planomateo
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Good read on Ozzie Newsome
On Friday, April 19, 1996, the brain trust of the brand new Baltimore Ravens was sitting in the windowless draft room at the teamās training facility housed inside an old state police barracks in Owings Mills, Md. After the exodus from Cleveland that ripped the hearts out of Browns fans, there was plenty of work to do in building the new franchise. The group had been working non-stop, not only on the draft, but on trying to make their new space functional. It still wasnāt close to that. In the hallway outside, VHS tapes numbered 1 to 2000 were lined up on the floor against the wall up one side and then back down the other, because there were no storage units. People would roam the halls, yelling, āWhereās Virginia Tech vs. Virginia?ā Television monitors were strewn all over the place. The stationery had a blank white helmet on it. The practice uniforms were black and white, drawing jokes about the Mean Machine from North Dallas Forty. College secretaries, not knowing that the Ravens were a real NFL team, sent scouts on campus visits to the soccer offices.
āYou talk about a wing and a prayer,ā says Phil Savage, the teamās director of college scouting at the time.
But there they were, one day before the first draft in Ravens history, charting the course for a franchise. Present were owner Art Modell, his son David, team president Jim Bailey, chief financial officer Pat Moriarty and vice president of player personnel Ozzie Newsome.
Newsome, 40 at the time, was in charge, but he was greener than the Jolly Green Giant. After starring for four years at Alabama and then for 13 seasons as a tight end for the Browns, he was certainly at home around the game. But this was altogether different. Yes, he had studied tirelessly in the five years since his retirement, working at times as an assistant coach with Cleveland, and then in personnel under coach Bill Belichick with the Browns. But in Cleveland, Belichick, general manager Ernie Accorsi and later personnel chief Michael Lombardi did the heavy lifting. Everyone else was a glorified grunt, grinding tape and writing reports.
Continue for the rest of the article http://mmqb.si.com/2013/09/12/ozzie-newsome-baltimore-ravens/8/
On Friday, April 19, 1996, the brain trust of the brand new Baltimore Ravens was sitting in the windowless draft room at the teamās training facility housed inside an old state police barracks in Owings Mills, Md. After the exodus from Cleveland that ripped the hearts out of Browns fans, there was plenty of work to do in building the new franchise. The group had been working non-stop, not only on the draft, but on trying to make their new space functional. It still wasnāt close to that. In the hallway outside, VHS tapes numbered 1 to 2000 were lined up on the floor against the wall up one side and then back down the other, because there were no storage units. People would roam the halls, yelling, āWhereās Virginia Tech vs. Virginia?ā Television monitors were strewn all over the place. The stationery had a blank white helmet on it. The practice uniforms were black and white, drawing jokes about the Mean Machine from North Dallas Forty. College secretaries, not knowing that the Ravens were a real NFL team, sent scouts on campus visits to the soccer offices.
āYou talk about a wing and a prayer,ā says Phil Savage, the teamās director of college scouting at the time.
But there they were, one day before the first draft in Ravens history, charting the course for a franchise. Present were owner Art Modell, his son David, team president Jim Bailey, chief financial officer Pat Moriarty and vice president of player personnel Ozzie Newsome.
Newsome, 40 at the time, was in charge, but he was greener than the Jolly Green Giant. After starring for four years at Alabama and then for 13 seasons as a tight end for the Browns, he was certainly at home around the game. But this was altogether different. Yes, he had studied tirelessly in the five years since his retirement, working at times as an assistant coach with Cleveland, and then in personnel under coach Bill Belichick with the Browns. But in Cleveland, Belichick, general manager Ernie Accorsi and later personnel chief Michael Lombardi did the heavy lifting. Everyone else was a glorified grunt, grinding tape and writing reports.
Continue for the rest of the article http://mmqb.si.com/2013/09/12/ozzie-newsome-baltimore-ravens/8/
