Posts tagged BrianBillick at FanHouse

It seems like a lot longer than two seasons since the Ravens ripped off 13 wins, won the AFC North, and earned a home playoff game. Gone are Brian Billick and Steve McNair, replaced by fresh faces -- both coaches and quarterbacks -- although Kyle Boller, like a rash, refuses to go away.

Except for last night. The sixth-year player is nursing a shoulder injury and was unable to fill in for starter Troy Smith, who was a late scratch because he ate some bad Chinese food*. Which meant that rookie first-rounder Joe Flacco, who, according to some people, is barely 10 pages into the playbook, got his first NFL start.

Surprisingly, it was a little rocky at times. Still, Flacco finished 18 of 37 for 152 yards and one touchdown, but head coach John Harbaugh was reserved in his post-game comments.

"Joe did OK in there without much preparation this week," coach John Harbaugh said. "He'll settle down as he plays more."

As the Baltimore Sun's Jamison Hensley writes, this was supposed to be the preseason game where Smith staked his claim to the starting quarterback job. Instead, events conspired against him and Flacco found himself under center when the game started.

Hensley's colleague, David Steele, still has plenty of questions about the Ravens' next QB, but places most of the blame on the 10 other guys on offense. All fair points, for sure, but I'm pretty sure this is somehow all Brian Billick's fault.

* Speculation on the Chinese food, but Smith was unable to play because of a tummy ache. Maybe he ate too many pre-game jelly beans.

I mentioned earlier that this looks like Troy Smith's team, even it if hasn't been made official yet. Still, despite the end of an era (a pretty depressing era, but an era nonetheless), a slew of coaching changes, and a bunch of new faces, it looks like the same-old, same-old for Baltimore's offense.

At least according to Mike Lombardi, former Raiders personnel dude-turned internet scribe.

The Ravens hired Cam Cameron to run their offense; he knew it would require a major rebuilding effort. Based on this summer, the job might be even harder than many thought. When the Ravens drafted Delaware quarterback Joe Flacco in the first round it was with an eye on the future.

No one expected him to come in and start right away, but then again, no one thought he would be so far behind. Flacco's progress has not been as quick as some hoped and this is hurting the progress of the offense.

Hardly surprising, I guess. I mean, the Ravens haven't played a regular season game since Brian Billick was fired and you're not going to solve the offense's myriad problems during one offseason. Cam Cameron is an obvious upgrade over Billick/Neuheisel/Cavanagh*, and Joe Flacco is coming from Delaware, a D-IAA school.

He's going to need time to get up to speed, and that he's "so far behind" right now isn't that big a deal. Of course, that's easy for me to say; I didn't trade up in the first round to draft him, and I don't have a track record of taking future NFL busts.

It could be worse, though: Billick could still be the coach and Boller the starter.

* to be fair, Neuheisel was OC in name only

Kyle Boller still has his supporters, but, frankly, most Ravens fans gave up on Brian Billick's pet project long ago. Now, the future is Troy Smith, for the time being, at least, and Boller will assume the position.

I think most people support the decision to go with Smith -- even if Harbaugh hasn't "officially" made the announcement -- primarily because everybody knows what Boller can do. Seems like as good a time as any to give Smith the same opportunity. And according to the Carroll County Times' Aaron Wilson, Boller won't even see the field against the Rams tonight.

The plan is for Smith to start with first-round pick Joe Flacco on mop-up duty.

"The main thing a quarterback does is he moves the ball and puts points on the board," coach John Harbaugh said. "That's what we would like to see. There's a lot that goes into that.

"Guys can make plays, or guys won't make plays around him. Of course, you would love to see that part of it as well as running the offense well, which he's done a good job at to this point."

Hmm. This doesn't sound like a Boller-led offense. To be fair, it doesn't sound like a Billick-trained offense, either. Ultimately, Smith is just a placeholder for Flacco, unless, of course, he turns out to be Derek Anderson. You know, the kid the Ravens drafted and then released two years ago before going on to a Pro Bowl season with the Browns last season.

It probably means nothing in the long run, but come Thursday, Kyle Boller will be the Ravens' starting quarterback. Sure, it's a preseason game -- the first of the year -- and, yeah, a lot can happen between now and January, and maybe Boller earned the nod because he's currently the most experienced QB on the roster.

Fine, but a solid showing can't hurt his chances at winning the full-time job, at least in the near term.

Players have noticed Boller taking more of a leadership role this season. There have been instances this training camp where Boller has huddled his teammates together, which rarely occurred before this year.

Another change is Boller's increased sense of urgency. "How I play in these games is going to determine who is going to be the starter," said Boller, who is in the last season of his contract. "Every one of these games is extremely important. You get very limited reps. So, you got to take advantage of every rep that you have and every throw you have. You got to do everything you can to win that job."

Training camps are underway, the NFL season is right around the corner, and to get you ready for 2008, FanHouse previews all 32 teams, "heat index" style. We'll rate each club in 10 categories on a scale of 1 to 10, high score wins.

Quarterback: The position has been an issue in Baltimore since, well, the club moved from Cleveland. Brian Billick turned out not to be such a smart guy, after all, which explains Tony Banks, Elvis Grbac, Chris Redman, and Kyle Boller. Second-year player Troy Smith showed promise during a brief stints last season, but Joe Flacco is the team's newest franchise quarterback. Now it's just a matter of getting him up to speed on running the offense. Heat Index: 4

Running backs: Letting Jamal Lewis walk after the 2006 season was a no-brainer, even if he had a resurgence of sorts with the Browns. Willis McGahee is more than capable when healthy, and rookie second-rounder Ray Rice should see plenty of action. Heat Index: 7

In yesterday's Baltimore Sun, Jamison Hensley asks a question most fans have been contemplating since the Ravens traded back into the first round of the NFL draft to take quarterback Joe Flacco: can the former Delaware star win the starting gig in Baltimore?

