The three-year spending spree that left the Ravens with a pounding salary cap headache after last season wasn't regarded as a radical plan in the NFL's decision-making corridors.

Teams striving to win a Super Bowl typically sign clusters of players to contracts with minimal immediate salary cap impact, knowing the day will come when they have to slash their rosters because of the escalating cost of the buy-now, pay-later deals.

The Ravens' antidote for their cap headache wasn't at all typical, however.

Most teams in such a position continue to renegotiate their largest contracts and extend their cap debt, attempting to win a title. At the very worst, they gradually pare the big names from their roster over several years.

The Ravens took on their economic obligations all at once, breaking up their veteran team with one mighty swing of the salary cap scythe last February.

They chose to go with a painfully young nucleus in 2002, essentially ceding the season while clearing out their cap ledger for 2003 and beyond.

"We studied it," Ravens coach Brian Billick said recently, "and what we saw was case after case of teams hanging on [to a veteran core] for too long, thinking they had a chance to win when, in fact, they were just delaying the inevitable [defeat] and actually making their cap situation worse. So we made the decision to go this way."

Take the hard hit for a year on and off the field, then start over with room to maneuver under the cap in 2003.

"The rest of the league is watching us to see how this goes," said Ozzie Newsome, the Ravens' senior vice president of football operations. "If we can turn this around real quick, other teams may follow suit."

The cap forced the Ravens' hand, no doubt about that. The contracts that Shannon Sharpe, Sam Adams, Rod Woodson and others signed in 1999, 2000 and 2001 relied heavily on up-front money, in the form of signing bonuses, and included sharply increasing costs down the line. Such deals enabled the Ravens to get under the cap as they went for, and won, a Super Bowl in January 2001 and defended the title last season. Then the toll for agreeing to put future salaries on a credit card was exacted.

When the Ravens looked at their projected payroll for 2002, they owed well in excess of the cap's $71.1 million limit.

They chose to say farewell to numerous veterans, freeing themselves from having to pay the major salaries in those contracts, which, like most NFL deals, weren't guaranteed.

It was necessary but it wasn't fun.

"We let great players and good friends walk out the door," Billick said. "We knew there would be second-guessing."

'Black Friday'

How could there not be? The team's won-lost record was certain to suffer, and at the prices charged for tickets, the idea of replacing popular veterans with untested youngsters was bound to be a tough sell.

According to Ravens spokesman Kevin Byrne, owner Art Modell went to Newsome "several times and said, 'Can't we just do Shannon? To have a little more leadership?' But Ozzie said, 'No, we're going to go with this and wipe the credit card clean.' "

Modell didn't intervene with the front office's decision. He gave Billick a new four-year contract to lessen the instability.

But there is still wincing in the organization at the memory of what Newsome calls "Black Friday," the day when the veteran cuts were announced.

"You can talk about it and know it's coming, but you don't know how hard it is until you actually go through it," Billick said. "We could see how young we were going to be, but you couldn't appreciate it until you walked out at that first practice and looked into those faces and saw just how young you really were."

Newsome said: "The one thing I continue to rack my brain over is: How could I have saved [cornerback] Duane Starks? He was a good, young player, just going into his prime. I would like to have created a way to keep him, and I probably could have by extending our cap debt a little longer. But we decided to eradicate it in one year."

Many of the departed players are still on the Ravens' cap ledger this year because signing bonuses, though paid immediately in real dollars, are prorated over the length of a contract in cap dollars.

But while the amount of "dead money" - cap dollars going to players no longer on the team - on the books is considerable in 2002, it's small compared to the salaries the Ravens owed.

And there will be little "dead money" on the ledger next year, giving Newsome plenty of room to add veterans.

Ravens president David Modell declined to reveal the amount of "dead money" the Ravens are carrying this year, but it is estimated they're paying at least a dozen players no longer on the team.

Ring of truth

That has led to some criticism that the team mismanaged the cap, but David Modell, Billick and Newsome just laugh at the notion.

"Whenever someone says we didn't do this thing right, I just take out my Super Bowl ring, blow on it, polish it against my chest and ask, 'Have you seen this?' " Billick said. "There isn't one knowledgeable person in the league who disagrees with what we did.

"Almost from the day I got here [in 1999], we knew this was the course of action we would take. We knew we would spend to create a window of opportunity and take our chances, understanding all the while that the time would come when we would have to deal with [the window closing]."

David Modell said they could see this day coming as early as 1999.

"We did a big research project then in an effort to see if there was a correlation between spending at certain levels and the won-lost column, and we found that, in fact, there was a correlation," Modell said. "We found we needed to anticipate spending over the cap [in 'pay later' dollars] if we were to anticipate fielding a winning team."

When Art Modell sold a minority interest to Steve Bisciotti at the end of 1999, the team finally had the resources to start shelling out for talent.

"In 2000, from a cash standpoint, we were the highest-spending team in the NFL," said Ravens director of football administration Pat Moriarty, the team's salary cap manager. "The Redskins got all the publicity for what they were spending, but at the end of the year, we were the highest-paying."

Many of those dollars were delayed for cap purposes. Then, after the Ravens won the Super Bowl, they added to their debt by signing quarterback Elvis Grbac and reloading for a title defense. Last season ended with a playoff loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and it was time to start paying off debts.

With a 3-4 record going into today's game in Atlanta, the Ravens have fared better than expected, seemingly proving you can take a huge cap hit and survive with a young roster.

But even if they lose the rest of their games, they won't look back with regret at any decisions.

"We went for it and it paid off; we won the Super Bowl," Newsome said. "That's the thing that makes going through this [rebuilding] easy to take. Some other teams have made the same, big push that we did, and they didn't get there. Jacksonville and Tennessee haven't gotten there. They're still trying to win. They're also drafting in the top 10, so they aren't playing very well, either. I'd much rather be where we are. Whatever we have to go through [in rebuilding], it was worth it."