#4: John's Battle in Baltimore

After the high of being selected as the team’s new head coach, John embarks on a battle for the team and the buy-in of his players.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Last time on Man of the Crowd, we made the
very difficult decision to fire Brian this morning. I could
be three coaches past Brian Billick nine years from now,
trying to solve this puzzle. There is a Hall of
Fame coach out there and it's our job to find him.
And he goes and I will be a great head coach.
I'm going to be a great head coach for somebody,

(00:21):
but with the people in this room, I can be
a great head coach here. And Steve says something like, well,
we believe you can. You can see John's eyes kind
of wander around the room and they looked over at
Steve and he goes, are you offering me the job?
And what I saw in the eyes of the guys
in the first meeting was just no, we're not buying
into this. Brian said. The bar pretty high, so John

(00:43):
better be successful. From the Baltimore Ravens, This is Man
of the Crowd, a multi episode podcast that pulls back
the curtain on Ravens figures personal lives. This season the
Horrorbaugh family. I'm Sarah Ellison. We're going to turn this

(01:10):
day with an enthusiasm. Don't bear it. Car because you
are a fighter, and that's what you are going to
be today tomorrow. You're a horthor fight. If I got
to choose the theme song for John Harbaugh's first few

(01:31):
years in Baltimore, oh, I'd have the perfect one. It'd
be Run This Town by jay Z featuring Rihanna and
Kanye West. And that's because some of the lyrics and
the chorus precisely encapsulate how Harbaugh felt after he was
hired as the head coach. I think you know the lyrics, right.
The only thing that's on my mind is who's going

(01:53):
to run this town tonight? But in place of the
word town, substitute the word team. Because it was the
obscure Warner special teams coordinator versus a group of strong
willed veterans fighting for the control of the team, and
Harball wasn't going to lose that battle, at least not
without an enthusiastic fight. Anyway. Remember this from last week.

(02:18):
It's lar Darius Webb telling you about his first and
awkward team meeting as a rookie. In two thousand and nine,
Harbaugh and potential Hall of Fame safety Ed Read butted
heads in front of the entire team here he is
with my colleagues Ryan Mink and Garrett Downing Harps. Harves
like he's like sitting down like this, like leaning back

(02:39):
in his chair in the front, and then Harves like
saying talking and he's like, h sit up. It was
like he set up you know, he set up cars.
When I talking, he was like it you need to
sit up or you can leave. Ed got up and
just walked out into Oh. He just like, this is

(03:09):
my first time I'm getting said like he gone, like, man,
this is what NF fail is about. He didn't sit up,
he said. I guess he did said up enough. He

(03:30):
didn't sit up enough. And then that was around Harps
his first year. Second. Yeah, he just he didn't just
butt him when Harps first got him. Man, oh he
was the whoom man. He was tough on us, you know,
like you know, and I can't I can't. I don't
know if I can blame it on because he had

(03:52):
we had nothing but veterans here. You know. The whole
defense was kind of veterans. So he had to like
get to be strong. This is my team, you know,
a new coach. I don't care if y'all older guys
this is my team, you know, to kind of because
he had to be. We had Jared Johnson, we had
them all, so he had to kind of be like that.

(04:15):
I guess throughout my eight years he was just like tough,
way tough, tough, tough. I'm wondering if you picked up
on the same thing I did from Webb's story. I mean,
other than the obvious of how tough Harball was on
his players, but did you notice that Webb started to
empathize with his head coach, and by putting himself in
harbaugh shoes, he actually hit the nail on the head.

(04:38):
For why Harbaugh came in so tough, it's because he
wanted to quickly grab the reins of the team before
all the influential veterans did. When we followed Harbor up
to a coach's clinic with his dad and brother in
ann Arbor, Michigan last year, he literally said he thought
there was a chance he could be run out. When
I first got the job in Baltimore was a big

(05:00):
shock anyway, so nobody's thought it was going to happen.
You know, there's one guy believed to meet Dad always
talks about that you have to have somebody believe in you,
and the owner did, and I figured, you know what,
I'm probably gonna get run out of here anyway, So
I'm gonna make sure I do what I believe and
do it the way I believe and build a kind
of football team I believe in. And that's irregardless of
of why other people might think. And you know you're
going there and you respect people, you treat people right.
We had Ray Lewis and Ed Reid, We had iconic

(05:22):
type of personalities, Rex Ryan, you know, we had a
lot of personalities, and you respect the fact. You respect that.
But those guys weren't going to run the Ravens. The
head coach was gonna be in charge, so to speak.
And you're the one that believes in what you believe,
and you're the one that's going to have the record
next to your name, and you've got to you gotta
do it the way you believe that is to do
it right. And I figured, it's it's uh, I'm not
going to keep the job. I'm going to do the job.

(05:43):
Let's be real here. If losses were to pile up,
who do you think would be blamed? Obviously the head coach,
you think anybody would give him a pass if he said, Oh,
but wait, guys, it's not my fault. We're not even
doing things the way I would like to. It's the
players who are running things. Uh No. Even when criticism
is warranted, head coaches often get an unfair portion of

(06:05):
the blame. Tomorrow is never promised, especially for a first
time head coach with no background of success to fall
back on. Harbaugh was keenly aware of that. Remember, his
dad had coached for more than forty years and the
family moved seventeen times. This could have been Harbaugh's only
shot at living his coaching dream, and Senior vice president

(06:27):
of public Relations Kevin Byrne explained how that may have
affected his approach when he arrived. I think at the
beginning he felt that he had to grab as much
as he could because he's the head coach, and he's
the one who's most vulnerable. And I think coming from
a coaching family, there's a certain distrust because he's had

(06:47):
to move. He's seen it with his own dad. He's
seen it with his dad. He was at different schools.
He has seen his sister go to different schools, and
it's hard to do that. As a family. It's hard
for the kids, it's hard for the mob if you're
following the husband who has a job that has transfers
or firings. So I think what John is better at
is that at the beginning he felt, I gotta this

(07:10):
is my job and I've got to get my second contract,
you know, and he believes in himself, and now he
believes that, well, all these people can really help me,
And so I think he's more patient with Wait a minute,
they're pretty good at this. Let me let me hear
this out. Tell me why you know I should be
thinking this way or why we can do this, because

