It's official. Quarterback Steve (Air) McNair has landed in Baltimore.
McNair, 33, passed his physical Thursday to finalize a proposed trade from the Tennessee Titans to the Baltimore Ravens for a fourth-round draft pick.
"I think this is a place we can win Super Bowls," he said. "That is the missing piece out of my career."
Steve McNair has joined the Ravens.
(Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
McNair received permission to speak to Baltimore on April 30 and reached terms on a five-year contract with an $11-million US signing bonus.
He will earn $1 million US this season.
"Bringing Steve in, does that guarantee us being in Miami [the Super Bowl]?" Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome asked. "No, it doesn't, but I think today we are a better football team than we were yesterday."
"He is one of the elite quarterbacks in this game," Ravens head coach Brian Billick said. "His record speaks for itself."
McNair, the winningest quarterback in Titans history, completed an impressive 61.3 per cent (292-476) of his passes for 3,161 yards and 16 touchdowns with 11 interceptions in 14 starts last season.
But McNair's relationship with Tennessee soured April 3, when it prohibited him from using the team's training facility until he restructured his $9-million US contract to ease the pain of a $23.46-million US salary-cap hit.
"The drama is over," McNair said. "I knew the $23-million salary-cap hit was going to be impossible for them to handle."
"We will end up with more money than we've had over the last probably seven, eight years," Titans general manager Floyd Reese said. "We'll have money for injuries.
"We'll have money to re-sign some of the quote-unquote, core people. We'll have money to do the things we've not been able to do for a number of years.
"It's been hard. But we all know that, in one fell swoop here, we've gotten ourselves pretty healthy pretty quick."
Pro Bowl passer
McNair is a three-time Pro Bowler and one of five quarterbacks in NFL history to amass 25,000 passing yards and 3,000 rushing yards, joining Hall of Famers John Elway, Fran Tarkenton and Steve Young as well as Randall Cunningham.
McNair tops all Titans quarterbacks with a record of 81-59 and, three years ago, shared NFL most valuable player honours with Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts.
"I don't know that we could ask for a lot more from the guy," Reese said. "When he finishes, he'll come back to Nashville and he will still be a Titan.
"When people talk about Joe Montana, he's not a Chief, he's a 49er. And Steve McNair will always be a Titan, and I'm thankful for that."
McNair is a career 59.5 per cent passer with 2,305 completions in 3,871 attempts for 27,141 yards and 156 touchdowns with 103 interceptions in 139 NFL games (131 starts) since being drafted third overall by the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans in 1995.
He also has scrambled 614 times for 3,439 yards and 36 touchdowns.
"Clearly, as our starter going in, Steve is going to add a dimension to this football team that we've not had," Billick said.
"I figure he has still got two, three or four years left in him, if he doesn't take the shots that he did in previous years," said Ravens wide receiver Derrick Mason, who played with McNair in Tennessee.
"I think it transforms us. To add Steve, with the kind of player he is, it adds that much more."
With files from Sports Network
