About midway through his three-hour, silence-breaking radio chat yesterday, Brian Billick said he fully expected "snippets" of his comments would be pulled out and played up.

Good call, Coach. You offered up as meaty and juicy a "snippet" as anybody awaiting your comments about your dismissal by the Ravens could ask for. And even though he didn't say it with anger or bitterness, and barely with curiosity - he was just answering a question - it did serve the purpose of showing Billick in a better light, for now, than the man who fired him.

Regardless of whether you think firing Billick was the right or wrong move, that nearly two months have passed without his getting a clear explanation from owner Steve Bisciotti - that he is left to speculate on what the most logical one is from the owner's perspective - is very troubling. At least as troubling as the 11th-hour change of plans about his fate. Even Bisciotti acknowledged being uncomfortable about that.

He should be uncomfortable with this, too.

For Billick to shrug off something that fundamental shows he's a bigger man than many of us would be. To say the following out loud has to be hard enough, but to have lived with it for eight weeks had to be even harder:

"The commitment from the organization, I felt very good about, and it did change, and it changed in a day. Don't know why. Haven't had that conversation, and don't know that I ever will."

Billick said that before a commercial break on ESPN Radio 1300, and after the break, he listened to a replay of his comments immediately after the season finale, when he was asked whether he believed he would coach the Ravens in 2008. "Oh, absolutely. We have a great partnership here," he had said. "I'll take a half a day, and we'll get right back to it." You saw what happened a half a day later.

Continued Billick yesterday: "There are several reasons you can point to for why a change has been made. I'm not naive to that. In terms of the actual conversation we had and the transition, I could see very readily that Steve had made his mind up, that for whatever reason, he had made the decision. It was firm in his mind. So there was no reason to push it any further.

"We had all of those discussions over the course of the season and the direction we wanted to go, and for whatever reason, he had the conviction that he did about making the change in going forward. I could see clearly in his eyes that's what he needed to do. So as that partner, it was my job to say, 'I understand that.'"

Unfortunately, The Sun was unable to reach Bisciotti, through the Ravens, for a reaction. Just as unfortunately, outside of the CBS Radio studios after the interview, Billick politely declined to comment.

Billick gets the benefit of the doubt on this one. He has had plenty of chances to vent about how this ended since Dec. 31. Instead, he took every opening yesterday to praise the organization, including Bisciotti, heartily endorsed his replacement, John Harbaugh, and essentially said he wasn't owed any explanation.

Bisciotti certainly doesn't owe us in the public an explanation, and on the day he let Billick go, he didn't give a specific one, except that, well, the Ravens were losing and he didn't like it.

But it says here that Billick deserved more. Some "partnership," if this is how it went down. For all the talk of the new, open style of communication within the organization, particularly during the close call after the 2005 season, this sounds like a significant breach in that communication. An unnecessary one, too. It's not as if all Billick did to help put that big trophy in the lobby of the Castle was to give pithy quotes.

Billick sounded as if he could live with the void. Yet Bisciotti did invite the entire fan base in to judge him and his handling of the first major move of his tenure.

"I hope that, over time, Baltimore views me as a quality of an owner as Brian Billick was a head football coach," Bisciotti said the day of the firing. "So, I've got some catching up to do for the man that I just asked to step down today. And the jury's out on me. Brian's already got his Super Bowl, so I'll try and make you all proud."

Based on the hiring of, and transition to, the new coach, so far, so good. Then again, there appear to be some loose ends to tie up with the old one.

david.steele@baltsun.com

Listen to David Steele on Tuesdays at 9 a.m. on WNST (1570 AM).