One night during the 1998 season I was in a bind when a player cancelled on me at the last minute. I immediately called Lewis, and others as well, to play the role of last-minute fill-in. When I reached Lewis, he sounded horribly sick when he answered his phone. When he knew I was in jeopardy of having a roomful of disappointed Ravens fans, he hopped in his truck and arrived at The Barn within 30 minutes.
Arriving late and obviously under the weather and nursing a massive head cold, Lewis told the fans, “I’ll always be there for you guys for supporting me. I’d never want to disappoint my fans. They mean too much to me.”
We had a fun relationship because we could poke fun at one another. I would always ride him about the Miami Hurricanes’ latest problems (with considerable help from Florida State grad Peter Boulware) and he would ride me about my radio competitors. He would almost always ask me about my son, whom he took a liking to right away.
On Halloween night of 1997, he and I both got invited to be celebrity judges of an enormous costume contest on the square in Fells Point called the “Parade of Fools.” It was an event sponsored by Pepsi – one of my radio sponsors – so the soft drink was plentiful around the dais and Pepsi cups were prominently displayed. It was a Friday night, Fells Point was packed with the interestingly bizarre folks that only Halloween can bring out, and I was out for a good time. Only a “fool” wouldn’t have enjoyed a few adult beverages while watching the festivities unfold. My girlfriend, with my full approval, had purchased a couple of beers at one of the local taverns and placed them on the stage behind me. I wound up sneaking a few beers, disguised in a Pepsi cup, over to Ray. I think he and I laughed all night as we played like 16-year-olds getting away with one. We kept yelling back and forth stuff like, “Boy, that Pepsi sure is good” and “How’s that Pepsi taste?”
Ray Lewis is a fun guy. His teammates love playing with him. His coaches love his enthusiasm for the game and his work habits from the video room down onto the field. The football fans of Baltimore enjoy his style, his work ethic and his sense of community. And, of course, the pre-game dance that seemed to shock the world on Super Bowl Sunday, has been his calling card since Memorial Stadium and the first season.
There were two things that Lewis lacked as a young player trying to find his way in the league: a role model and another player as good as he is who could match his passion for the game.
During his second off-season, defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis found his young linebacker a match: future Hall of Famer and NFL 75th Anniversary cornerback, Rod Woodson.
I saw the relationship form right away. Where the corner in the Ravens clubhouse during the 1997 season featured Ray Lewis mentoring Morris, Boulware and Jamie Sharper – not a bad group of talent, mind you, nor a bad leader – the 1998 season would begin with an absolute rock of foundation with Woodson in that corner teaching the young bucks, including newly added Duane Starks, about life in the NFL.
Woodson’s eternal line for anyone who dared enter the corner of talent: “We’re just trying to get right around here.” And he didn’t just mean football.
At one point, wanting to befriend Woodson (and that wasn’t easy), I invited him out for the tradition of crab cakes and football talk at The Barn. Lewis intervened and made the introduction on my behalf. Woodson was a diplomat. “If you get Ray to come out to the show, I’ll come with him. I go wherever Ray goes.”
Ray said, “We’ll be there this Monday night.” And they came, too.
It’s very easy to define Ray Lewis by the way he plays football. The plaudits and the praise for his style will continue for as long as NFL Films continues showing highlights of Super Bowl XXXV.
From defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis: “He runs sideline to sideline, covers receivers, plays in space. He’s got everything you want, from a great mental capacity to leadership skills to incredible intensity and athletic ability.”
From Ravens’ linebackers coach Jack Del Rio: “The advantage that he has over most players at that position is he’s big enough and strong enough to handle people at the point of attack, yet fast enough to make plays outside the box sideline to sideline. Most guys that are fast enough to go sideline to sideline can’t hold up inside against stronger people. Most guys that hold up well against the stronger people can’t run the edges like he does. So, he’s a rare combination…His mind is set. We talk about the fact that great players aren’t great one game and not the next, aren’t great one season and not the next. It’s over time. It’s consistently great over time. And that’s what he wants. When you have somebody that’s motivated that way, he soaks up every bit of information I give him. He’s infectious because of what he rubs off on the other guys. And they pick up on it. So he really sets the tone of the defense.”
From defensive end Michael McCrary: “He can’t wait to play. You can see it in his eyes. He can’t wait to go over and knock someone’s head off.”
Everyone has a favorite Ray Lewis story to tell.
For Marvin Lewis, it’s about the first time he ever saw a tape of Ray Lewis.
“I was still with the Steelers in 1995 and we were scouting players in our spare time, watching film,” Marvin Lewis said. “I turned the tape off after five plays and got disgusted because I knew I’d never coach him in Pittsburgh. We had plenty of linebackers and we weren’t in a position to draft him. We didn’t need him. But he was the best guy I’d ever seen. He could run and he could make tackles. When I got to Baltimore, (former Ravens’ linebackers coach) Maxie (Baughan) went to Florida and worked him out and loved his competitive nature. He was obviously undersized but he didn’t take on blocks. We built a system where he didn’t have to. On draft day we just crossed our fingers and he fell to us.”
The scouts didn’t love Lewis because there were bigger guys available in the draft. He wasn’t a prototypical middle linebacker in the NFL.
“Scouts are always going to differ because they don’t have a vision of what you’re going to do on game day,” Marvin Lewis said. “There’s a feeling that if a middle linebacker isn’t 6-2 and 250 pounds, they can’t do it. Ray was under 6-1 and about 238 pounds. He was plenty big enough for me.”
For Director of College Scouting Phil Savage, there was some minor trepidation on draft day. “He didn’t interview well during the combines, he had the double earrings and he came from a tough background in Miami. There were a lot of teams turned off by Ray, I’m not going to lie to you. That’s how he fell so far.”
But five days later when Lewis reported to Owings Mills, Savage got a report from the weight room that made him smile.
“When the rookies came in, they gave them a series of tests,” Savage recalled. “They would do the bench, pull-ups, dips – stuff like that. Lional Vital, who’s now a scout with New England, was our scouting guy down there in the room watching it all unfold. When Ray stepped in for every exercise, the first question he asked every time was, ‘What’s the record?’ That’s when you know you have someone special. He had the mentality that you wanted in a pro. He wanted to be the best at everything right away.”
He impressed the Ravens coaching staff so much that weekend that when veteran middle linebacker Pepper Johnson showed up for mini-camp weighing nearly 280 pounds, they cut the guy with two Super Bowl rings and a big cap number for an undersized rookie with a passion for the game.
Yet despite all of these football credentials – and they were all earned through long days of sweat, long before he hoisted the Lombardi Trophy or the Super Bowl MVP trophy that night in Tampa – Ray Lewis will almost certainly be forever defined by the masses for an event that had nothing to do with tackling, blocking, passion or winning football games.
It had to do with celebrity and murder.