(07:32):
my impulse is get him out. Yeah, you know, and
that comes with a little job security too, because it's
like I remember him saying, if I'm gonna get fired,
I'm gonna get fired in it my way exactly. With
so much on the line, it's easy to see why
hardball came in tough. Plus we already know how the
hardballs approach conflict right first, they're not afraid of it,
and then they attack it enthusiastically. They try to separate

(07:54):
the issue from the person, but they will relentlessly fight
for that higher purpose. And John felt like this was
a worthy cause, you know, because it was a fight
and I couldn't back down, and it felt more like
a fight than it did anything else for you know,
at times. I mean there were great moments too, sure, yeah,
because because really it was there was really a real, real,

(08:16):
real fight for the kind of control of the team,
so to speak. You know, and uh, and I wish
I wasn't backing down. I mean there's a certain way
the team, the team was going to be what we
were all about, and that meant certain things were going
to be done certain ways. Well, a fight was exactly
what outside linebacker Jared Johnson saw when Hardball came to Baltimore.

(08:37):
I talked to Jared to get a player's perspective on
this drawn out, on again, off again five year battle.
And as a quick side note, JJ, or Double Jay
as he's affectionately called, he was kind enough to talk
to me while he was at home with his family,
so you'll hear his cute kiddos of the background from
time to time. I think when john came in the building,
he was expecting a fight. I think he was expecting,

(09:02):
you know, defiance and expecting disobedient type guys. And I
think we did have a lot of strong willed players.
We did have a lot of hard headed players. Read
a lot of players were setting away. But you didn't
have a lot of bad guys. You didn't have a
lot of disrespectful guys. And I think in a lot
of ways, John was bowed up and you know, chin up,

(09:25):
ready for a fight, and we really weren't. I think
we were more accepting of him than he likes to think.
I think that he thought he had to win us
over and win in reality, he already want us over.
You know, we respected him from day one, even though
we went through some hard times. You know, we always

(09:46):
respected him. I always appreciated what he was bringing to
the table on the type of guy he was. What
was so difficult about that transition, Well, um, I don't
you know, in a lot of ways, we were two
different teams. We were an offense in the defense, and
a lot of us didn't get along. One of John's

(10:07):
big things when he came in is he wanted a
complete team. He wanted a team not just built around
the defense, but built around everybody. So one of the
things he did to combat that was to challenge the
defense and challenge the defensive leaders. A lot of times

(10:27):
he would side with the offense. You know, he was
trying to motivate them, and in hindsight see what he
was trying to do and what essentially he did. Do
you know he built a complete team in their last
Super Bowl they wanted twenty and twelve they did with
a great quarterback and a complete offense and frankly, the

(10:48):
defense was not that great that year standards right exactly,
and he accomplished his goal. But there's early year years
were you know, they were they were good a lot
of time, and they were rocky a lot of times
because he was he was trying to not beat us down,

(11:09):
but he was trying to get the offense. Uh, he
was trying to to build a complete team, and so
he was trying to motivate them, trying to give them
confident and trying to get better players on that side
of the ball, which essentially he did. Why do you
think he came in that way where he was expecting
a fight, Well, I think we had we had the
prisona of being that that those type of players, yeah,

(11:33):
kind of bullies, you know, brass. You know a lot
of guys didn't show up for the offseason program. He
didn't like that. He wanted a lot of guys. He
wanted guys around, which is understandable. And the other thing.
John's a tough dude. John's a no nonsense He's not
going back down from anybody. He doesn't care who you are.
He wants what he expects out of his players. You

(11:54):
know in his early years that he just had a
perception of us and just way in some degree with
Wright in a lot of ways. I don't think it
was real accurate. It's nine years later, so things could
have changed. But in talking to Harbaugh, I honestly didn't
pick up on the resentment that JJ is referring to.
In fact, to me, it only seems natural for the

(12:16):
players to want Ryan to get the job over Harbaugh.
That's because some of the players had a ten year
history with Ryan and most of them had never even
heard of Harbaugh. To me, it'd be strange if they
didn't want Ryan to get it. Plus, Harball has hired
several former head coaches to be his assistance on his
staff multiple times over the years. That includes Gary Kubiak,

(12:37):
Mark Tressman, Marty morning Wig, Cam Cameron, Jim Caldwell and more.
He's never shown a history of feeling threatened by another
qualified person on his staff, whether they're well liked by
the players or not. It says a lot about both
Harbaugh and Ryan for Ryan to stay on the staff
for another year. Well, you know, when the coaching Kirch
was going on, you know, absolutely Rex was our guy.

(13:00):
You know, we were very well to him, as he
was very loyal to us, and we wanted him to
get the job. In hindsight, the decision that Steve and
Ozzy made. You know, at the time, I didn't understand
why they didn't go with Rex, because everybody loved Rex
Rich was a great coach. But at hindsight, I see
why they picked a guy like John over a coach

(13:23):
like Rex. They didn't want just a defensive coach, you know,
And I think Rex has done a great job Jets
doing a good job at Buffalo, but I don't think
he would have done as good a job as as
John has done, you know, changing that organization from not
just a defensive team, but to a to a complete team.

(13:45):
You know, I know, I'm sure that John had some
maybe some resentment about us put one Rex to be
a head coach. But you know, at the end of
the day, the Ravens made the right choice, and John
has done a phenomenal job as a first time and
I mean he's been phenomenal. Ryan actually went on to
be the head coach for the New York Jets and

(14:07):
the Buffalo Bills. So both swallowed any potential pride they
may have had by working together in Baltimore, and they
both handled it with class and professionalism. Okay, So while
there didn't seem to be any real resentment, Ryan's presence
did have a tangible effect on the culture that Harbo
was trying to change, and that's not anybody's fault. It

(14:29):
was just part of the challenging transition process. So the
easy thing would have been would have been to move
on from Rex. But you know, Rex and I were friends.
I knew Rex, you know, pretty well from being with
him before, and I knew how you know, how much
how talented he was and all that. But and it
was great that we did that because what we did
was we transitioned the defensive structure and system. We transitioned

(14:49):
it across the coaching change is good and remnants of
that are still in place today. You know that's evolved
tremendously also, but that's still the foundation of us. So
we were able to kind of have continuity from the
night ninety six through to two thousand and seventeen. Now
that continues and try to make it a positive. But
the challenge was that the guys saw the guys having

