NEWSWEEK: You’ve always been known as a motivator.
Brian Billick: I don’t like the word quite frankly because it intimates that I have some hidden ability to get something out of a player-to motivate him in an emotional way, almost as though it’s a trick. And I’ve never believed in that. That motivational stuff you throw out in the locker room before the game lasts about as long as it takes to run down to the kickoff, get your ass knocked off and come up looking through your ear hole. Then all the Knute Rockne stuff goes right out the window. But if we’re defining motivational as providing an environment that instructs or teaches your players how to intellectually, emotionally and physically deal with their circumstances and gives them confidence in dealing with those circumstances, then, yeah, I’m a motivator.
When you look at your leadership last year, any regrets? What do you hope to be better at someday?
I hope every year that I’m a hell of a lot better coach than I was the previous year. In looking back, it took a fundamental change in my philosophy to recognize the unique talents we have and what it would take to win. I very much believed, which I think is supported statistically and analytically, that in order to win a Super Bowl you had to have a certain offensive presence. If you look at the former champions over the last 10, 15 years, there was an offensive presence. So I constantly pushed that aspect because I thought without it “Well, great we can get to the playoffs. But if you can’t win a championship, then why bother?” It wasn’t until about midseason that I recognized a couple of things. That we truly did have one of the unique defenses in the history of the game. And that although there were some very good football teams out there, there was no dominant team that you looked at and said “Boy, there’s no way that we’re going to beat this team.” So I could see that a ball-control mentality could indeed win a championship. And fortunately I didn’t recognize that too late.
It will be even harder the second time around, won’t it?
Uh, different. Obviously most conventional thinking says-and justifiably so-that you can’t repeat. That the players have got the ring, they’re not as motivated, everybody starts getting greedy. Then there are things like the harder schedule [that comes automatically in the NFL after winning]. All those things are legitimate. But what offsets that is the experience we now have on this team. We have a veteran presence that very few teams have. We have been to the top of the mountain. We know what it takes to get there. I don’t have to educate the players or explain it to them on a daily basis like I did last year.
How do you figure out how to deal with a murder trial involving your star player….
One of the hardest things for me was that I had nothing, no reference point. No coach in the NFL has ever had to face a current player under indictment for two counts of murder. There’s no manual, no coach I could talk to and say “What did you do when this happened?” So I truly had to fall back on basic crisis-management principles. Had I not already spent some time trying to understand classic crisis-management principles-primarily from a business environment or a political environment-I don’t know that we would have been in a position to maybe handle the situation quite the way we did. And I think the way we dealt with it was pretty much well-received.
Your book stresses having an ethical framework in your operation. How do you deal with a Ray Lewis situation in an ethical framework?
It’s very difficult. It tests you in a way that I have never been tested before. From the minute Ray was indicted, there wasn’t a day that I didn’t have to deal with some issue revolving around it. You have to constantly fight the impulse to prejudge. Everybody wants to rush to judgment, to be able to declare the situation is this way or that way. As I watched the proceedings in the court trial, it became immediately apparent to me that this was not about right and wrong, this was not about guilt or innocence. It was a competition, one set of lawyers against another. And it was about who won that competition, which was a scary thing. But also it goes deeper than that. It goes to the fact that my players are made up individuals of multicultural background. Economic, social, racial. I grew up with a white middle-class background outside of suburban Los Angeles. I can’t begin to imagine the cultural values many of my players grew up with, whether it be in slums from Miami to South Chicago or in the farmland in mid-Iowa. You have to be very careful about not trying to lay your moral and ethical perspective on your players. For me to demand my players act in the way that I would want them to act is … First off, I wouldn’t be very successful. Secondly, that wouldn’t be morally or ethically correct. I can’t tell my players who to see, who not to see, whether they should have children out of wedlock or not. As long as they’re not violating the law, I don’t have the moral, ethical or legal right to call a player into my office and lecture him on those perspectives.
What are you bringing to training camp that you didn’t have last year?
