Back on October 7 Steve Bisciotti joined us on the Ravens Rap at The Greene Turtle in Ocean City as he does every fall. The Ravens owner is always forthcoming and informative and the show is always very lively. Some of the exchange amongst the hosts (myself, Bruce Laird and Mike Bradley) and Bisciotti was edited out so as not to incriminate anyone (if you want the unfiltered version, join us live next year).

That said in this first of what will at least be a two part interview, the Ravens owner pulled no punches and enthusiastically tackled some tough NFL issues.

What percentage would you place on the NFL reaching a new collective bargaining agreement?

Steve Bisciotti: Well I’m on the broadcast committee. There are two major committees. One is broadcast and one is labor. I’m not on labor because I have a hot temper. So they figure I’m not the best guy to help do that. But honestly as I sit here today there’s a 100% chance that we’ll have football next year.

Has Roger Goodell issued some sort of gag order to the owners when it comes to labor issues?

SB: To the extent that I sent in a check for $100,000 back in March for saying something that he didn’t think that I should have said.  That gag order! That’s when he reminded me that I’m part of the broadcast committee and not the labor committee.

But you and Roger have become pretty tight…

SB: He likes the way I think and so we talk but it’s off the record and it’s something that I tell him to bring into the labor decisions but this is not the time to ask him for me to be part of the labor decisions. It’s too far along. So we talk, I give him my advice and I send him my checks.

You have your own management style. Can you describe what is? And here’s a lead in. What you like to do is find qualified people and empower them to do their job and then watch it…

SB: And then make them educate me on why they are making the decisions that they are making. That’s all I’ve ever asked. It’s one thing to hire smart people, it’s another thing to understand why they make the decisions that they do.

I’ve always said as a leader in my own company, anybody that draws a pay check from The Allegis Group has the right to ask me a question or challenge a rule that we have so to speak, and I owe them either an explanation why they’re wrong or I owe them change. And to me that’s what I really brought over from 20 years in business. I have the right to ask Ozzie [Newsome] and John [Harbaugh] why they’re doing what they are doing and they need to either explain their position, teach my why I’m wrong or change. And they do and I love them. They are high quality guys and I get along fine with them for that reason.

Football teams are very much like a family. When Trevor Pryce was released, were you notified and how did that go down because that can very much upset the family unit.

SB: In our history we haven’t really released veterans during the season. There’s really only one reason to release players during the season and that’s because you have good players sitting on the sideline. That’s not to say that Trevor doesn’t have something left or that he can’t offer something to some other team but when you release a player in the offseason or in season, it’s because that you think you’ve got talented guys for less money.

We’re running a budget so when your Mom tells you that you can’t have pizza every Friday night, it’s every two Friday nights. Now you might complain but Mom has made the decision. We’re living under a budget albeit a very large budget, it still comes down to how much money we’re spending on every individual player and whether we have talented players behind him who can do as good or even 80% as good. If you can do the job 80% as good and you cost half as much then we’ve got to make some tough decisions.

Bart Scott was very vocal about Trevor joining the Jets. He went so far to say last year that in 2008 it was really Rex Ryan who was the head coach of the Ravens and not John Harbaugh. Then recently he said that Trevor Pryce was probably one of 15 other guys in the Ravens’ locker room who would like to be released like Trevor so that they too could make their way to New York and play for Rex Ryan. As a former employer of Bart’s how does this affect you?

SB: Their bravado I can’t let affect me. This is such a competitive business that you have to take all those things with a grain of salt. So we could have not signed Terrell Suggs and signed Bart Scott. We could have not signed Ray Lewis and signed Bart Scott. And so if I’m him, I’m probably saying the same things. I don’t really know how to respond to that because I really don’t care because once he’s not a Raven, he’s not a Raven and he’s somebody else’s player.

What I’m trying to say is…somebody asked me in my once a year press conference, “How hard is it to let go of players, who’s the hardest one to let go off?” and I said, “Bart Scott because he was with me the longest.”

You know you have Jimmy Leonhard for a year and you let him go and then there was this guy and that, but Bart was with us, he was an undrafted free agent I believe…and as a matter of fact years ago when I think we signed Tommy Polley to start for us because we didn’t think Bart could do it. Tommy was hurt a little bit and Bart played well and then instead of letting him go we signed him to a really big contract.

So Bart made a lot of money playing for the Ravens, but at the time two years ago we could only pick two. I didn’t have much of a say in that decision because it’s not my decision to make. I asked them to give me a good reason and they gave me a good reason. We kept Ray and we kept Terrell. Bart Scott and Trent Dilfer were the hardest cuts that I ever experienced in 10 years.

Shifting gears, let’s touch on the 18 game season. At what point can the wear and tear of an NFL season bring diminishing returns in terms of quality of play on the field?

SB: Substitutions…think about substitutions. When I was a kid I had four 20 game winners. Now I have five guys that can’t play a whole season. And I’ve got four middle relievers and a set up man, I mean where is Milt Pappas when you need him?

Let me frame this in a different way…

At the end of the year you stretch out 16 games to 18 games and when you (Bruce Laird) were playing, what was it 8 games? (laughter)

When I get to the end of 16 games there are a lot of players on my 53 man roster that I don’t know anything about. And there’s no reason why Paul Kruger shouldn’t have played some last year instead of Trevor. And there’s no reason why some of our other players shouldn’t play. So through the course of a year you are forced to play those guys because of injury. So as much as everybody talks about the injuries in this league, I still finished with a handful of guys last year that I was not happy didn’t get a lot of snaps. So I can promise you that Terrell Suggs and Haloti Ngata will not play 20 more snaps in two games.

I’m still looking for Arthur Jones to get out there. Ozzie Newsome thinks he’s great. Arthur Jones, fifth round pick out of Syracuse, can’t get on the field. I want him on that field and if you go to two more games I promise you are going to see guys like Paul Kruger out there last year more than you would because we’ll start rotating more.

You put a lot of money into a guy like Flacco and Lewis, if those guys get hurt that’s a major loss in an extended season…

SB: No it’s not. A loss is a loss. It doesn’t matter whether you have four games left in the season or six. If you’ve lost him for the year you’ve lost him if you IR him. I think what you will see are ways to set a player down, take him off the roster for 6 weeks and in effect make the P.U.P. list a floating list.

So if you put a guy down because he has an MCL tear which everyone knows takes four weeks, you are going to have the luxury of deciding if you want to let the player hang on the roster for those four weeks or P.U.P. him for six.

In a way such a system rewards the team that scouts better. It allows the deeper team to utilize their quality depth more. It even gets back to the inactive list…

SB: It’s stupid! I’ve got young healthy guys being deactivated an hour and a half before the game for now reason. The [lousy] teams didn’t want you to have an advantage.