(15:10):
Rex still there. The guys had a great deal of
loyalty toward Rex, and Rex was the first guy to
be basically saying, Hey, I'm with John, I believe in John.
This is the way we're going to do it. We
see things the same way. We're in this together. But
the guys by giving, you know, their their loyalty or
their allegiance or their their buy into this idea of
moving that Steve wanted to transform the team into was

(15:32):
almost like not being loyal to Rex anymore or what
had taken place in the past, especially for the defensive guys.
I'm just wondering, do you think the Rex Ryan factor
played in at all? Definitely, that's Ravens call umnist John Eisenberg,
there's no doubt. I mean, those defensive guys years later
still talk about Rex Ryan. You know he was And

(15:52):
it's nothing against any of the coordinators that have come
along since, some of whom you know, are very popular,
you know. But Rex didn't get the up for a
number of reasons, which were well, you know, I think
Rex just wasn't at that certainly at that point in
his career, and you could argue still today, you know,
just not as polished, yeah, you know, and I think
Steve Bishotti was looking for someone The Ravens are Every

(16:16):
franchise has sort of an emo. The Ravens I think
are pretty you know, successfully corporate in a corporate style.
You know, it's like, you know, they're gonna behave for
the most part. You know, it's not the rowdy Raiders,
and you know it's not you know, it's you know,
the Baltimore Ravens have been very buttoned down, very successful.
So they want someone in that style and Rex that

(16:38):
wasn't Rex, right, you know, Rex was going to stay crazy.
All the stuff that he did do said crazy stuff,
and you know, was just it was just kind of nuts.
And I don't think that that's what Steve wanted, as
Harbaugh said. While Ryan's presence made the old culture more
challenging to move on from, Ryan was often the first
person to jump on board so that he could be
an example to the player. And that became evident when

(17:02):
Harbaugh got into it with JJ and the defense the
very first spring. You know, we have we have a
we have a kind of a sort of not a scrimmage,
but we're kind of going offense against defense, and a
drill on the defense is just just marauding against the offense.
And Cam, you know, Cam was a lot of the
big thing that Cam did so well was Cam. Cam
was strong and tough and he didn't back down to

(17:23):
the you know, the big brother, little brother mentality that
the defense would even talk about in camp. Says, we're
not accepting this. Harba is referring to Cam Cameron, the
Ravens offensive coordinator at the time. So they were rising
up and they were they were kind of showing their
their their their spine, and they're met a little bit.
And the defense didn't really like it, and they were
going back and forth and was getting really ugly at practice.

(17:43):
So I just went over and I told him, I said, yes,
that's enough. So we're a team. And that outsideline kind
of unleashed on me. You know, we've been doing this
a long time around here. And we've been great for
a long time. And it was Jared Johnson who said it,
and I said, really, you've been great. I said, great
is twenty fourth of the league. We were six. You
were six in the yard, twenty fourth in points. That's
what counts. No count yards for wins and losses. So

(18:06):
Jared steps out of there and kind of like challenges me, like,
you know, like like you got a problem. And I
look at him and I kind of like and I
walked to I walked to him. We're about five feet apart.
You know, he's two hundred and seventy five pounds. I'm
I'm about a buck ninety five, you know. And I'm
looking at him and he's and he's kind of, you know,
looking at Michael. You want to go? You want to
go right now? And and my thought in my mind

(18:28):
was when I said go, was like go off the
practice field right and talk. Yeah, yeah, go go get
out of here. Do you want to leave? Oh? Yeah?
His thing. He looked at me like are you crazy?
And he told me later we laughed, goes, he goes.
I thought, you met go like drop the gloves and
go right now. And I'm like, this guy crazy you
gotta fight me right out here in front of the
whole team, you know, and uh, you know, and we

(18:50):
laughed a while at Rex. You know, afterwards was just
a mess. He was just just straw. He was beside himself,
you know, and and I had to go to his
office and he's like, you know, this is you know,
was not what's supposed to be. And I didn't mean
for that to be like that. And you've got it
all wrong and you're missing you know you're not. And
I said, no, I don't have it wrong. I said,
I have it right. You know, we're in this together.
We're not fighting, we're not coming. It's not against between us. Yeah,

(19:12):
this is this is against this, this this thing that
we got to transform and change here. And we had
a great talk and then we said, well's let's walk
down to the cafeteria. They're all down there together and
all wondering and they're all waiting. And we walked down
in that cafeteria together and we were laughing and joking
and you know, punching each other kind I'm just having
just being like we always were, you know, and having
a good time. And you could just hear the you

(19:32):
could just hear the whole the tension just break up
and the whole team at that moment, you know, and
I thought, Okay, we're on our way. We're gonna be okay.
In addition to building up the offense, Harball wanted to
change some of the locker room dynamics at the Ravens.
JJ told me that Billick was much more hands off
when it came to things like player interactions in their

(19:52):
dress code, and then linebacker ray Lewis also told me
that the players police themselves in the locker room when
Billick was in charge. He noted how this was a
major departure from what Harball was used to or how
he wanted to run things going forward. Yeah, I remember
when he first got there. Um, you know, we had
a veteran corps and it was it was it was

(20:15):
a great learning curve for each other. You know, him
coming from you know, going to the next level and
then him coming to us, And I think what the
start has happened earlier was we started to gain a
lot of conversation with each other to really start to
understand each other. Because I think him coming from a
team that was you know, predominantly ran by the players,

(20:36):
it was really it was different. It was really different.
Allowing the players to run and police the locker room
on their own without the head coach's influence definitely was
not how Hardball saw things going, especially not after the
owner hired him to improve the culture of the team
and said things had gotten to a bad place. Remember
Bushatti saying this to Harbaugh, and that was a that

(20:57):
was a really bad vibe. And I told him from
day one that will be your biggest challenge. It's not
an indictment on Head or Ray or John feeling his way.
It's literally the passing of the torch and them having

(21:18):
to take no for an answer. Let's say no, we're
not going to view it through this prison anymore. So
Harbaugh was going to have an influence in policing the
locker room, and it started with discontinuing the special treatment
that Jared Johnson said the more productive veterans received under

