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Rave review

Another stellar draft puts Baltimore back in business

Posted: Sunday April 27, 2003 9:23 PM

OWINGS MILLS, Md. -- The future is now in today's minute-by-minute NFL, but for the Baltimore Ravens, this weekend was all about 2004 or 2005.

In the Ravens' master plan, the drafting of twin first-rounders Terrell Suggs and Kyle Boller represented two quantum steps toward their goal of putting another Lombardi Trophy behind glass in the coming three seasons.

Just a year removed from the most dramatic salary cap-forced dismantling in the NFL's free-agency era, a year after Baltimore carried only 35 or so players on its bare-bones offseason roster, the Ravens are back in the business of chasing a championship.

The rebirth of the Ravens as a playoff contender is a remarkable story that has played out at warp speed in the past 14 months.

There was ruin, with last offseason's roster purge. But then respectability got here faster than expected, via 2002's 7-9 finish. And now, with a franchise quarterback and impact pass rusher on hand to build on the momentum created by last year's productive draft class, the Ravens officially have pulled off the most difficult of coups in the NFL: They've rebuilt, or more aptly, reloaded, virtually without losing. In Baltimore, it was a case of practically no pain and wildly accelerated gain.

Suggs sounds off

OWINGS MILLS, Md. -- He'll be playing his football in a new city at a new position, but Ravens first-round draft pick Terrell Suggs is already familiar with one of Baltimore's landmarks: perennial Pro Bowl middle linebacker Ray Lewis.

Suggs and other top NFL Draft prospects were featured in one of a series of entertaining commercials that Lewis did for EA Sports, the video game merchandiser. In the spot, which ran all draft weekend, Suggs brags about his nation-leading 24 sacks last season, and then Lewis rolls up and tells the rookie that he has two sacks of laundry for him to pick up.

Suggs, in a frequently comical debut news conference with the Baltimore-area media on Sunday, said the commercial with Lewis leapt to mind Saturday when the Ravens made him the No. 10 pick in the first round.

"After the Cardinals traded [their No. 6 pick], I didn't know where I was going," Suggs said. "The first thing I thought about was me and Ray Lewis doing that commercial, and how he made me do his laundry. And now it's actually going to be a reality."

Suggs, who played defensive end at Arizona State and was expected to be taken by the Cardinals, will be shifted to strong-side linebacker with the Ravens. That means he and Lewis will be position-mates and will be seeing plenty of one another.

"We had a blast [doing that commercial]," Suggs said. "He told me what he was planning on doing to his rookie, and I was like, 'That's cool, because I ain't going to be there.'

"And when the [Ravens] called my name, I was like, 'Yeah! ... No!' But Ray's a great guy, and who better to spend your rookie season with than the best defensive player in the league?"

Suggs also held court on a few other pressing matters on Monday, like:

The proper pronunciation of his first name, which was a source of some confusion during the telecast of the draft. "It's Ter-rell," he said. "Terrell Owens is the only one who has changed it. Terrell Davis and David Terrell pronounce our name right, but Terrell Owens, he's about attention and he wants to be different than everybody. We give him credit. He's Terrell, and everybody else is Ter-rell."

If he ever sacked Cal quarterback Kyle Boller, who was Baltimore's other first-round selection? "Once. In three years, once. But I've rocked him a couple times. He'll tell you that."

And whether he thought he was treated fairly by NFL scouts, who advised him to bulk up to play defensive end in the league, and then downgraded him when he ran a relatively slow 4.8 40-yard dash with the extra weight.

"I don't think it was fair, but you know, it's football. Ain't nothing fair. I just got to shut up my critics now."

Ravens head coach Brian Billick had his own quip ready when asked if Baltimore was concerned about Suggs' "slow" 40 time?

"Well, if quarterback drops start going to 40 yards, then we're going to be concerned," Billick said. "As long as they stay in that 10-yard level, we're going to be OK."

-- Don Banks, SI.com

"We view last year and this year as almost a singular process," said Ravens head coach Brian Billick on Sunday afternoon after introducing Suggs and Boller to the Baltimore-area media. "We knew what we were coming into in the 2002 season, and we knew the 2002 and 2003 drafts were going to be pivotal in terms of us actually putting together the basis of this team to go forward and hopefully make multiple runs at a championship.

"Obviously this [draft was] very important to us. It's a great start ... and there's a great deal of positive energy that we're going to build on."

Fresh off yet another bountiful draft, here's how the Ravens plot out the next three years:

Playoff contention in the AFC North in 2003, while further developing the bevy of young and talented players who emerged in 2002;

A strong postseason run in 2004, when many of those players are reaching their prime;

And an all-out assault on the Super Bowl in 2005, when that youth will be fully integrated with the team's remaining veteran stars from the 2000 Super Bowl champions.

