The "Bullies of Baltimore" 30 For 30 About The 2000 Ravens Was Everything You Expected It To Be And More
Looong anticipated 30 for 30 for us in Baltimore finally hit our screens last night and boy did it deliver. Had to wait like an extra 45 minutes for a Sixers-Knicks game to finish but it was well worth the wait.
I could write a book about the 2000 Ravens. They're my favorite sports team of all-time, with apologies to the 2012 Ravens and 2002 Terps. Those teams were legendary in their own right, but this 2000 team just had the juice in ways that few other teams in sports history ever could. The history of football in Baltimore was touched on briefly towards the front of the documentary, but I think it really undersold just how much this team meant to the city. Even though the Ravens had been back since '96, they didn't really have much to show for themselves until that team. Football wasn't truly back until the 2000 Ravens rejuvenated the city. They were brash, they were loud, they were controversial... but more than anything, they kicked your ass and let you know about it.
There's a ton of stuff to unpack, and a few of them could be blogs in their own right, but I'm just gonna do a big thought dump on the whole thing. Here goes:
- Documentary opens and closes with the passing of Tony Siragusa. Of course it's hella sad that he left us in June, but it's also fantastic that they were able to film this thing when he was still with us. He was so clearly the star of the show and left us with tons of incredible stories. The story about him getting an enema just so he could play against Washington was laugh out loud stuff.
Guy was a legend in every sense of the word. I thought the way they framed the entire documentary around his death was really tasteful and served as a great tribute to the big fella.
- The roundtable format was a brilliant way to bring us those stories and get those big personalities together on one stage. I remember this event being announced and having a conflict and I'm going to kick myself for the rest of my life for not ditching it to go to it. It occurred to me at a certain point that basically all of those guys have been TV personalities throughout the years. Billick did color commentary, Goose did ridiculous sideline work with Fox, Ray and Dilfer each did a variety of things with ESPN (and not terribly well it would seem given that that's no longer the case), Sharpe is on TV every damn day and stirring the pot with NBA stars, and even Rod Woodson called games for the Ravens radio network this past year. These guys were characters both on and off the field and I think their work post-playing days really drives that point home.
- The cast of characters mentioned above dwarfed some really big and important players on that team that I felt were hardly featured on the doc. Jon Ogden is one of the greatest tackles to play the game, and he was barely featured at all. Peter Boulware is a guy that I think has never gotten his proper due. Boulware was an all-world pass rusher for years, but the personalities around him basically washed him out. That, and Terrell Suggs came through the door a couple years later and eventually washed him out of a lot of franchise records. Chris McAlister is in the same boat. It's a testament to just how deep that team is. Sam Adams, Michael McCrary, Rob Burnett, Duane Starks, Jamie Sharper, Kim Herring... all guys that balled but were afterthoughts in the documentary. Cheers to you fellas.
- Completely forgot Brian Billick was on the Match Game...
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Kinda funny to see him as a cheeseball in 1977 and not the arrogant egomaniac we know now. Bullies of Baltimore did a really nice job of capturing his personality and role in how he let those guys be themselves. I think that's a culture thing (for better or worse) that has carried forward in Baltimore with Coach Harbaugh. We embrace personalities here, not turn them away. That's why so many players enjoy coming here. Billick knew all the right buttons to push with those guys. For him to open up a team meeting the day after clinching a playoff spot with an hour-by-hour itinerary for the next 6 weeks from that very moment all the way to the end of the Super Bowl parade was brilliant. Goose summed it up really well in the way that instilled confidence in that locker room:
"This motherfucker really thinks we're gonna win the Super Bowl."
I can totally see how Billick could rub people the wrong way and why they wouldn't bring him in, but it's always surprised me he was never given another head coach gig.
- These fellas really made Corey Dillon take his ball and go home.
- The "no touchdown for 5 weeks" saga was captured beautifully, along with the transition from Tony Banks to Trent Dilfer. They didn't cite the details explicitly, but Billick's hand was pretty much forced there. To start the 2nd half of a close game against Tennessee in Baltimore, Banks went pick-6, INT, Punt, INT. This was week 4 of the 5-week no TD drought, and ultimately cost the Ravens a game 14-6 in which they smoked the Titans in yards (368 to 191) and first downs (24 to 7). The Titans were the boogeyman as the defending AFC champs that year, and that was certainly a battle they won… but it might have cost them the war as the Ravens had proven to themselves that they were the better team and had plenty of unfinished business to take care of down the road.
- The goof on a roof is a legend and he deserves a statue in this city. That's a guy who puts his hard hat on and gets a job done. Might need him to get back up there and get a damn Lamar Jackson extension done.
- I've written about this before, but those two Titans-Ravens games in Tennessee are my favorite games in NFL history. Watch those games in full and it'll really hit home just how different football was back then. First downs felt like touchdowns. Better yet, we finally got that clip of Brian Billick yelling "FUCK THE TITANS" after the playoff win, which only emerged when that clip was shown last May at the reunion event.
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- Titans long-time kicker Al Del Greco got totally let off the hook in the doc. Yeah, Dilfer threw the devastating pick 6 in the regular season game, but it was Del Greco's extra point miss that gave him the opportunity to respond and win the game outright. Then in the playoffs, Del Greco had a 45 yarder blocked, missed a 31-yarder to end the 1st half, and then had the 37-yarder blocked early in the 4th quarter that was returned for what ended up being the game-winning TD. Guy had a great career, but it was ended that day by Keith Washington and Anthony Mitchell.
- Gregg Williams stealing Trent Dilfer's playbook was damn near the least surprising discovery in this documentary. Typical scumbaggery from Gregg but ya know what? They needed it more than we did and look how it turned out.
- The unapologetic attitude from Goose after crumpling poor Rich Gannon just goes to show we'll never see football played that way again. Goose would have been thrown in jail for that in 2023, instead he basically called Gannon a pussy for complaining about football.
"My wife is 5'2 and I'm on top of her once a week and she never complains" is gold.
- Did we really need to include Elvis Grbac in this in any capacity? I get that Dilfer's departure is part of the story, but we really didn't need that much Grbac. Or any at all. We don't say the G word around here.
- It wouldn't be a proper documentary without some outlandish Ray Lewis symbolism and we got a 2 for 1 with him talking about Gladiator and the Serengeti. That was to be expected. But him recapping the Super Bowl performance…
Just goes to show you how much it really chaps these guys' asses that the kick unit gave up that Ron Dixon TD and ruined the shutout. Those guys wanted it bad and you can tell they're still not over it.
Look, this debate has been rehashed a billion times, but the objective of a defense is to prevent the other team from scoring. No team did that better than the 2000 Ravens. 165 points allowed in an entire 16 game season is insane. 10.3 PPG will never be touched again. That number was brought down to 4 points per game in the postseason when you back out the kick return TD. That's just insane. The 1985 Bears were great and they pitched their 2 playoff shutouts, but across the board the Ravens' numbers are better. Few PPG, fewer yards, fewer first downs.
The 2000 Ravens is the greatest defense of all-time. Period.