(21:39):
the old regime, Like I know, I know that. I
mean John told the story of this is with Ray
and Suggs that he boarded up their lockers when they
first had two and they'd had this little game where
Suggs would tears the boards down and John would have
it put back up. And I think there's a story
where John wanted to stop doing Ray Lewis's dance coming
out of the tunnel, right, Was that true? I had

(22:00):
heard that. I had heard that. I don't know if
that's true or not. Yeah, everything was senator around the team.
He didn't want anybody to be more special than the other.
And that was one thing that was different from Rex.
If you were wanting Rex as guys, if you were
an established member of the team, if you were you know,
if you were a playmaker and you did things right.
Rex did not care about stuff like that. We neither

(22:20):
did billing that stuff like that was allowed. You know,
TVs in the locker room, Terrell having two or three
lockers or whatever he had, you know, Ray doing his dance.
You know, guys showing up whenever they wanted in the offseason.
As long as you showed up from performed, they didn't
care about that. John wanted to complete package. He wanted
you to do things the right way. He didn't work

(22:43):
that stuff giving players special treatment because they performed well.
That did not jive with Harba's deeply ingrained principle of
the team, the team, the team, and of course the
Ravens veterans already knew that football was the ultimate team sport.
I mean, you don't make it this far as an
NFL player and not understand that concept. So it's not

(23:04):
like they flat out disagreed or we're an open rebellion,
but the definition of a team player can mean different
things to different people, and Harba's vision for it was
very detailed, and it manifests itself in ways that seems
small and insignificant to some of the veterans. Ravens Senior
vice president of public Relations Kevin Byrne explained that there's

(23:24):
a delicate balance between letting an individual shine but not
if it's separated himself from the team. Well, John has
a way, you know, John wants this is what we're
going to do, and a big part of that is
we are going to work hard and we are not
that Brian didn't work the team hard, but in simple things,

(23:48):
simple things. I remember this, John says to me one day,
you know a practice players are going to tuck in
their jerseys. And I kind of joked and I said, really,
I said, that's that's a big He goes, it's a
very big deal. He looked at me seriously like I
would question that, And so I go, Okay, what happens
if Terrell Suggs doesn't want to tuck in its jersey?

(24:10):
And he goes, I'm still in charge of playing time,
you know. So he made rules that some veterans are going,
why are we doing that? But it all went back
to his concept of teen teen team. You don't separate
yourself from the team when you are doing team activities.
So John has a great thing and he tells the

(24:31):
players every year, I want your life to shine, show
me your personality, show the world your personality, but don't
do it to separate yourself from the team. Right. So
I think it's encourages players to say what they believe,
to do things away from the game that shows personality
and fun or seriousness. But when they're in the confines

(24:56):
of the team the team huddle, don't separate your self
from the team unless this was great place. That's why
Harbaugh was going to put an end to Terrell Suggs,
Ray Lewis and other select stars getting two lockers while
everyone else had won. And that wasn't all. He also
wanted everyone to dress a certain way on the team plane.
Then their uniform shirts were going to be tucked in,

(25:19):
the color of their cleats was going to be the same,
and those cleats were going to be laced up. Harbaugh
wanted better attendance for voluntary organized team activities. He wanted
players to run to the ball and finished drills a
certain way, and if you made a bad play on
the field, it was gonna get called out, even if
you were a pro bowler. And no, it wasn't just
a rumor that cutting ray Lewis's iconic dance out of

(25:41):
the tunnel was up for discussion, which I'll get into
in just a minute. But first Harbaugh was going to
revoke the privilege of giving two lockers to some of
the stars, and ray Lewis was actually quick to surrender it,
especially after Harbaugh explained that the optic just didn't look
right with the preached team centric philosophy. Why why were
you so willing to buy in? Yes, a locker for me,

(26:06):
um A locker never defined who I was, right, me
having two lockers had nothing to do with me wanting
just to have two lockers. It just fell that way.
One of the guys who was in my corner just
moved out and I was like, oh, guess what, it's vacant.
Let me take this right, And that's what you do
with lockers, you don't. You don't board space up, you

(26:29):
use space, right I was. I was raising the projects
and the projects, you use all the space you had,
and so, you know, but when he made this ship,
but I'm like, listen, I'm not bro I'm so over
that I'm not going to argue him about a locker.
Like he wants a board, a locker, a board, locker up,
he could happen whatever. So yeah, it's real. Sucks wasn't
so quick to give up his extra space. So I

(26:50):
was just tore the board down and kept using the locker,
so Hardball had it put back up again. And that
back and forth continued for weeks, and even though they
still talk to me each other just as they normally would,
they never talked to each other directly about this locker struggle.
Then finally Suggs just got tired of tearing the boards down,
and today he still sticks to just his one locker.

(27:12):
But Sugs told my colleagues Ryan Mink and Garrett Downing
that he hated Hardball to change at first. You know,
I would say Billick's favorites. I had two lockers, you know,
so he just even narves got here. He just wanted
to kind of you know, put his stamp in the
locker room. You know, it's like, no, everybody gets one locker.
And not only that. You know, remember on MLK and

(27:34):
there that was like all d lineman and linebackers back then. Okay,
that's what we call it. Okay, so you know markin
Luther King Boulevard. But um, you know he even twitched
that and he just kind of made it like a
more cohesive locker room. You know. We didn't like it
at first, you know, like, yo, why you why you
moved me away from this? How you moved me away
from that guy? You know what I'm saying. But but

(27:54):
then you know, it turned out to be turned out
to work because you know, now, like my lockers next
to James Hurston, he's one of the coolest guys ever.
Like it's like if you know, he never really if
he hadn't ever moved him there, like I probably would
have never I wouldn't have a personal relationship with James,
you know what I'm saying. But you know, for a
long time it was Helode's lockers, so he did do

(28:16):
me day. James Hurst was an undrafted free agent who
plays offensive tackle, and on the surface, Hurst and Sugs
seemed like polar opposites and unlikely friends. Anyway, there was
another change for the Stars on the team that wasn't
well received at first. Their bad play would get called
out just like everyone else on the team, especially if

(28:36):
it hurt their teammates or left them out to dry,
and according to Kevin Byrne, not even ray Lewis or
had Read was exempt. Well. Yeah, the reason he's going
to be in the Hall of Fame soons is that
he's like an independent contractor as a safety. You know,
the defense had rules on where he's supposed to be,

