Going Behind The Ravens Curtain With Kevin Byrne

[TL24x7]

LINK

[HoustonRaven]

Good stuff, Tony. Thanks again!

[JohnBKistler]

I could be wrong, but I believe the Ravens front office making the decision to move on from Ted "midway through the 1998 season" was a direct result of this game:

http://www.pro-football-reference.co...9811010rav.htm

Jacksonville 45
Baltimore 19

The score at half-time was 42-13. Yes, you read that right, the Jaguars scored 42 points in the first half. Back in those days, I road a bar bus to the games, so you were usually in it for the duration of the game. I can remember sitting in the upper deck at the start of the 2nd half and there were maybe...MAYBE...10,000 fans left in the stadium.

When fans talk about games where the Billick-led Ravens "turned the corner" from a truly abysmal franchise (think Browns) to the perennial championship contenders they are today, there a several games that fit the bill:

December 5, 1999 game against the eventual AFC champion Titans. The Ravens scored 24 unanswered points in the final 20 minutes to thump the Titans 41-14.

September 10, 2000 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Ravens scored 32 second half points including the final TD with 41 seconds left to defeat the Jaguars for the first time in franchise history.

However, from a purely won/loss record point-of-view, the November 1, 1998 game against the Jaguars was without a doubt rock bottom. The Ravens at that time held a 12-27-1 franchise record (.300). But from that point forward, they went 4-4 the rest of the 1998 season (a testament to Marchibroda and his staff that the team did not quit), 8-8 in Billick's first year and then the nearly yearly winning records (12 out of 15 seasons) that we've come to expect as fans.

[GOTA]

I never understood hiring Ted in the first place. It seemed almost to be a PR move. Baltimore fans all remembered Ted Marchibroda. It was almost like they were thinking that bringing Ted back to Baltimore would sell tickets instead of hiring the best coach. He was 65 years old. There was no way they were thinking long term.

[Rxdoxx]

Thanks Tony, nice read

[JimZipCode]

I never understood hiring Ted in the first place. It seemed almost to be a PR move. Baltimore fans all remembered Ted Marchibroda. It was almost like they were thinking that bringing Ted back to Baltimore would sell tickets instead of hiring the best coach.

I thought it was a good move, for precisely those reasons. It's not like he was unqualified – took Indy to the conf champship game the year before. A good "bridge" hire, to re-establish the NFL in Baltimore.

I hear your criticism that it was not a hire made for the long term. It really was just a "bridge" or transition hire. But it was a good example of such a hire.

I don't feel like criticizing them for making a mere transition hire at that time. Who knows what turmoil the organization was in, with moving to Baltimore at the same time as firing Belichick and hiring a new head coach? We've seen what kind of hiring process they like to go thru for a head coach, in '99 and again in '08. It seems very likely to me that they just didn't have the bandwidth to do that whole process, while they were also moving to a new city with everything that entails. (Setting up a whole building, lining up a practice facility, etc etc.)

They needed an established veteran coach, a professional who knew how to run a team and would not be learning on the job, to help keep them on an even keel thru the move. They got a guy coming off a conf champship appearance, who happened to have history and credibility in Baltimore. That's a home run. The fact that they needed to do it again in a couple years – well, that's fine. A few years later they were fully settled in their new city and prepared to execute the kind of exhaustive, careful hiring & vetting process that they like to do. But they needed a caretaker coach to get them to that point. Marchibroda was ideal.


Great hire, even if he only won 16 games over 3 seasons.

[Ravenswintitle]

Outstanding article, thanks.

BTW - I was at that game where Jacksonville just crushed the Ravens. To this day I can see Mark Brunnel throwing the post to Jimmy Smith...

Interesting that the Eagles tried to hire Billick a couple years ago when their talks with Chip Kelly stalled.