The longer I’m in this business, it constantly amazes me how pivotal confidence is. You’re looking at athletes, supremely conditioned athletes, making a ton of money that walk the walk and talk the talk and that have a certain bravado. But it never ceases to amaze me how thin that veneer of confidence really is. And how quickly that can be shattered, even on the most confident of athletes. And so the confidence our guys [bring to camp with them]-not just in their own abilities, not in a cocky trash-talking way, but that they’ve been down this road before. They truly know what it takes and the price that they have to pay. Having been through those battles, that’s a tremendous advantage for us.
But so many teams fail to successfully exploit that advantage.
One of the things I have told the team after visiting with a number of coaches that have been in repeat positions is that it’s like a marriage. Don’t underestimate the need to constantly reestablish relationships. Don’t assume just because we’ve been able to keep this team primarily intact that the sense of family that we had is going to maintain itself. Don’t take it for granted. Just like in a marriage. If you take your marriage for granted, you’re going to have a problem. I’m constantly pushing my players to reconnect with those relationships.
What exactly is HBO doing in the Ravens camp?
HBO is running a six-week survival-reality TV series. They will have robotic cameras in the meeting. And they will have 24/7, unprecedented access to an NFL team during training camp. They will simply chronicle this true “Survivor,” with guys literally getting voted off the island, so to speak, when they get cut.
What’s in it for the Ravens? And what are the risks?
The real risk, obviously, is to expose yourself in a personal way that maybe is less flattering. That egos get involved, that players start to grandstand or that it affects preparation, focus. That they change their routine in a way that is detrimental to their preparation. But the upside? My first response quite honestly was, “What a hell of a teaching opportunity for me.” We can’t hide from being world champions. And this season is going to bring upon us a notoriety of focus that we’ve only been through during those couple weeks leading to the Super Bowl. Training camp now will give me a better way to judge how they handle that scrutiny. Also positive-wise, it will certainly raise the profile of the Baltimore Ravens. We’re in a small-market town, small-market media. So the value of the organization will be enhanced by this. And it’s a great way for our players to be known more nationally in a positive way. This is a great opportunity for Ray Lewis, for people to truly to see Ray Lewis in his environment. To see what kind of man he really is, as opposed to buying into the stereotypes of what may or may not have happened last year.
As opposed to last year, you open up as the consensus favorite.
From a strictly football standpoint, I don’t imagine you would find too many people that would say that today we’re not a substantially better football team. More balanced, more explosive and with more potential to win a Super Bowl than the team that won the Super Bowl. Now does that guarantee a championship? By no means.
You took a big gamble by not resigning Trent Dilfer and getting Elvis Grbac to take his place at quarterback.
I’m going to be criticized either way if anything less than a Super Bowl comes of it. If we don’t achieve that goal, they’re going to criticize me for having changed the chemistry of a team that won one. But if I had stayed status quo-and believe me it would have been infinitely easier to do just that-and that did not result in the Super Bowl, I would have been roundly criticized, too. “Well, how arrogant is he to think that that formula was going to work again? How could he think he was going to win without a more offensive presence?” We felt like we needed an increased offensive presence to do again what we did before, to win a championship.
Will changing quarterbacks change your fundamental approach?
Here’s what I hope happens: We don’t have to lead the league in offense to go back and win a Super Bowl. But if we can increase efficiency in the intermediate passing game that we think Elvis brings to us and have a little more explosiveness down the field, then we present a pretty formidable opponent. Then our defense doesn’t have to break the all-time scoring record again in order for us to go back to a Super Bowl.
There’s been so much talk, particularly in the NFL, about coaching burnout….
You know, you only hear talk about head coaches burning out. Never about assistant coaches. Why is that? ‘Cause assistant coaches can’t afford it. So that kind of puts it in perspective, as well. In any high-profile job, the key is to establish a workable routine for yourself. If you don’t regulate your priorities, then, yeah, this thing could gobble you up pretty quickly. You cannot sustain this on will alone.
Doesn’t something always have to give?
The job’s not going to suffer, you don’t ever have to worry about that with me. What usually suffers is your family. I’m constantly telling my family, “It’s not that you mean less to me, it’s that you’re more forgiving than the job.”
