Re-tool time

Ravens begin tearing down, building up

You know the names. You know the numbers. But maybe you'd be surprised to find out there's more to a team's salary-cap purge than just the hard, cold data.

Want to get a feel for what it's like to be Ozzie Newsome and Brian Billick these days? Try taking some beloved pet project of yours, the one that has been three or four painstaking years in the making, and destroy at least a third of it with your own hands.

Stand back for a moment or two in silent observation, and then get busy rebuilding it as fast as you can.

Just because the Baltimore Ravens knew this day of financial reckoning was coming doesn't make it easier. Less than 13 months after winning Super Bowl XXXV, the Ravens are in some ways starting over. Like kids building sand castles in the surf, Newsome and Billick held back the tides for as long as they could, but now it's time to watch a good bit of their work get washed away.

Linebacker Jamie Sharper and kick returner Jermaine Lewis already are gone (not to mention nose tackle Tony Siragusa, defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis and linebackers coach Jack Del Rio). Tight end Shannon Sharpe, free safety Rod Woodson, defensive end Rob Burnett, defensive end Michael McCrary, and defensive tackle Sam Adams all are either definite or potential salary-cap casualties by March 1.

Cornerback Duane Starks and safety Corey Harris are free-agents-to-be and also may have played their last game in purple and black. Quarterback Elvis Grbac and linebackers Peter Boulware and Ray Lewis are being asked to restructure their contracts in order to help Baltimore's salary cap situation.

This is the way it is in the NFL these days, where the "Not For Long" punchline now applies most aptly to the composition of a team's roster. All politics may be local, as Tip O'Neill was famously quoted, but in the NFL, all personnel decisions have become financial. One way or another.

"I won't ever get used to having to tell guys like Shannon Sharpe, Rob Burnett and Rod Woodson that, even though I know you can still play, still contribute, we have to release you because of the salary-cap issues," said Newsome, the Ravens' senior vice president of football operations. "Yeah, that's tough. It's difficult. I actually played a year with Rob Burnett in Cleveland, when he was a rookie (in 1990).

"I'm dealing with some guys of my vintage. Rod Woodson was a friend of mine before he became a player of mine. That's the part of this that will always be uncomfortable."

The Ravens saved about $7 million in cap room by losing Sharper and Jermaine Lewis to Houston in this week's expansion draft. But they still have about $15 million to chop to get under the $71.1 million cap by March 1. They'll get there, because they have to. But not without pain. And definitely without gain.

You want to know the most shocking of numbers that the Ravens have to deal with in the next week or so? Baltimore had six Pro Bowl selections this season. As many of four of them might not be back next year due to financial considerations: Sharpe, Jermaine Lewis, Woodson and Adams. Only Ray Lewis and offensive tackle Jonathan Ogden are assured of roster spots. Can anybody in the league match that talent drain?

"I have to constantly tell my personnel staff, 'Hey guys, we're still a good staff even though we're allowing good players to go play for other people,'" Newsome said Wednesday. "I tell them, 'Let's take the credit for acquiring the talent and developing that talent for three or four years. Let's don't beat ourselves up. That's just the nature of the beast in the NFL right now.'

"Hopefully people won't say Baltimore doesn't know good talent. We know good talent when we see it. We just know we couldn't keep all of our good players the way the game is structured these days."

While Baltimore's cap purge is fairly dramatic even by today's standards, the Ravens made this deal with themselves last year, when they were coming off their stunning rise to Super Bowl champions. In electing to bring back 20 of 22 starters in 2001, Baltimore bought itself the opportunity to take its best shot at back-to-back Super Bowl titles.

It didn't work out, given that the Ravens were eliminated in the divisional round of the playoffs, but Baltimore at least kept its team together and made its run. Last year at this time, conventional wisdom said there was no way the Ravens would be able to re-sign Sharper. Jermaine Lewis, as well, had a cap issue to deal with and was forced to take a pay cut in order to remain in Baltimore.

"We felt like we were cheating time a little bit right there," Newsome said, of last year's cap maneuvering. "We knew we were putting ourselves in this position in 2002, but we had to take our shot at winning back-to-back. We could have done half of this cap-cutting last year, and it wouldn't have been this painful, but I don't think we would have had a real shot to get to the Super Bowl this season."

As Billick sees it, the Ravens got the services of Sharper and Jermaine Lewis probably a year longer than they could have expected to. Now both players get to make bigger money with Houston, the Texans get two quality performers, and the Ravens get some much needed cap relief. In the weird cap-conscious world of the NFL, that's as close to a win-win as it gets.

"You hate to let them walk out the door, but it's absolutely unavoidable," Billick said, the Ravens fourth-year head coach. "We knew what we were coming up to. We didn't wake up after the playoff loss to Pittsburgh and say, 'Oh, [shoot], look where we are with the cap.' We projected where our window was, and where we'd have to regroup. And we're clearly in the regrouping stage. But that regrouping doesn't mean we can't be good this season. We're not capitulating."

While the NFL always has been a bottom-line business, the cap has changed things in the league to the point where that truth is much more blatant. As Billick freely admits, the hardest part of his job has become building a team-first mentality for seven months of the year, from the opening of training camp until the final game of the season, and then watching as the business-side of the sport takes over for the other five months.

"You tell them it's all about the team, and what we can do together," Billick said. "You got my back, I've got yours. But then two seconds after the season is over, you have to start deciding who to cut and when to do it. You just hope that you do it in the right way so that when you reassemble your players again, you can start rebuilding that team mentality again.

"As Dennis Green used to say, there really is a time for pay and a time to play. And right now we're in the time for pay. That's just the reality of it."

The news isn't all bad in Baltimore. The flip side of life in the NFL is that the rebuilding process doesn't take as long as it once did either. The 49ers were supposed to be in cap hell for a good four or five years, right? But after just two non-playoff seasons, San Francisco was right back in the Super Bowl hunt this season, going 12-4 and making the post-season.

Though weakened, the Ravens aren't dismantling their team anywhere near the level of the 1999 49ers -- who many experts predicted would be the NFL's version of the 1962 Mets.

"I guess you've got to look at it like it's college," Newsome said. "After four years or so, the players have to move on in this system. But we think we can do it again. We think we can build it back up. Look at San Francisco. It can come back around very quickly in this league. That's what we're focused on."

Don Banks covers pro football for CNNSI.com.