WP:Nolan's Change in Style Has the Baltimore Defense in a Familiar Place

[TK]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36747-2003Dec4.html

Now He's Grown on the Ravens

Nolan's Change in Style Has the Baltimore Defense in a Familiar Place

By Steve Argeris

Special to The Washington Post

Friday, December 5, 2003; Page D01

OWINGS MILLS, Md. -- The quote on the grease board in Mike Nolan's office reads: Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you.

Ray Lewis and Baltimore's defense is doing just fine under Mike Nolan's leadership. "He wants you to play football the way it's supposed to be played," Lewis says of Nolan.

"That's up there for our guys, because they are so young," Nolan said, "but it applies pretty well to me as well."

At 44, Nolan has had plenty of experience, no matter how it's defined. The son of former San Francisco 49ers and New Orleans Saints coach Dick Nolan, Mike Nolan has taken that birthright and added 23 years of experience -- 17 in the NFL -- to it. He has been a defensive coordinator for four NFL teams, including a tumultuous three years with the Washington Redskins from 1997 to 1999. For the last two, he has found stability and success with the Baltimore Ravens.

"It was easier for me," said Dick Nolan. "I coached for [Dallas Cowboys coach] Tom Landry, then went out on my own."

Mike Nolan had a difficult act to follow in Marvin Lewis, who left Baltimore for the Washington Redskins after the 2001 season. Nolan inherited a defense with little left over from the group that led the Ravens to the Super Bowl in 2000, a unit gutted by the salary cap. But with younger, less-known players, the defense has been the team's backbone this season, ranking fourth in the league heading into its biggest game of the season. With first place in the AFC North on the line, the Ravens (7-5) on Sunday take on the Cincinnati Bengals, coached by Nolan's predecessor, Marvin Lewis.

"Mike Nolan's done a phenomenal job," Ravens Coach Brian Billick said. "It's been a two-year progression. When you take over what he took over last year, the youngest team ever, the change schematically, and to continue to watch this team fit up has been phenomenal."

Nolan and Lewis share another bond; both were defensive coordinators with the Washington Redskins. Lewis left for a head coach's job. Nolan left under far less ideal circumstances, and says that since then he has sought above all else stability, a commodity that remains in flux with Washington, where the latest to experience job insecurity is George Edwards, the team's current defensive coordinator who is under scrutiny for the unit's poor play this season.

Nolan fell under a similar microscope with the Redskins, particularly in 1999, when the defense struggled early in the season but recovered somewhat down the stretch. He was fired after the 10-6 season.

"Down there, it's an unstable environment," Nolan said. "This is a stable environment. I don't want to get into what it's like down there, but it's just not stable. Look at everybody that's been in there. There's been five guys that have done my job since I left down there. That's a lot of guys in five years. . . .

"The things I learned in Washington -- they weren't technical aspects of football. What they were [was] staying true to yourself, your integrity, your players. There were so many things where I wish I could put words on, I'm not articulate enough to say them. Just every day was . . ."

For most of his career, a day spent in sports has been a day well-spent. A self-proclaimed "locker-room rat," as a child, Nolan began learning his trade at a young age. "My dad was probably a lot more people-oriented," Nolan said. "I've probably got a little more X's and O's in [me] because I grew up around his assistants, enjoying the technical part, watching all that was a great thrill for me because I just fell in love with football, whereas he was kind of the one who started it. I don't know what point he fell in love with it. I got to choose real early in my life that it was what I wanted to do."

The elder Nolan remembers all but raising Mike on the job.

"He used to hang around with [49ers defensive lineman] Charlie Krueger," said Dick Nolan. "Charlie loved the kids, and what would happen would be they would get into pranks, hiding guys' helmets, their shoes, things like that.

"What he did as he got older was he worked for us as a helper during training camp. A lot of times at night, he would go up and sit in the back for meetings. He probably picked up a lot of things that way."

After playing free safety for Oregon and reaching the final round of cuts in the Denver Broncos' training camp in 1981, Mike Nolan began his coaching career. "Those same guys who I was shagging balls for as a kid were the guys coaching in the NFL when I first got started," Nolan said. "Those were the guys that helped me out. They were in their fifties then, they were calling the shots."

He spent six years as a college coach, then returned to Denver with Dan Reeves. After six years as a Broncos assistant, he followed Reeves to New York as the Giants' defensive coordinator for four seasons. It was the first of two stints in New York, along with working as the Jets' defensive coordinator in 2000.

After his stint with the Jets, Nolan moved on to Baltimore. Under him, there are changes far more striking than a formation switch from the 4-3 to a 3-4.

If the Lewis-directed, record-setting 2000 group was a big-budget star vehicle for linebacker Ray Lewis, this season's group is more of an ensemble piece. "It's got to be that way right now because of the people," Nolan said, though pointing out that Lewis, with 172 tackles, 4 interceptions and 2 recovered fumbles, "remains the foundation of what we have."

Lewis, cornerback Chris McAlister and linebacker Peter Boulware are the lone carryovers in the starting lineup. Of the rest, most are not high-round draft choices, most are in their first few years in the league, and none are as well-known as the players they replaced after the Ravens' salary-cap purge following the 2001 season.

The St. Louis Rams gained only 121 total yards on Nov. 9; the Miami Dolphins scored nine points on Nov. 16 -- both Ravens losses. Denver and San Francisco each managed only a pair of field goals.

"The 3-4 allows you to do a lot of different things," Nolan said. "It's easy to tell a big linebacker to put his hand down and do the things an end does, while it's kind of tough to tell an end, 'Okay, you're a linebacker now.' "

The adaptability of three players in particular has helped the Ravens tailor what they do to their opponents' strengths. Gary Baxter has started at both cornerback and safety, switching between the two even in-game, and Adalius Thomas and Boulware are outside linebackers on the depth chart, but either can move up as a fourth down lineman.

"That is a big part of it," Billick said. "That's the nice thing about the 3-4. You can get into a four-man front, you can be the three-man front, and you can stay in base when they come three-wides in, because of what you can present protection wise. There is a lot of versatility to it. [it] lends itself to our defensive effectiveness."

Ray Lewis called Nolan a player's coach, quickly taking stock of the young players and planning accordingly. "He's going to put his players in the best position to play," Lewis said. "He's not one to beat it in your head, make you play like a robot. He wants you to play football the way it's supposed to be played. He gives us the game plan, we play."

Secondary coach Donnie Henderson was on the staff of both Lewis and Nolan, and said the changes Nolan implemented were based on the needs of a younger group. "It's not as complex, there's not a lot of checking," Henderson said. "The one thing we had with Marvin that people didn't know was you had to defend us. Not only that, you had to know where every one of our guys were. Right now, you can pretty much sit, you know where we're at, but now you still have to beat us."

Nolan's name has at times appeared on the list of hot assistant coaches -- and at times it has nearly fallen off the radar, as when he came to the Ravens as a receivers coach in 2001. Now, he is getting noticed again.

"There was a time that might have been a distracting thing, like many coaches trying to go on to something else," Nolan said. "I've got a great job here. . . . I aspire to be something else, but not to the degree that stuff distracts me any more. Sure, I have some aspirations, but because of my experiences, I don't get lost in them."

[TC4]

Sure wish he had that "better style" when he was the D-coordinator here in '99.

We had the No 2 offense behind the eventual Super Bowl champion Rams, but were No 30 on defense, with only the expansion Browns below us.

If we had a top 10 or even a top 15 defense that year, WE might have been in the Super Bowl that year