In the fall of 2000, the band U2 released what was somewhat of a comeback album, All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Featuring the single “Beautiful Day,” the album re-established U2 as a rock and roll powerhouse and cemented their status as an all-time great.
That fall also saw another renaissance of sorts, as the Baltimore Ravens earned their first playoff appearance and set themselves on a course to become one of the best football franchises in the NFL. For long suffering Baltimore football fans, the 2000 season was the culmination of a lot of pain and anguish after 12 seasons without NFL football and an affirmation that it was all worth it. It also established that Baltimore was truly back on the NFL map.
Even though they ended up finishing in 2nd place in the then AFC Central, the 2000 Ravens clinched their first playoff appearance in early December that year, which allowed Ravens fans to savor the next couple of weeks in anticipation of the first home NFL playoff game since the infamous “Ghost To The Post” overtime thriller against the Oakland Raiders on Christmas Eve, 1977.
The lead up to the game was mostly dominated by the pundits not giving the Ravens much credit and theorizing on how the “genius” head coach of the Denver Broncos, Mike Shanahan, was going to find a way to beat the Ravens – even with backup quarterback Gus Frerotte at the helm. Even though the Ravens were at home and favored by Vegas (+3.5 points), most pundits seemed to feel that the Ravens were going to be overmatched by the Broncos’ No. 1 offense, even with Frerotte. Little did it seem that anyone yet truly realized just how good that Ravens defense was (outside of Baltimore, that is).
Weather-wise, December 31, 2000 was not a “beautiful day.” With a game time temperature of 22 degrees and winds gusting to 40 mph (creating a wind chill of 5 degrees), it was probably the coldest Ravens home game to date.
That said, the feeling before and during the game was anything but cold.
The city and the crowd were abuzz and the party was about to begin.
From arrival to departure, it seemed like no one sat and the crowd was as loud as it had ever been to that point in Ravens’ history. After 12 years without football and 23 years without playoff football, Baltimore and the Ravens were ready.
After a scoreless 1st quarter that was dominated (surprise!) by the Ravens’ defense (Denver’s 1st first down didn’t come until almost four minutes into the 2nd quarter), the Ravens strung together a 10-play, 75-yard drive that culminated in a one-yard Jamal Lewis touchdown run. The Ravens had the first score and a lead they would never relinquish.
Several of the highlights from the game:
1. The most famous play from the game is probably the Shannon Sharpe tipped touchdown reception, but what made the play even that much more memorable was the sideline block by fullback Sam Gash that ended linebacker Bill Romanowski’s pursuit of Sharpe and sent him flying into the Broncos bench. Romanowski had become a villain of sorts for spitting on an opponent several seasons before, so seeing him getting rocked by Gash was almost as fun as watching Sharpe score the Ravens’ second touchdown of the day.
2. As was the case that year, the Ravens’ D was dominant and the Broncos could get nothing going on offense. Their No. 1 rated offense and their high octane running game went nowhere, as Ray Lewis and company repeatedly stuffed running back Mike Anderson. Anderson had 1,487 yards, and 5.0 ypc during regular season, but only 40 yards on 15 carries that day.
3. Poor Ed McCaffrey. The Broncos’ wide receiver probably had the best day of any Broncos offensive player (eight catches for 75 yards), but the Ravens’ defense was content to allow him to make the underneath catch and then pound him. And, pound him they did. Repeatedly. There is a classic piece of video of CB Chris McAlister basically body slamming McCaffrey to the turf by the sideline (for what seemed to umpteenth time) and Tony Siragusa – as only Goose can do – taunting McCaffrey – “you got slammed like a b—-!”.
4. One especially humorous recollection was a 4th quarter pass attempt by Frerotte in which an unexpected Ravens defender showed up in pass coverage. From our seats in the end zone, we had a perfect view as Frerotte dropped back intending to throw a short crossing route to WR Rod Smith. Except out of nowhere, the Ravens had dropped Siragusa into coverage and there was Goose – in all his glory – jumping up and down flailing his arms around.
Needless to say Frerotte wasn’t expecting a defender there – much less Goose – and had to pull the ball down and then just chucked the ball out of bounds when the Ravens pass rush quickly closed in on him. Even though Frerotte had his back to us, his body language suggested “panic” while gripped by a rather apparent state of confusion.
The best highlight of the day, though, was Jamal Lewis’ 3rd quarter touchdown run.
The offensive line opened a huge hole up the middle, with only Broncos middle linebacker Al Wilson in Jamal’s way. Jamal absolutely steamrolled Wilson and then rumbled 27 yards to the end zone. The score was then 21-3 and for all intents and purposes the game was over. While hindsight and the history of that Ravens defense will say that the Ravens lead was never in doubt, even at 14-3 (or 7-0, for that matter), that touchdown was the tension reliever that the stadium waited for.
After years of being ignored and passed over, years of frustration and anguish, the crowd could be excused for not realizing just how great that defense was and how Denver was never going to score or make a game of it.
But, once Jamal scored, it was clearly over and the party was really on.
And no one felt cold.
And in an absolutely perfectly timed moment, the stadium PA system cued up “Beautiful Day.”
And, it was.
Postscript
When attempting to recall certain moments of this game, I asked a couple of my tailgating crew about their recollections of that “Beautiful Day”. What one wrote was really too good to not include:
However, for a city that had gone through proverbial football hell and back: The Ghost-to-the-Post, Irsay tearing down a championship organization, the Elway draft fiasco, the airport press conference, the moving vans, the promises of expansion and the disappointing expansion “process” itself…and then having to take on the burden of being the city that “stole the Browns,” Bob Costas and his smug arrogance on Opening Day 1996, and having one of the worst teams in the league for three years. Suffice to say, we had a pretty big chip on our shoulder come the playoffs of 2000.
And the beauty of that attitude was that it matched what was going on with the players: Trent Dilfer can’t take a team to the playoffs, much less win a game, right? They are all a bunch of “thugs” with smack-talking Shannon Sharpe leading them. Their coach is arrogant (he was). Ray Lewis is a murderer and should be in jail. Etc., etc., etc.
That day was just the perfect moment in sports that comes probably two or three times in your lifetime (if you are lucky) when a city with something to prove was married up to a team with something to prove, and the result was a truly “beautiful day.”
