“Season in Between” Ep. 3 Companion Blog
“The New Guard”
The only thing more difficult than writing a masterpiece is figuring out how to follow it up. This was something Brian Billick was learning over the course of the early 2000’s, as every move he made would be compared against what he had done in his Super Bowl XXXV winning season.
Comparatively, Ozzie Newsome was judged under a similar microscope due to him being the one that hired Billick and constructed that roster. His calling card had become hitting big on draft picks, and after nailing it out of the park year after year throughout the late 90’s, the question of whether or not he could continue at that level was a fair one, simply by virtue of how good he’d been.
Spoiler alert for today’s episode: that good fortune continued. In Arizona State’s Todd Heap, he got the perfect eventual replacement for Shannon Sharpe that the team would need; in 2002, he landed the prize of this new litter in Miami safety Ed Reed, who’d quickly acclimate to the team and the league as if he were a veteran; the year after, he’d snag Terrell Suggs, also from Arizona State, who’d be a beast off the edge from the word go; and in 2006, he’d tab Oregon defensive tackle Haloti Ngata as the Tony Siragusa/Sam Adams successor that he’d sought.
All of these guys made an instant impact when brought in, but Ozzie’s new guard of ringless players seeking a championship didn’t end there. It also included Steve McNair, and of course his former teammate in wide receiver Derrick Mason. Newsome would later say that Mason was the most important free agent signing in Ravens history, and it’s hard to argue this point; the ironic thing is the move for him wasn’t supposed to happen at all, as the Ravens pursuit of Terrell Owens ended in publicly humiliating fashion, sending them back to the drawing board.
But what Mason and McNair had in common with the young draft picks I just alluded to was of course the fact that they hadn’t won a Super Bowl, and never experienced the same glory that their peers in the old guard like Ray and Jamal Lewis, Jonathan Ogden, Adalius Thomas, and others had. A 4-0 start to the ‘06 season was reason to believe they might, as soon as that year; but after stumbling into the bye week, the increasingly anxious Billick, worried about his job security, made a drastic move to try and salvage things on offense.
As was often the case in the 2006 regular season for Baltimore, it was a good move indeed. And it was one that was needed to jumpstart things behind center, where McNair was struggling a bit over that two consecutive loss stretch heading into the break. He emerged refreshed and ready to attack things with this new offense headed up by Billick’s playcalling, and he took that energy to a game he’d had circled on his calendar since the moment he saw it: Week 10 vs. the Titans, at Tennessee.
I hope you guys enjoy the listen, and feel free to get at me on twitter @jakelouque with your thoughts, and be sure to stay tuned to the podcast feed for next week’s episode! Thanks for listening.