Heading into the team's first official training camp practice, Kyle Boller was the odds-on favorite to get the first-team snaps, but that had more to do with seniority than what the depth chart might look like come September. And while Boller seems like the safe choice to win the job, Troy Smith, last year's fifth-round pick, has been impressive during off-season workouts.

Whatever happens, first-year head coach John Harbaugh ain't talking:

"We've said this from Day One: Our plan is to go with the best quarterback at that time," Harbaugh said. "Our goal is for those guys to make that decision based on the way they play."

Hardly earth-shattering stuff, there, but you can't really argue with the philosophy given that Boller hasn't established himself as anything other than an NFL backup, and Smith and Flacco are unproven but have loads of potential. Ultimately, the job's Flacco's, but unlike Boller, the Ravens should bring him along slowly. Having Brian Billick working for Fox Sports should go a long way in making sure that doesn't happen.

I always had a sneaking suspicion that Greg Olsen hated Rex Grossman's guts. Now I have confirmation:



Yeah, maybe I overstated* it a bit there in the lead; Olsen admits that the Bears would never land Brett Favre because of their NFC North rivalry with the Packers, and the second-year tight end remarks that "I think we're happy with the two guys we got."

Of course, he said it with all the conviction of Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti pledging his support for Brian Billick -- right before firing him -- but whatever. Olsen continued: "I think we have a good quarterback competition right now with Kyle and Rex, and I think the team is real comfortable with one of those two guys being the guy for us for the future."

He then added, "But, yeah, who the hell wouldn't want Favre? I mean, we could have Kyle and Rex on the field at the same time and wouldn't be as successful with Favre under center."

Okay, I definitely made up that last sentence, and to Olsen's credit, he handled the Favre-to-Chicago talk about as well as you could expect. And as he explained to First Take's Jay Crawford, given the history between these two organizations, it's ain't happening so it's not even worth discussing.

Ideally, Favre would go to an organization that was a quarterback away from making a deep postseason run. The Bears, as currently constituted, don't qualify, but there is that other NFC North team...

* overstated = lied

In his weekly "Snap Judgments" column, SI.com's Don Banks has an interesting nugget on the Ravens and their ever-elusive search to find a competent starting quarterback:

If the indications coming out of Baltimore are correct and former Heisman winner Troy Smith does win the Ravens starting quarterback job this preseason, new offensive coordinator Cam Cameron is likely to be in line for much of the credit.

Not sure what "indications" Banks has picked up on, but this is the second time in a week that Cameron, fresh off a 1-15 run as the Dolphins head coach, has garnered praise from the media. In a story about rookie Joe Flacco, the Baltimore Sun's Jamison Hensley wrote of Cameron's willingness to fit the offense around a quarterback's strengths. Novel idea, that.

Apparently, the same holds for Smith, according to Banks' source:

"Cam's very good at figuring out a player's strength, figuring out what he does well, and then tailoring the offense around those skills,'' the Ravens source said. "He's got Troy moving around and doing a lot of the same things he had success doing at Ohio State.''

So after years of not having a legit starting quarterback, the Ravens suddenly have two, neither of whom are named Kyle Boller. And to think, all it took to turn Baltimore into a QB factory was to get rid of Brian Billick. Shocking.

I understand that there are statues with more mobility than Byron Lefwich, and Daisuke Matsuzaka has a more compact windup, but looking over some of the names of quarterbacks currently populating NFL rosters, you have to wonder how he has yet to find work. (Actually, I know the answer, but just for the sake of discussion...)

But here we are, almost to July, and Leftwich is still unemployed. As I mentioned earlier this month, a lot of teams around the league are concerned about Leftwich's injury history; sure, David Carr or Joey Harrington or Kyle Boller might all be less skilled players, but they can take a hit. A bunch of them, in fact.

Good news, though: Leftwich has an ally in Brian Billick:

Billick, now a game analyst for Fox, liked Leftwich enough in college that the Ravens tried to work a deal with the Minnesota Vikings to trade up in the draft. But in an infamous draft day snafu, the Vikings took too much time - some say the Jaguars intentionally stalled them - and lost the pick, allowing Jacksonville to take Leftwich...

"He can throw it," Billick said of Leftwich. "There's never been a question about his ability. He's got one of those unique arms. He proved to be fairly accurate..."

So, in a sense, we have Mike Tice to thank for ruining Leftwich's career. Somehow that makes perfect sense.

via PFT

There are very few cases of NFL quarterbacks having much success as rookies. Ben Roethlisberger is the obvious exception, and Vince Young played surprisingly well after replacing the irreplaceable Kerry Collins. More often, though, these players struggle with the speed of the games, the voluminous playbooks and the defensive schemes devised to confuse them.

Kyle Boller is the perfect example, which explains why, after five less-than-spectacular seasons, the Ravens have drafted the next franchise quarterback, Joe Flacco. But unlike Boller, who, in retrospect, never had a chance with Brian Billick serving as his career counselor, Flacco will be mentored by Cam Cameron.

Cameron was rightfully canned after a forgettable 2007 season in Miami; although he may not be head-coaching material, he's a proven offensive coordinator, and has a solid track record in developing quarterbacks.

As Flacco continues his crash course in Baltimore's offense, the chance that he finds his way onto the field this season increases.