It took Ray Lewis four years to reach the Super Bowl. Four years in the league and the former-Miami Hurricane was already playing in the biggest game of his young career, the biggest game in the sport. He was playing in the biggest game in the sport. He was playing in the game that had escaped legends like Eric Dickerson, Deacon Jones, Dick Butkus, Warren Moon, Barry Sanders, Chris Carter, Tony Gonzalez, and LaDanian Tomlinson.
Ray Lewis would not only play in Super Bowl XXXV, but he and his Baltimore Ravens would win. A feat that evaded Hall-of-Famers Dan Marino, Fran Tarkenton, Bruce Matthews, and Bruce Smith.
It took four years for the Baltimore Ravens Lewis to win the Super Bowl, the Super Bowl MVP, Defensive Player-of-the-Year award.
It is twelve years later and Lewis has won more accolades. He has made the Pro Bowl nine more times, been named to five more All-Pro teams as well. He has become the only player to ever register 40 sacks and 30 interceptions.
It is twelve years since he won Super Bowl XXXV. It has taken him twelve years to return to the Super Bowl.
“Back then, I was a little bit more of a follower, because I hadn’t won a Super Bowl yet,” Lewis recalls. “Shannon (Sharpe) was always trying to tell me what it felt like, what were the things you had to do, and the things you had to give up.”
“[N]ow, it’s different, because now I’m a leader going into this Super Bowl, and I have touched the confetti before. Now, there are a bunch of young guys sitting there and saying ‘Oh my god, I don’t believe it’s real.’ And I’m like, ‘It’s real’.”
Lewis has played more seasons (17) and started more games (227) then any other player in history at his position. A testament to his desire to reach the Super Bowl, to be at the pinnacle of success once again.
“It’s the ultimate,” Lewis said. “As a child, you have always had this dream on what this feeling will feel like. There is no greater feeling in this business to be sitting here right now with a chance to win my second Super Bowl ring.”
“It is a surreal feeling, because all of your hard work, no matter what you go through,the pains you go through, the surgeries you go through, whatever you may go through and the end result means that you ended up back here, it’s the ultimate.”
No doubt Lewis has gone through much to get back to this point, to sit on the brink of immortality as one of the select few to have won multiple Super Bowls. In this, his final season, Lewis tore his triceps in Week 6 against the Dallas Cowboys.
Lewis had surgery on it three days later and aggressively rehabbed to make it back for the postseason. Recently, Lewis has come under fire from a report by Sports Illustrated that said Lewis allegedly used deer-antler spray, a banned substance, to return faster. Lewis and the Ravens quickly nixed the report and so far the NFL has no further investigations.
The Ravens linebacker has always been a player well regarded for “leaving it all on the field” and as Super Bowl XLVII marks the end of his career, Lewis still has approached the game with the same focus as always.
“I promise you I haven’t slowed down one time to reflect on my retirement yet,” Lewis said. “If I do that, it means, once again you’ve always heard me say this, that it means I take a selfish approach. This time ain’t about me right now. “This team is about my team and getting my team this Super Bowl win.”
Yet as he prepares, Lewis also recognizes that he must pass the torch, that a new dawn is approaching the middle linebacker position, and he realizes the future of the position is right across the field from him.
“That is a young one, that is a young lion I talk to a lot,” Lewis says of San Francisco 49ers linebacker Patrick Willis.
“I’ve been talking to Patrick since his rookie year, and I got into his story a little bit, why he wears 52 and all that,” said Lewis. “My job is now, every time I call him, every time I tell him something, I always try to give him good advice, whether it’s to stretch more or to do more to have the longevity that you are trying to have in this game.”
Willis is starting off on a career much like Lewis’. Willis has been a Pro Bowler and All-Pro year since entering the league in 2007 and was named Defensive Rookie of the Year. The only difference is it took Willis six seasons to reach the Super Bowl to Lewis’ four.
“I think he is one of the up-and-coming young stars who plays the game the right way,” Lewis went on to say. “He plays the game with a certain passion, and plays with a certain discipline. Honestly, I really enjoy watching the young man play.”