You went through a rather grueling season. Why not dial back and take a break? Why write a book?
Honestly, I did it primarily to augment my corporate speaking, which I really enjoy. I’ve been chronicling these things in my own life for a while. But now I was able to take tangible things that happened during the season and apply the principles to my team-like the Ray Lewis situation in terms of crisis management. The book really kind of wrote itself. Regardless of whether the book is successful or not, I gained a great deal from writing it.
The Super Bowl-winning season helps, doesn’t it?
Obviously the viability of my speaking becomes much more as a Super Bowl coach. And the fees have jumped up a level.
What is your fee now?
About 25 [thousand dollars] a pop.
And a year ago, before the championship season?
It was between six and seven.
Are you a better leader because you won the Super Bowl rather than lost it?
No. It is more profitable because I am a Super Bowl-winning coach. Certainly the principles are a little more verifiable. But the principles themselves do not change because of winning. I’m asked all the time “How has the Super Bowl changed your life, your perspective?” I guess the only real answer to that is when you stand on that podium and you hold that trophy, then it validates this stuff. That it is more than just theory, that it really matters. I’ve been at this 25 years, preaching teamwork, cooperation, leadership abilities, being value oriented, being prepared, all the things we talk about in the book. You hope they do make a difference. But until you’ve reached that pinnacle, you really don’t know. And now I’m one of the lucky ones that gets to stand up there and say, “Folks, this does make a difference.”
Your book seem to offer largely what I’d call common sense.
Absolutely. But I’ll steal a line from Steven R. Covey: What’s common sense isn’t always common practice.
How else can you judge your leadership except by the bottom line?
Championships are still a pretty good barometer. But if you let others set the barometers for your success, you are absolutely doomed for failure. Because it’s never enough. Never! That’s because at some point it’s just not going to be there. Those are some great coaches like [ex-Buffalo Bills coach] Marv Levy about whom some people would say, “But he never won the big game.” If I could have a career as distinguished as Marv Levy’s, I would think of myself as successful.
You must realize that if you coach another 10 years, you can’t possibly win the Super Bowl 10 more times.
A. Emotionally you have to believe that it can happen. Hell, I took a Utah State team into Nebraska when they were No. 1 in the nation and thought we could win. [Utah State lost the game badly.] How else do you prepare, how else do you go in and play that game? Now intellectually am I going to tell you that we’re capable of having nine more Super Bowl championships? Am I going to guarantee for you we’re going to win a Super Bowl this year? No, that would be foolhardy.
You’ve been described by some as arrogant.
Oh, arrogant, egotistical, eccentric. What people have to give me at least is that I’m consistently arrogant, egotistical and eccentric. What pisses me off is that they leave out greedy. Greed is good. It clarifies. It defines. Arrogant, well I don’t know that I want to trust too many leaders who wouldn’t be characterized like that in terms of being confident in their abilities and demanding a certain level of competency around them. Egotistical. “Ego” in the dictionary means nothing more than to distinguish yourself from others. I don’t necessarily see the downside of that. Eccentric, as simple as doing something unconventionally or out of the ordinary, like winning a Super Bowl in your second year as a head coach. But if those things lead me to be self-absorbed and self-centered, then I hope I’m not those things. But the only ones who can truly answer that are my family.
And you?
Well, I think when it’s all said and done, we all dream and it’s usually a selfish dream. When you reach that pinnacle, which for me was standing on the pedestal holding the Super Bowl [trophy], it’s usually about you. “Aren’t I a great coach? Aren’t I accomplished? Don’t you think I’m wonderful?” But I will tell you as someone who’s had the grace of God to be there, it’s a very humbling experience because you truly do realize just how many different people it takes with passion for and competence about the game for you to be standing there. You realize that it’s not about you. And that’s gratifying to reach that unselfish moment when you do recognize it’s about others.
We’ve talked a long time and the word “fun” hasn’t come up. Is all this fun?
Absolutely. I wish people could be me. The challenge, the interaction with the players, the constant dealing with the changing environment on a daily basis. It’s exhilarating.
