Ravens cling to Super Bowl memories
RAVENS, orchestrated by widely revered general manager Ozzie Newsome, has not produced the desired results.
The Ravens have gone 40-40 in the regular season and made the playoffs just once since they won the Super Bowl. They’ve failed to build a consistent offense around Flacco or a defense as stifling as those led by Lewis and Reed in their primes. They’ve coped with offfield controversies, including Rice’s downfall due to domestic violence and players kneeling in protest during the national anthem. This season, even as the team fought for a wild-card berth, disillusioned fans left swaths of seats empty at normally raucous M&T Bank Stadium.
Their disappointment only deepened when the team’s playoff ambitions vanished on a stunning fourth-down defensive lapse, and the Ravens responded by keeping their power structure — once lauded for its stability but now dinged for its stagnancy — largely intact. Newsome will step down after the 2018 season, but he’ll be replaced by his long-time lieutenant, Eric DeCosta.
“I don’t think we’re stagnant at One Winning Drive,” Bisciotti said Friday in his annual State of the Ravens address. “I think we’re as enthused as we’ve always been. Disappointed, embarrassed and determined, but not stagnant.”
Organization leaders, players from the 2012 Super Bowl team and outside analysts offer a variety of reasons for the malaise hanging over a franchise that was frequently lauded as one of the smartest in the NFL.
“People don’t realize what that city had with that team,” Lewis says. “What I was able to be around, to help build, that was chemistry. That was being able to play with people that understood the entire culture of what being a Raven meant. When you go through that big of a hit after 2012, you lost some of the strongest personalities in football. If you go back historically, remember the Chicago Bulls and when Michael Jordan left that city, the Bulls have never been back.”
Lewis gushes about C.J. Mosley, his successor at middle linebacker.
“Then you see everything else around him,” he says. “It’s just the mix of old, young, wisdom, youth. That mix is kind of what makes great teams. I don’t know if we’ve found that total mix yet.”
Others argue that periodic dips are inevitable for almost every franchise.
“Truly, there are no more dynasties except for New England,” Rice says. “I have a lot of respect for everyone there — the owner, the coaches, everyone there. But when you look at it, some things you can’t control. I know they’ve been injury-plagued for the last couple of years. Then the one year they made it back [to the playoffs], Gary Kubiak was there. But, man, it’s hard. It’s hard to make it back to the Super Bowl. They’ve been faced with some adversity.”
The concern raised most frequently by former Ravens is the disappearance of strong, independent voices — Lewis, Reed, wide receiver Anquan Boldin — from the locker room.
“Harbaugh could’ve done a better job, but he’d rather have guys that are yes men instead of men who were going to step out there and go to war,” says Bernard Pollard, the safety who helped set a hard-hitting tone for the 2012 team. “I believe deep down inside, he broke up something that was truly special when he shouldn’t have done it. You could tell me otherwise, but I know it’s killing him and eating at him because he could’ve been a guy that benefited from two or three Super Bowls rather than just one and losing seasons after that.”
He’s the sharpest critic of Harbaugh, but others share the same general outlook.
“Of course you see something missing,” says Reed, who sometimes butted heads with coaches but was also revered as a powerful influence on younger teammates. “Leadership means a lot, leadership and communication. That’s huge. Of course you can see something missing, the way guys carry themselves.”
It’s a line of criticism that frustrates Ravens coaches and executives. They’ve retained linebacker Terrell Suggs, an outspoken personality who learned to lead at the knees of Lewis and Reed. They’ve also brought in veteran alpha dogs such as receivers Steve Smith Sr. and Mike Wallace and safety Eric Weddle.
Bisciotti sees little validity in the argument that the Ravens have jettisoned strong voices. “You can’t replace Hall of Famers,” he said Friday, referring to Lewis and Reed. “You can try.”