(28:57):
but what separated him is he would instinctively, by study
go to the right place. Sometimes that meant Ed Reid
was given up big plays that the world didn't know about,
and John would say, look, I want you to make
those plays, but you can't expose us. You can't. You
can't lose a game for us that way, And so

(29:19):
he was hard on Ed that way in terms of, look,
you got to stay within the rules of it. But
at the same time, I want you to be Ed
Reid and let your light shine. And I can imagine
for Ed, well, how do I find that I got
here in the first place by leaving what we're supposed
to do and recognizing that when I see the tight
end there, you know, then I'm going to go fly

(29:41):
to that because I'm going to intercept it. But what
John would tell Ed is, yeah, but they're giving you
that look because they think you're going to bite. Now
they've studied you, and now it looks like Jimmy Smith
or Chris McAllister has has been beaten badly because you're
not backing them up back there. And I think a

(30:03):
team meetings, John would showed good and bad plays of
all players. So if Ray Lewis made a bad place,
if Ray, you know, you should have been there, and
he'd do it with Ed. And I think Ed was
offended buying that a little bit, and they had to
reach a balance a little bit. It's I remember with
Rod Woodson, a Hall of Famer, that they had the

(30:26):
same thing with Rod Woodson that Rod would say, look, guys,
no offense to you, Marvin Lewis, but the reason you
wanted me in the first place is because I can
go make plays. Don't restrict me into my little box.
It's covering this part of the field. And so with
great players there's always that ying and yang. And it
took a while for John and Ed to to put

(30:50):
their arms around each other. But when you win the
ultimate you know then that Ed's looking at hey. I
should have been paying attention even more. Yeah, winning, winning
really does cure all because somehow throughout all these battles,
Harbaugh and the Ravens kept winning year after year until
he took home the Lombardi Trophy in twenty twelve. It

(31:12):
was after this game that Harball experienced with Reid one
of the greatest moments of his thirty plus year coaching career.
We got the Baltimore and we had a guy named
Ed Reid. Okay, greatest safety in the history of the game.
And Ed, Ed is a great player and a great guy,
and he studied football, loved and everything. But he was
up and down. He would tell you to this day,

(31:33):
and when the hood was up and the face was
covered up, that was an Ed that you really weren't
going to talk to you that day. Other times he'd
comp and he smiled, He'd be a guy but we
had a lot of clashes early on because Ed didn't
like the way we were doing things. Didn't see it.
And there were even times like and he said it later,
We're on the bus ride home from the super Bowl
and he kind of looked at me and he smiled
and he said, he said, now I see it. Now,
I see a coach. Now I see it. Now I understand.

(31:55):
And we both knew what he meant. And there were
times that we didn't talk to each other for weeks.
We would I would make a point I didn't talk
to him because I didn't really appreciate the way he
was treating me. He wasn't being respectful of the program,
and we'd walked by each other and not say hello.
But I knew it bothered him and I knew it.
But but before that happened, I told him, I said
something along the lines of, I know you may not

(32:15):
like me, and you may not be doing the we
may not be doing things the way you think they
should be done, but that's not going to change the
way I feel about you, man, I love you. When
I talked to Harbaugh, he went into more detail about
that super Bowl moment with Reid and what it meant
to him after such a trying five years together. We
were on the bus after the game, finally really late,

(32:37):
and it was like the last bus back and I'm
sitting there with Allison and the Ingrid and other family
and different five or six players in the bus and
Ed Reid plops down in the head coaches spot. He says,
I'm sitting here, coach this spot, but I'm sitting here.
So I popped down rising normal, he said, and I said, yeah,
I said, Ed bad, It's all years You've earned it,
you know, And he kind of looked at me and
he got real emotional and he said something along the

(32:59):
lines of, you know, all the things that you were
trying to say from the first day, all the things
that you've been telling us. He goes, now, I see
clearly what you were saying. And he's told me that
a number of times since then. And that was the
moment where I just realized, you know what, it's all
been worth it. You know, that was the moment where
you know Ed said that to me, and I was
just like, you know, and Ray told me things along

(33:21):
those lines before, and Ray and Ed were great, and
you know, but it's hard for me to even put
the whole thing into words. Someday I'll have a chance
to probably sit down and really give it some thought
and put pen to paper and yeah, and talk about it.
But but you know, it's funny because Okay, then then
you have that moment and then you wake up the
next morning, and you know what, life goes on and

(33:41):
there are new challenges, you know, they always something new,
all right. That's that's incredible to me though that it
took that many years. It's not an easy fix. And
yet you guys were winning the whole time, right, So
somehow you guys were able to keep you were figuring
it out while you kept going. Well, the thing, the

(34:02):
thing that overrides all that, you know, we don't all
have to see things exactly the same way or be
on the same page, but we do have to, you know,
we do have to build a relationship and respect one
another and really love one another. It's okay to have conflict.
And we say all the time, you know, we've got
a lot of little leadership ideas here, but I think
they're just truce. There's kind of universal truth. But one
of them is that is confrontation is good. And in

(34:23):
this sense, we confront everything, but we don't confront anyone.
You know, it's not about We're not confronting one The
battle is not against one another, you know, we're not
We're not in conflict with one another. We're in conflict
with things that are much bigger than our outside of ourselves. Yeah,
you know, let's fight those things, and let's fight them together.
We won't always agree on how to fight them, but

(34:43):
let's let's have that fight. I was very curious about
how Horriball was able to overcome all the obstacles in
front of him to go on and win the Super Bowl. Well,
you can't get anything done in this league if you
don't string a few wins together first, and Harball did
just that. Think about this. In two thousand and seven,
the year before Harball came on board, the Ravens went

(35:04):
five and eleven, which was the worst record in the
AFC North that year. Then, in Harbaugh's first year in
two thousand and eight, Baltimore went eleven and five and
was just one game away from the Super Bowl by
advancing to the AFC Championship Game. Such incredible success goes
a long way with Earn incredibility, says Ravens columnist John Eisenberg, Well,

(35:26):
I think, first off, I think winning in that first
year was just huge. The first year to go all
the way to the AFC Title Game was just it
just changed everything. It was just like, okay, I mean
immediately he proves you can year one step away from
the super Bowl your first year. Yeah, so that says, okay,
he can do it. I mean it's obvious he can
do it. If you get within one game then year

