Was Brian Billick a Horrible Head Coach?

[RavensTillIDie]

29 minutes ago, SalvadorsDeli said:

Billick was not a horrible coach. He wasn't the X's and O's genius people thought he might be because he happened to be the OC when Randy Moss and Cris Carter destroyed the league in 1998. But he was an outstanding leader of men who comes second only to Ray Lewis in terms of his responsibility for creating the tough/blue collar culture within the Ravens organization that has helped keep us successful for the past 2 decades. And Ray Lewis the leader and personality probably doesn't become the Ray Lewis we came to know under a different head coach - Billick embraced him in a way a lot of coaches wouldn't have, particularly given the off-the-field issues. Not to mention, as bad as he was at building the offense, even as an 'offensive' head coach he deserves credit for the incredible staffing job he did on defense - he didn't miss on DC's, going Marvin Lewis --> Mike Nolan --> Rex Ryan, on top of also having guys like Mike Smith, Vic Fangio, Mike Pettine, Jack Del Rio, and Mike Singletary (who was an amazing fit working with Ray even if he sucked everywhere else) on staff over the years. A big part of being a head coach is making the right staffing choices and he batted near 1.000 on defense. 

He had an intense and abrasive style that probably makes for a shorter shelf life as a coach so its actually pretty amazing he made it almost a decade with us, but it was clearly time to part ways at the end of 2007. That said, Billick could and probably should have gotten another shot at coaching after that, to answer @ET80's point. I think he was somewhat a victim of circumstance in that at the time he got fired, every team in the league was looking at Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh (including us) and scouting assistants and coordinators trying to find their own young hotshot head coach  - hence why guys like Harbaugh, Jason Garrett, Josh McDaniels, Jim Zorn, and Raheem Morris all got coaching jobs in that period. Those things are cyclical so eventually things did turn back towards seeking older/established voices afterwards. My understanding though is that once teams did start reaching out to Billick he decided he just decided he didn't want to go back to the grind and was more than happy just hanging out on the Eastern Shore on his boat doing some broadcasting and basically coasting into a pretty comfortable retirement. Can't really fault him for that choice, he already had his Super Bowl ring so why not just enjoy life instead?

His biggest failure in Baltimore was just never identifying and developing a quarterback. The one time we tried drafting one during his time, it was Kyle Boller who was doomed from the start. There's an alternate universe out there where instead of trading back into the 1st round to take Boller in 03, we wait till 2004 to draft a QB and take Ben Roethlisberger instead - who I absolutely believe the organization and Billick in particular would have fallen in love with. Think I've said this before but Ben would have been the archetypal Ravens and Billick QB - huge, tough, strong armed dude and complete scumbag. If that somehow does happen, even with Billick not being a brilliant offensive mind, Big Ben + Jamal Lewis + our defense would have resulted in at least one championship between 04 and 08 IMO and Billick's career trajectory and legacy ends up completely different. 

Spot on. However, your hypothetical scenario of us landing Big Ben made me realize, if we never trade up for Boller, we probably don't end up in a position to draft any of the top QBs in 2004. Thus, we hold off on drafting a QB for one more year as we let Anthony Wright be our stop gap QB for one more season. Then in 2005 we finish in a similar spot as we actually did and without feeling like we need to draft a WR (Mark Clayton) for our 1st round QB, we instead find the heir apparent to Wright in Aaron Rodgers. Oof, hurts to think about.

[SalvadorsDeli]

13 minutes ago, RavensTillIDie said:

Spot on. However, your hypothetical scenario of us landing Big Ben made me realize, if we never trade up for Boller, we probably don't end up in a position to draft any of the top QBs in 2004. Thus, we hold off on drafting a QB for one more year as we let Anthony Wright be our stop gap QB for one more season. Then in 2005 we finish in a similar spot as we actually did and without feeling like we need to draft a WR (Mark Clayton) for our 1st round QB, we instead find the heir apparent to Wright in Aaron Rodgers. Oof, hurts to think about.

Lol. That's another definite possibility and hard to think about. Taking it one step further, even in the universe we DO live in, considering how consistently terrible Kyle Boller looked throughout his brief career and given the fact that we ended up pulling the plug on him only one year later after 9 more starts, you gotta wonder what would have happened if Ozzie had just had the stones to call it quits on Boller and take Rodgers in 2005 regardless. One can wonder whether that one awesome game against the Giants in 04 towards the end of the year where Boller and Clarence Moore looked like Montana to Rice completely changed the trajectory of the organization for the worse. But then - would our horrible experience with Boller have then prevented us for going for Rodgers even if we were looking for a QB given he was another Jeff Tedford and Cal QB?

In regards to the Big Ben world - because I live for these sorts of dumb hypotheticals - here's how and why I think it would have actually happened in a world without Boller. First, we probably end up at 10-6 with Anthony Wright (or Chris Redman) starting the whole year. Wright had that amazing comeback vs. Seattle and was definitely better than Boller, but he was still a mediocre QB in most of his starts that year and we operationally would have been in the same situation of having Jamal Lewis and the defense carrying us. So we end up with the 21st pick except we actually own it instead of it being in New England's hands, and we're hot for a QB. As I said before, I fully believe this organization would have fallen in LOVE with Big Ben. Billick would have thought he was his long-lost son. We know that the organization was willing to give up a lot to get their QB - considering what we unfortunately did to get Boller in 03, plus how close we came to trading virtually all of our picks in 08 to take Matt Ryan - so would it have been a huge leap for us to trade up from 21 to the 6-10 range in front of the 11th spot where Pittsburgh took Big Ben? I don't think so. This is dumb and completely counterfactual but it's the sliding doors moment I think about from time to time because it feels demonstrably true to me that taking Boller in 03 set us back by a half decade and almost certainly cost Ray and Ed multiple rings. 

[diamondbull424]

Yeah I think about the Rodgers hypothetical myself from time to time. That because we took Boller it made it impossible to take Rodgers. Same school, similar athleticism, similar system. Even had we pulled the plug on Boller, it would’ve been a near impossible ask of the organization. At that point in time that’s potentially a fireable offense if it doesn’t work out.

Maybe if we would have been able to draft Byron Leftwich at QB and he looked as bad as Boller, maybe? If he fails, it puts us in position to acquire Aaron Rodgers as he’s falling in the draft because we wouldn’t have drafted a Cal QB. 

Though the Big Ben scenario proposed while one I hadn’t considered is definitely very intriguing.

Could’ve still drafted Lamar and just had him learning behind Ben the last 2 years. 😂

[DreamKid]

Easy to picture fatso actually getting the reputation he deserves if he'd been a Raven. 'Ol' Bathroom Fiend Ben' is lucky to be covered by a pro Steelers biased NFL media.