Ozzie Newsome’s ‘Beautiful Mind’ has Been the Key to Baltimore’s Success

newsome 3Every quality personnel man has his own style, and Newsome’s core belief is one of inclusion — he will listen before he speaks.

“I don’t say anything through the draft meetings up until the Thursday or Friday before the draft,” he said. “I try and take the opportunity to be a good listener, and try to consume as much information as I can before I make a decision. If I’m the guy doing all the talking, I’m not the guy doing all the listening.”

He had to listen after the Ravens won their first and only Super Bowl at the end of the 2000 season.

That roster was set for success at the time, and the subsequent changes led to a few rough years. The Ravens suffered through losing seasons in 2005 and 2007, and a change in coaches from Billick to Harbaugh before the 2008 season. That’s when things really started to turn around, and the record shows it — the team is 54-26 under Harbaugh, and has been in the hunt for the Super Bowl every season. They were one dropped pass away last season, and finally made the ultimate goal this time.

According to Newsome, the difference now is that the franchise is built for a longer run.

“I think what we’ve built now — when we tried to do it before, we made that run, and then we tried to make a second run, and we knew we were going to have to start over. I think this team will continue to be successful because of some of the youth on the team. Your quarterback, your running back, your offensive line, Haloti Ngata, and we’ve got some young cornerbacks. So, I think we’ll be able to contend for the next two or three years without having to blow the thing up like we did in 2001.”

So, what’s his secret? Humble but confident to the end, Newsome would prefer to credit others. “I think it’s having the right relationship with the coach, the owner and the president. I try to make myself available. I try to be very honest with any and everything that I try to tell them. They are my partners. Sometimes I have to bite my tongue and say, ‘OK, we need to do this, even though I don’t agree with it.’ There is a lot of give and take. Brian Billick and I were partners for nine years, and we’re still friends. You build a partnership just like I guess you do in a marriage.”

Newsome gives a lot of credit to that kid from Delaware — the one who helped him get back to the league’s biggest game.

“It goes with the quarterback,” he said. “If Joe Flacco wasn’t a very good quarterback right now, I’d probably be playing golf down in Alabama somewhere.”

Golf in Alabama will have to wait — Newsome said that he and his staff have a personnel meeting to get started on the 2013 draft back in Baltimore just three days after the Super Bowl is over. The pressure rarely stops for people in his position, and Newsome feels the additional weight of his own societal responsibility, as one of the first minority NFL decision-makers. There was no Rooney Rule when Newsome worked his way up through the Browns’ front office — just the need to stay in football after his playing career was over, and a real hunger to succeed where never had when he was wearing a helmet.

“I think there will be an emptiness as a player because I never played in the Super Bowl,” he said, when asked about his legacy. “I will never be able to go back and recapture that. But having the ability to have success on the field and off the field is going to match. I just wish I had a chance to play in the Super Bowl as a player.”

He’ll have to “settle” for being a role model in a higher sense.

“When I first became a GM, I was on a radio show with John Thompson,” Newsome recalled. “He made the statement, and it hadn’t dawned on me. He said, ‘Now that you’ve become a general manager, other young African Americans will inspire to do that.’ At that point, you go, ‘Well, yeah. Now that I’ve done it, somebody else can get a chance to do it.’ That’s the only time it’s come about. To me, it’s all about the challenge. And being the first – it just so happened when I was born, America started to change. So, I got a chance to be first because it changed. It’s not that I was any better than anybody else, I just hit the cycle at the right time.”

In truth, Ozzie Newsome did much more than that, though he’s too modest to say. He set the pace and has kept it for years. That’s a fact more people should celebrate.

Maybe they’ll do so if he can grab another Lombardi Trophy.

 

Article Appeared @http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/ozzie-newsome-beautiful-mind-key-baltimore-success-002311374–nfl.html

Also Appeared @http://blackubiquity.com/sports-a-entertainment/item/12352-ozzie-newsome’s-‘beautiful-mind’-has-been-the-key-to-baltimore’s-success

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