(35:47):
close enough. So yes, And how did he do that
that year? I mean, if you if you really go
back and look at that year, I mean pretty much,
let the defense he stayed out of the way. You know,
it was Rexa's defense still stayed out of the way.
Credit to John, He's a constitive guy. He knows what
he wants. But yeah, he knew where to draw the
line for that first year he did he did? You know,

(36:08):
that was still the Edreid ray Lewis defense. Just let
them keep doing what they're doing and offensively with a
rookie quarterback, there's no doubt that they adjusted to that
scenario and simplify things way down. You know, now x's
and o's. I can't get into that but there's no doubt.
It was like, we're going to keep it real simple here,

(36:29):
and you know the first thing we're gonna do. I mean,
it's football, one on one. I'm sure some fans probably
wish they were still doing it today, which is number one,
don't give the game away. You know, we're going to
be really careful. We're not going to give the game
away and very slowly roll out you know the things
that can that can help you win a game on offense.
And so I think they adjusted. John definitely adjusted to

(36:51):
that scenario of having a rookie quarterback first year, be
very careful, very simple, and between that and the defense,
it was became a winning and not giving the game
away so important. I think that was a winning scenario,
it turned out, and so that proved to the whole
locker room he can win, period. And so then after that,
you know, you're just another winning coach and you really

(37:15):
got them, You get some credibility. You do while trying
to expel the more toxic behavior that brought the offense down,
Harball was still able to preserve what was good about
the defense on the field, But as Joe Flacco progressed
in subsequent seasons, it became increasingly helpful in helping the
offense become equal with the defense and in creating a

(37:35):
complete team. The Ravens run to Super Bowl forty seven was,
no doubt fueled by Joe Flacco. He became only the
second quarterback to throw eleven touchdowns to no interceptions throughout
one postseason in NFL history. The only other quarterback to
do that, oh, it was just the legendary Joe Montana.
But there was another key to Harball eventually winning his

(37:57):
team over now. Even though he was tough on his players,
Harball was also flexible and he had the ability to adapt.
Being relentless doesn't mean being stubborn and unwilling to listen. Remember,
Harbaugh is relentless in the pursuit of winning, not in
the pursuit of getting his way. If he has to

(38:18):
change in order to win, Harball will change. Just ask
Ray Lewis and Ozzie Knewsom. I did. What is the
best quality John Marbles as a coach, Um, honestly adaptability.
Every coach has to have it. So he did it
that he did. He had to. He had to, you know,
because you know if you if you don't, you lose

(38:39):
people that you may never gain back, and that's the
last thing the coach wants to do. So I think
when he started to adapt to have conversations right there. Yeah,
you can run, run the team, do your thing, but
you have to have conversations with people that has paved
the way before this and even you even had this
job or had this opportunity. And I think once once
he started to really accept that, I think everybody you know,

(39:01):
then he started to laugh a little bit like, non, look,
don't be coming out us so serious, freaking laugh. We're cool,
We're gonna, we're gonna come to work, you know what
I'm saying. It's just certain ways. I think people just
had the patterns, had that ways and like doing it.
But it was it wasn't wasn't nothing wrong, but what
he was trying to do, it was just how to
do it. So I think once I bought it and
I was like, I was talking to the guy, said listen,

(39:21):
trust me, bro he yea, all right, yeah, I mean
we can we we can figure this out. All right.
He's not definitely not the freaking enemy, So let's just
get it out of our heads right now. He's for us.
He's really for us overall. I'm telling you, you know,
you go from year one to the year we want it,
we were totally different brotherhood. And that's what for me

(39:43):
makes it worth standing in Baltimore forever, because, yeah, been
it may have been rocky, but when we got to
the end of it, we finished it the way we
wanted to finish it. How would you say, coming in
from as a rookie coach to now being a super
Bowl winning coach nine years experience, how was he evolved?
What he's learned is what's important, Yeah, about when and

(40:05):
what's important in dealing with people, you know, And that
doesn't happen overnight, because you come in with certain ideas
about the way you want things to be, then you
find out it could be totally the opposite. And so
he's matured into those aspects of what's really important, you know.
And I mean it's just decisions now that he just

(40:27):
just asked the players, what do y'all want to do?
You know, with the schedule of practice, What do y'all
want to do? When do y'all want to practice? When
do y'all want to leave to go on a flight?
All of those things that you know, maybe he had
his arms around them when he first came in. Now
he realized that you know what, you know, the players
can if they are vested, if they are part of
the process, then you can get a lot more out

(40:48):
of them. Do you think that's why that leadership counsel
was formed? Yeah, well, I mean I think everybody has
a leadership counsel. But you can have a leadership counsel,
but sometimes it just can be a counseling word. And
now it's not that way with John because because periodically
he have me to set in on it when we
have some things to discuss and he wants the input,

(41:09):
and he takes the input of the players and say, Okay,
this is the way we're going to do. So it's
just not a council. So that that appiece everybody else
in the building that people think they have a say,
they actually have a saystick on a pig. It's legitimate.
It's legitimate, exactly. And I think the players really appreciate

(41:30):
that and they think that and take it back into
the locker room. Everybody knows that John is tough and
he's a competitor, and he can't address the elephant in
the room but there isn't some humility there. I don't
think as many people get to see. Well. Yeah, well,
number one, he wants to create the best environment that
he can and that's what it's coaches, that's what it's players,

(41:50):
and that's all the other I mean, the equipment managers
to train all of those people. He want to create
a very good working environment with everyone. But what you're
saying is that John is probably and it's a little
bit better than I am. I can see John and
he can talk to any individual and have a conversation. Yeah,

(42:11):
he can, and he is immersed in the conversation that
he's having with that person, regardless of what the subject is.
That's a true talent, you know, to be able to
do that, to be able to express himself or to
communicate with all types of people in all walks of life.
I think that's the true strength makes that individual person
feel important always, you know he does. And like I say,

(42:32):
he's one of the best listeners I've been around. Remember
when I said Harbaugh considered discontinuing Lewis's Dance out of
the Tunnel, Well, his adaptability was made manifest when he
eventually agreed to it. Harba sat down with Steve Sable,
the president of NFL Films, to discuss how that decision
went down. One of the things that's interesting to a
fan with Rays is the pregame introduction. And as a coach,

(42:56):
what do you think of that is It's like, when
you see it as it's all about me, I'm drawing
touch into myself. John, what did you think that? But
when you took over and you saw that, Yeah, I
probably thought the same thing that everybody else thought out
there because I was looking at it from the outside
in and didn't know Ray. You know, and you would
you would maybe assume it is about it's a selfish thing.
And Rex and I had this conversation and my first
thought was, you know, we're not going to do this.

