and his mates.
Newsome and DeCosta have worked together since the club’s inception. This is their 20th season with the Ravens. 2015 will be Hortiz’ 18th with the team. Harbaugh is entering his 8th season.
And then there’s Bisciotti.
The Ravens owner is entering his 16th season with the team. He’s a self-made billionaire – a rare breed, and he built his fortune on placing people in jobs that line up with their core competencies. It’s safe to say he has a good handle on people and what it takes to develop talent and enable their innate abilities.
He doesn’t dictate to the other three what they should do but he integrates his refined business acumen into the process, the result of which is to open their minds, brake down the boundaries influenced by habit and see things in a new way.
Staying with The Beatles metaphor for a moment, their Hall of Fame producer George Martin has often said that the inability of The Beatles to read music was a good thing in that their ideas weren’t controlled by proper musical education and that had a way of challenging him as a producer in order to help bring their ideas to life.
Similarly, Bisciotti who by his own admission will never know as much about football as the other three, doesn’t have his ideas limited by conformity.
It’s a great marriage that grows stronger with time.
Back during the Brian Billick years, Bisciotti, frustrated by the up and down swings of his team from 2005 to 2007, emphatically stated that he wanted to put an end to losing seasons such as those in ’05 and ’07. He said he didn’t believe in “windows of opportunity” in the NFL. He made a commitment to keep those windows perpetually open.
Years later after 5 consecutive seasons of playoff appearances, I asked Bisciotti what he would attribute the team’s success to.
He didn’t hesitate.
“Joe Flacco!”
Clearly steady play at quarterback is a prerequisite for consistent success in the NFL. I get what Bisciotti is saying.
But for my money, the consistency goes deeper than that. The consistency is rooted in the Big 4. By their collective guiding hand, the Baltimore Ravens will always be a threat in the National Football League. Individually the members of the Big 4 are all too ambitious to remain static. And as a unit – a front office force, achievement is almost a foregone conclusion.
And that’s great news for the fans.
In Ravens Nation, it’s getting better all the time.