It's a blueprint that's looking surprisingly possible in light of Baltimore's performance in this weekend's NFL Draft, in which the Ravens turned in the league's most widely acclaimed talent haul. Suggs and Boller were the centerpieces of Baltimore's work, the kind of players who have the chance to be cornerstone figures on some eventual Super Bowl champion.

"You have to look at it in three different phases," Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome said. "No. 1, we did have a plan. When we decided to make another run for the Super Bowl in 2001, that draft that year was all about 2002-03. And the second part of every decision that we made last year [during the cap cuts] was about 2003-04. Who's going to be on this team in 2003-04, both with the younger players and the veterans?

"The third piece was the job that the coaches did last year, taking that young squad and developing some of those young players, and then being able to augment it this year. We looked at it and said, '03 and '04 were what we were shooting for."

Take a moment to think about where the Ravens were 14 months ago, amid the depressing cap purge that most assumed would lay them low for at least two or three seasons.

At that point, Baltimore didn't know if running back Jamal Lewis would return to his 1,300-yard form after 2001's season-ending knee surgery. The Ravens weren't sure what they had in young players like tight end Todd Heap, linebacker Edgerton Hartwell, defensive end Adalius Thomas and cornerback Gary Baxter. And they hadn't yet acquired their 2002 rookie class, which included standouts safeties Ed Reed and Will Demps, defensive end Anthony Weaver and punter Dave Zastudil.

"None of those pieces were in place 14 months ago, and they are right now," said Newsome, who with this weekend's draft burnished his image as one of the league's most astute personnel men. "And we've been able to augment things over this offseason and with this draft."

Baltimore augmented things all right. In Suggs and Boller, it landed two of the top 10 players on its draft board, using the No. 10 pick on the draft's premier pass rusher and boldly trading away its first-round selection in 2004 to address the franchise's long-standing need at quarterback. Then, with their third-round pick, the Ravens drafted Georgia running back Musa Smith, a move designed to never again leave the team in the precarious position of not having a quality replacement for Lewis.

"I think we've done things fairly intelligently," Billick said. "We've rebuilt without drastically slipping back at any one point."

For the Ravens, with their history of good luck and good planning in the first round of the draft, Saturday's acquisitions only add to the team's growing reputation for being able to find players in bunches.

"I don't think I could have conceived a scenario in which we could get Terrell Suggs and Kyle Boller in the same draft," Newsome said. "I just couldn't conceive of that happening."

But it did, and Baltimore's efforts to return to playoff contention have been substantially furthered in the process, even if Boller spends most of this season watching and waiting for his turn behind fourth-year veteran Chris Redman. After all, the Ravens are looking at 2003-04 as Boller's time. Anything they get from him this season, other than a steady and patient pace of development, will be something of a bonus.

Don't be surprised if Boller is elevated to the starting job only when the Ravens are certain that he's ready to keep it for good. If he's in place for the final four or five games of 2003, as the team is building momentum for a serious playoff push in 2004, then all will have gone as planned. Until then, Boller probably will play the supportive and deferential backup to Redman, working hard to justify Baltimore's substantial investment in his future.

"I realize they took me in the first round and also gave up another first-rounder for me," Boller said. "I know what's expected of a first-round quarterback in this league. But it's warming to me to know the confidence they have in me to do handle this. Because that's a big deal they made."

On top of everything Baltimore has accomplished on the personnel front in the past year, there's this enticing caveat: Much of the ground the Ravens covered last season was without the services of their best player, Pro Bowl middle linebacker Ray Lewis, who missed all but five games with a shoulder injury.

Without Lewis, the Ravens -- somewhat fortuitously -- were forced to rely on and develop several of their promising young defenders. With him returning to the lineup with a vengeance, and the addition of Suggs' pass-rushing and play-making to the mix, Baltimore's defense is again a force to be reckoned with.

There are still question marks, of course. The Ravens' receiving corps remains young and largely unproven, and the combination of Redman and Boller must prove it can provide adequate to above-average quarterbacking. But what looked like a disaster scene in Baltimore just a scant 14 months ago is again a team on the rise.

Who would have thunk it? Not even Newsome. He admitted as much on Sunday.

"I guess you could say it's like climbing a mountain," said Newsome, of the Ravens' rebuilding. "You just start climbing."

As this weekend again reminded the rest of the NFL, the Ravens are on their way.

Don Banks covers pro football for SI.com.

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