(43:17):
So he came somebody said, I said, we're gonna stop it.
And then I was like, I think you should act
a couple of players here there and see what they're saying.
It's like, man, you can't stop that. I'm saying, that's
like a part of us. You get in that stadium
and Ray does that dance the place, just explore us.

(43:45):
And that's what Ray's all about. It's not about him.
You know, whether you come out as a team or
whether you do it the way the Ravens do. And
it's kind of butt around Ray Lewis. It's where your
heart's coming from. Ray's heart is all about the crowd
and the players and his team or Darius Webb has
been with Harbaugh for eight of his nine years in Baltimore,
and he can see how the evolution, both the team's

(44:06):
cultural evolution and John's personal evolution has had a tangible
effect on how the players respond to him today. Here
he is with my colleagues Ryan Mink and Garrett Downing.
I could just say when he first got here, he
wasn't a players coach. I'm gonna tell you. He was not.
They tell you, But now he is. I mean, I
think he just got the experience. You know, he got

(44:28):
some more. He got veterans on our teams. Us. We're
growing up a little bit, you know me, Jimmy, you
know Albert, you got Joe Yonda, his guys, you know Sam,
we're growing up now. So Hi, Yeah, I grow up
with him. You know, he got doomed. So now he
don't him figure that he have to be so so
so hard. He just knows how to get you know,

(44:49):
his message across now without being so tough. Now he
can get that same Usually he'll get that message out
but be real tough with it. But now he can
get same message out with the same effect, but just
not as horrible as he used to be. I love him, man,
I love him to death. Man, my coach. Man. I

(45:12):
don't know nothing else but I harps. I understand him.
You know what I mean. He wants to win. I
could actually a better coach, you know. And he listens now,
you know, And that's the reason I want to say that.
You know that he's becoming that player's coach where you
just you just love him, you know what I mean.
And he's the guy you want to win for him,
you know. Like I go out and put it on

(45:34):
the life of this guy on a perfect example of
how things have changed. All I need to do is
say the name of one player to show that Harba
can have a strong relationship with a brash, trash talking
bully on his team. And here it is wide receiver
Steve Smith Senior. Here we go. This is a nail

(46:02):
hit middle coffee. You're dead. Take ass back to Carolina
so you can mow my law too. While y' out
there keep a clicking. What happened between you and til
By the field role in the game. I don't know
you're gonna ask up because he didn't finished the game.
I shop so I saw that film was a coaching session.
They're gonna be They're gonna they're gonna be coaching. I'm
thirty five years old, and I ran around them boys

(46:24):
like they were school yard kids. I when I think
of a Baltimore racing and I'm in Baltimore, rainmore, I
think of if you're going there, if you take your lunchbox,
you take your sound, we take your buf bot, you
take your apples off, and we take your fork and
we break. And he said, I'm not scared of you.
I said, okay, cool, I see you after the game. Okay,

(46:45):
So I went to I went to public school as
ko OL, so that means you understand what I'm talking about.
So after the end of the game, had a little
chit chat with him. That last quote was Smith talking
about a trash talking exchange she had with then rookie
cornerback Jalen Ramsey of the Jacksonville Jaguars. They had an
explosive back and forth on the field last year. That

(47:06):
carried into the media. Listen to Harve's response when a
journalist asked if he had a conversation with Smith, a
sixteen year veteran, about how to conduct himself. No, No,
I didn't have a conversation. I didn't think that was necessary.
I was actually in the middle of that at one point.
I got caught in the middle of that by accident. Yeah,
it's kind of fun, you know. I thought Steve Smith

(47:28):
had a heck of a game, you know, if that's
how he responds to whatever challenge was put before him
out there, and I'm for how that happened every week.
You know, Steve Smith seems to understand how to take
things right up to the edge of being fiery and competitive,
which is needed in a tough and violent sport like football.
But in Baltimore, he never really took things so far

(47:51):
that it hurt his team with penalties or fines. He
knew how to fire people up without going over the line,
and Harbod trusted him to do that. I caught up
with Smith outside the Ravens locker room to talk about
his relationship with Harbaugh, and he said that while they've
had their own small run ins. He overall appreciates how
Harba takes the time to get to know him personally

(48:13):
and lets him be himself. You know, he lets me
he not just me, He lets each each guy has
his own relationship with him and with me and him
is it's uh, you know, we talk about a lot
of different things, you know, family legacy and that stuff.
And the first thing when I told him, Hey, I'm
going to Chicago see my son, first thing he said

(48:33):
was tell him I said hello, you know, and so
like things like that. You know. So that means a
lot to me. And so when we're out there grinding,
even though I may not want to work as hard
as I want to today, he gave me something to
work for. The guys that he really connects with, football
is just a conduit. He keeps those relationships via tax
or email even when guys are done. I know guys

(48:55):
who he's coached seven years ago that he still may
drop a text you here and there. After such a
rocky start with Harbaugh in those early years, I was
super curious what JJ thought when he saw somebody like
Steve Smith thrive with John Harbaugh. Yeah, And I mean
I don't know this, but I believe that if Steve

(49:15):
had been here in two thousand and eight and two
thousand and nine, I don't think it would have been
a real good relationship. But the coach that John is today,
it's a phenomenal relationship. I bet, I bet Steve is
one of John's favorite players who's ever coached. And then
if it had been six or seven years ago, I

(49:35):
don't know if if it all have worked out. It's
just the progression that John has made who he's become.
I brought to Harbaugh some of the feedback from people
like Ozzie Newsome, Jared Johnson, and Lardarius Webb to see
if he agreed with their assessments, and I was mostly
curious about why he thinks he's changed so much. Was

