Eight months after he was summarily dismissed on New Year's Eve, former Ravens coach Brian Billick chooses not to look back in anger, if he looks back at all.
Did he get a raw deal Dec. 31 when team owner Steve Bisciotti reversed his position and fired the last coach to win a Super Bowl in Baltimore?
"No, I understand fully how this league works, the business side of this," Billick said yesterday in his first extensive interview with The Baltimore Sun since the 2007 season. "I'm not one to look back. I have taken time with a number of people and said to them: 'OK, tell me about what happened. What did I do wrong? What's my focus on going forward?' "
What's in front of Billick at the moment is a trip to New Orleans, where he will serve as game analyst on Fox for Sunday's Tampa Bay Buccaneers-Saints season opener.
Beyond that, there's a book he is co-writing with Michael MacCambridge, author of the widely acclaimed America's Game, and - down the road - perhaps another coaching job in the NFL.
Billick, 54, sidestepped a question on his interest in returning to the sideline but left the door ajar.
"I want to see if I enjoy this," he said of his new TV job. "If the right thing presents itself after the season, I would consider it."
When he was fired, he had three years left on a four-year contract extension that will pay him between $15 million and $18 million.
Given his regular-season record of 80-64 and a Super Bowl title in January 2001 with the Ravens, it is likely that Billick will be on the short list of coaching candidates when vacancies occur at the end of this season.
After that Super Bowl victory, however, Billick's tenure in Baltimore was clouded by the failure to acquire or develop a franchise-type quarterback and offensive struggles.
On Wednesday, the Ravens put Kyle Boller, whom they selected in the first round of the 2003 NFL draft, on injured reserve with a serious shoulder injury, ending his season and probably his career in Baltimore. Boller's lack of on-field progress was a major failing for Billick and the Ravens.
"I'm not here to defend Kyle Boller," Billick said. "He's a great young man, and he's got talent to be a quarterback in this league. Those individual things that happened to him in terms of his progression, let somebody else comment who knows more than I do."
Pressed for reasons that Boller didn't live up to expectations, Billick said: "I think you have to look at the things that swirled around Kyle Boller. We won the [AFC North] division when he was a rookie. ... It was a tough learning curve for Kyle to carry around early. There were injuries around him. The running game was there and not there."
Billick, who still lives in Maryland, spent this week doing phone interviews with players from the Buccaneers and Saints and working on a playbook show for Fox. He recently became an investor and partner in sports talk radio station WNST (1570 AM) with Nestor Aparicio.
He still has the same deprecating humor and sensitivities he had as a coach.
"They say you always have the Super Bowl when you win one," he said, "although some people are trying to take that away, too."
