But Ray Lewis thought it was something else that powered Jones’ touchdown run.
“I was just told to put my hands on his chest, and I rubbed my hands down his chest, and I saw him break through there,” Lewis said. “You have to be a real fast person to catch him. He is a special man.”
“Man, that dude is a special guy,” Jones said of Lewis. “He did the same thing he did to me right before the Denver game, he walked up to me, grabbed me, right on my arm and he said, ‘I’m doing what I was told to do.’ I think he was talking about the man upstairs doing what he told him to do. It’s crazy.”
Just 11 seconds into the second half of Super Bowl XLVII, the Ravens were now involved in a laugher, up 28-6, and in disbelief that it could possibly be this easy.
“I touched him,” Lewis was explaining to linebackers coach Don Martindale right after the play. “All I did was what God told me to do. I touched the man,” Lewis said showing the man players call “Wink” about divine intervention on the Jones touchdown return.
At this point not even “the man upstairs” was going to argue with Lewis.
If the Ravens were to win this game, it was now squarely in the hands of the defense, which was handed a 22-point lead in the second half of the Super Bowl. Lewis could’ve only dreamed of such a scenario over the last dozen years in Baltimore trying to climb the mountain back to the Lombardi Trophy and confetti.
Kaepernick, who played his college ball at Nevada, was no stranger to a shootout. He preferred a wide-open game and, like Flacco, had no quit in him. It’s why Jim Harbaugh benched former No. 1 overall draft pick Alex Smith in favor of the second-year dual-threat back in November.
Kaepernick was fearless. He was also very accurate and very mobile. Starting at the 14, he hit Michael Crabtree for a 29-yard gain over Cary Williams. Two plays later, on 2nd & 7 from the Ravens 46, Kaepernick was sacked by Arthur Jones for a 6-yard loss.
And suddenly, with 13:04 left in the third quarter of Super Bowl XLVII and with the Ravens leading the 49ers 28-6, the lights went out.
With the world watching and waiting, the lights went completely out for just a flash and then it was clear that generators turned on making it a dim light that allowed for safety on one bank of the upper strand. Chaos ensued for everyone in the Superdome who was trying to figure out what happened, but the fans and more than 71,000 stayed amazingly calm amidst modern fears of terrorism and massive panic. Now, how to get the lights functioning at a level that would allow the resumption of the biggest sporting event in the country? The lights were incapable of fully illuminating in mere seconds. They were designed to come back slowly to full power and the league, television network and players knew this was going to be somewhat extended. Some players stretched, almost in a pre-game fashion all over the field and sideline and a few picked up balls and played catch.
Jacoby Jones joked about it later: “I didn’t even care about the power outage. I was tired. I was still catching my breath [from the kickoff return].”
Matt Birk best summed it up for the rest of the Ravens: “We stretched and talked, but nobody brought a deck of cards. We were a little bored.”
As the lull lingered, John Harbaugh realized that his brother’s side of the field had lost communication with the coaches upstairs via their headsets and the league was going to turn off the Ravens’ headsets. Harbaugh unleashed a tongue lashing on Mike Kensil, the NFL’s vice president of game operations and he later said he “way overreacted” in the circumstance.
But he was shown getting visibly antsy, and so was everyone else in America.
Harbaugh gathered the team as the delay continued: “There ain’t no mountain high enough, there ain’t no valley low enough and there’s nothing that’s going to keep us from winning this championship. We’re going to win this game no matter how…long…it…takes!”