(49:56):
he tough because he was inexperienced, or would he do
this same thing all over again knowing everything he knows today.
It's interesting how they describe you back then versus how
they describe you now. Like Lardarius Webb so that you
were tough, tough when you first came in and you
weren't really known as a players coach. He said, now

(50:18):
you're definitely a players coach, and he said that he
and the team love you so much that they want
to go out and sacrifice and win for you. And
then Jared Johnson said to me that he felt like
Steve Smith, who's known as a brash guy, wouldn't have
worked back then, but totally works now. Do you feel

(50:38):
like you've changed because you finally won them over? Or
is it just did you evolve? Did they just not
see you the right way? Like? What do you think happens?
It's a great question. I'm sure I've grown, you know,
and you learn. I'm sure I have, but I also understand,
you know, really where we were at then. You know,
I think I basically find them out the same person

(51:00):
and have the same beliefs. And if I was walking
into that same situation now, I think I'd be more
like I was then. I think they'd see me the
same way as I was then, because because really it
was there was really a real, real, a real fight
for the kind of control of the team so to speak,
you know, and uh, and I wish I wasn't backing down.
I mean, there's a certain way the team, the team

(51:20):
was going to be what we were all about, and
that meant certain things we're going to be done certain ways.
You can say right, wrong or whatever. But once we
were established that we're going to do it this way,
then I couldn't I couldn't back off of those things.
You know, we were going to run to the ball.
On defense, We're not going to be a penalty the
leading penalty team in the league. You know, we're gonna
play with discipline. We're gonna play hard, we're gonna be
we're gonna play in the back end. We're gonna have discipline.

(51:42):
We weren't going to give up big plays in critical situations.
You know, those are all things that that and that
where we track that back. It's about it's about doing
the little things right and well it's about discipline. Discipline
in every area of your life, and the small things
is what makes the big things fall in place. And
that's just something that we've always been taught and I've
always believed. So we were going to address a certain

(52:03):
way in the plane, we were gonna we were going
to finish a conditioning drill a certain way. We were
just going to do things a certain way. Even the
way we wore our uniforms are going to be a
certain way. And there was so much pushback, you know,
back then, because guys like Ed, you know, didn't understand
why are we doing all this crazy stuff? Why why
is this even matter? And five years later he goes,
I get it. Now, it makes sense. I see how
it all fit together. So I was in a position

(52:25):
where I just had to have a real strong backbone
and I just couldn't back up on really too much
of anything at that time. And now the principal base,
yes not, I didn't know what I was doing back then,
because you do the same thing today. There are principles
that you have to fight for, right Okay, yeah, I
mean it's it's now that those things are established. Those
things are the way we do things. So I don't

(52:46):
have those battles every single day, so I can the
relationship can be more you know, it can be more encouraging,
it can be more reinforcing for guys. I do think
I've grown a lot and I've learned how I've spend
a lot more time, you know, in relationship with you know,
And that was something Steve really really helped me grow
through and learn. And that was big man. That was
I've always said great relationships with players, I was always

(53:07):
a good recruiter, you know, and always could do that.
But genuine relationships take a lot of work, you know.
So now my time is spent doing that, and I
think the players really respond to that. But really at
the time, I really wasn't as mature or prepared to
do that then. But I also really didn't have the
time to do it because I felt like every day
I came into work, I was in a battle, really,

(53:28):
you know. And I think they sensed that too, And
yet we still managed to be successful through all that
because I think we all realized, you know, where I
was always talking to him about, hey, we're not in
conflict with one another. You know, we were trying to
get somewhere. You know, we're trying to reduce drag. We're
trying to become something. You don't win a championship, you
become a champion. And they were hearing those things too,

(53:49):
you know. That was part of the transformation, I think.
But the transformation, as you learn over time, it's it's
everybody gets transformed. We all do. We all grow together.
And that's why when the championship has finally won, you know,
the great saying, you know, we will walk together forever
becomes a reality, and it's really true thing. It's hard

(54:11):
to argue that Harbor should have changed his approach because
not only did his football team enjoy a playoff birth
in each of his first five seasons, but with hindsight,
his players seem to cherish their relationship with him. That's
how JJ felt. I think that today, you know, are
rocky times that we had kind of had made our

(54:33):
relationship closer. I think and if we if I had
just been a guy and we'd never gone through that,
that he would just have been another head coach and
I would just have been another player. But I think
that you know, I know that he's very special to
me as a coach, and that I would think that

(54:53):
he thinks the same with me. Next time, on Man
of the Crowd, we look at John and Jim's unique
childhood growing up in the Wolverine's locker room, plus Jim's
return as the messiah of Michigan football coach. Thank you

(55:26):
very much. You know how to make a guy feel
at hold and my family and I appreciate it very
much and I love you too. Thank you very Somebody
asked me if I was going to come to an
arbor and see the Messiah. I'm wondering how comfortable or
uncomfortable you are with this perception that you're the savior
of Michigan football. And I can remember when they could
just barely walk John and Jim, that she would bring

(55:48):
him out to the practice field and all it wants
the ball go over my shoulder and I didn't look back.
I said, oh, please, dear God, don't let this be
one of mine. And then Bull would say, do you
just glare at me? Damn kids off. What do you
think Bo would say right now if you saw Jim
leading this program, Oh, you'd be so proud. And I
think he doesn't know I above that. I think he

(56:10):
looks down and get an emotional just talking about it.
BO is very, very very proud of Jim and what
told you one day that he thought he would be
back and he would be coaching at the University of
Michigan before he before he passed away. Hey, man of
the crowd listeners, before you go, I just wanted to

(56:33):
say thank you for such a strong showing of support
for this podcast. We've been very happy with how many
there are of you out there listening, and we'd love
to have even more people find us, so please consider
rating the podcast and writing a review. The more subscribers
and the more positive ratings that Man of the Crowd gets,
the more others will be able to find it too. Also,

(56:56):
don't forget to continually check back on our microsite at
Baltravens dot com backslash Man of the Crowd for content
that compliments what you're listening to here, including biographies of
key interviews I've conducted, photo galleries and more. And as always,
I want to hear from you guys after each episode.
If you have any comments or questions or whatever, hit

(57:18):
me up on Twitter. My handle is at sg Ellison.
I look forward to your feedback and would love to
interact with you. Okay, that's it. That's all I've got,
but I'll be back next week with episode five. The
Michigan Messiah returns.