I Feel Like Going On

by Ray Lewis

  It’s funny, how it all worked out, first two games of the postseason, the Ravens fans being pulled every which way—me retiring, the Colts returning, Peyton Manning going up against us with his new team. It reminded me that God doesn’t make any mistakes. It played out this way for a reason, by design—me, carrying my city on my back. The postseason can be an emotional time, but it doesn’t usually work out that it’s this emotional.

  The Denver fans, they didn’t care at all about what was going on back in Baltimore—and rightly so. They did what they could to get under my skin. There were signs everywhere in that stadium:

  RAY LEWIS WILL NEVER PLAY ANOTHER GAME!

  BYE BYE, RAY.

  THE CAREER STOPS HERE!

  There was none of that blind hatred I’d seen back in Pittsburgh, first game after my trial. This was just good old-fashioned heckling, gamesmanship, but it got me going. It stoked the fire, picked me up, drove me forward. My arm wasn’t right, coming out of that game against the Colts, so this was a worry—not a big deal, but a worry. If I had to measure it, I’d say I was at 50 percent, maybe 60 percent. But I was on a journey, and 50 percent would have to be enough. Worry or not, I could still get to the ball. Worry or not, I could still put a hurt on someone. Only thing I couldn’t do, really, was reach for the ball with my bum arm. But the game was mostly about beating your man, and I could beat my man, no problem.

  I told my coaches, “I’m good.”

  And I was—only, if I was being completely honest, I was just “good enough.”

  It was a battle, this game.

  Denver scored first on a ninety-yard punt return.

  We answered back with a fifty-six-yard touchdown pass from Joe Flacco to Torrey Smith.

  Next, Corey Graham picked off a Peyton Manning pass and ran it back thirty-nine yards for the score, but then Manning threw a fifteen-yard touchdown pass to Brandon Stokely.

  And that was just the first quarter.

  I was getting my tackles. I was hurting, but I was beating my man, getting to the ball. I was dictating—only, each time I dictated, my arm barked back. The Broncos couldn’t tell that I was hurting. My teammates, don’t think they could tell, either, because I was playing like I was burning. But I couldn’t extend my arm, so I was a wounded warrior. Every time we got the ball back, I’d gather myself on the sideline, braced against the pain I’d just endured, the pain still to come. A couple times in there, I caught myself wishing the clock would hurry up and move, so I could get to the end of this ordeal.

  (Baltimore Ravens/Shawn Hubbard)

  Even though I still wasn’t at a hundred percent coming into those games, I’d come to play.

  At halftime, I called the team together and showed them this ring I’d started wearing around my neck. It was sent to me by this kid in Florida who’d heard me give a talk one day and quote from the book of Isaiah 54:17. He was inspired to make me this ring, with his own hard-earned money, and it carried the inscription: NO WEAPON FORMED AGAINST YOU SHALL PROSPER. So I gathered my teammates, asked them to join me in this prayer.

  We stood as a group and recited that line three times:

  No weapon formed against you shall prosper.

  We traded touchdowns the rest of the way, ending with a seventy-yard touchdown pass from Flacco to Jacoby Jones—what a lot of folks started calling the “Mile High Miracle,” because there was less than a minute to go in the game. That play, it kept us alive, but it also added a whole new dimension to our game, because Ravens football had always been hard-hitting, nose to the grindstone–type football. We were known for our defense. We’d never been known as a big-play team—wasn’t our style—but here on this one play, Joe Flacco let the world know we would find a way to beat you on his side of the ball, too.

  Anyway, that put the score at 35–35, and that’s how it ended in regulation, and then we traded punches for a while—stop, stop, stop . . .

  Finally, Corey Graham grabbed another interception—the dude was playing out of his head—and we ran off another few plays to gain some field position. Then, fourth and five, ball on the Denver twenty-nine, we sent in the field-goal unit.

  I’d started having these strange dreams, around the time I told my teammates I was retiring. I couldn’t understand these dreams at first, but they all had the number 40 in them. I wasn’t sleeping well to begin with. That’s how it goes when you’re nursing this kind of injury—you only sleep on your good side, so when I tossed and turned I shot up in pain. Sometimes I’d wake up and just have this image in my head of a giant number 40. Or maybe the number 40 was a part of the story of the dream. Once in a while, there’d be a stadium, with a giant number 40 on the scoreboard, a giant 40 on the field, whatever. Some of the dreams had to do with football, some of them just with life, but always there’d be the number 40, over and over.

  And here I took the time to notice that our field-goal kicker, Justin Tucker, was standing on the 40-yard line as he lined up to take the kick. Back of my mind I thought, Hmmm . . . that’s interesting. And when that ball sailed through the uprights and gave us the win, I went out onto the field and did my little dance in celebration, and halfway through I noticed I was standing on the 40-yard line, too. Again—Hmmm . . . that’s interesting. Laid my head down on that field, right at the 40. Don’t know why—didn’t even think about it. And I don’t know that I’d fully made the connection just yet, between these little “40” moments and the dreams I’d been having, but it registered, and I guess I filed it away.

  It was something to think about.

  Meanwhile, the Patriots were taking care of business in their divisional game against the Houston Texans, so that set us up for a rematch of last year’s AFC Championship—and let me tell you, there was a whole lot of trash-talking heading up to that game. Some of it wasn’t even trash, wasn’t even coming from the Patriots camp. In fact, a company that owned a bunch of billboards started putting up these LED countdown clocks all over the Boston area, ticking down the time to “Ray’s Retirement Party,” setting it up to get everyone thinking the Patriots would knock us out of the playoffs and this would be my last game. It got a lot of attention, that move—it certainly got mine, but not in the way those folks probably meant. It got me irritated, infuriated—and that’s not something you want to do when you’re about to face me in a big game.

  Like a lot of athletes, I played with competitive fire—been that way my whole life. And here I was already fired up to begin with. Here the pain in my arm was fire enough. The pain of last year’s loss in this same game was fire enough. So my message to my teammates going into this game was to hit, to hurt. I said, “Every person touches the ball, punish him. We’re in the punishing business.” We punished that New England team. Wasn’t even a match, but it took us a while to get our points. Biggest play of the game? We were down 13–7 at the half, but then we crawled back, put a couple nice drives together, made a couple key stops. Scored a touchdown to take the lead, midway through the third, another to start the fourth quarter, and this one put us up 21–13. It was still just a one-possession game, and with the ball back in Tom Brady’s hands, we had to keep sharp. The Patriots had this power play they used to run, and I told my boys, next time it came round, I’d try to cut out the lineman’s legs, cause a big pile. It was just like that Eddie George play—I had it read. And the pile left the Patriots running back Stevan Ridley one-on-one with our strong safety, Bernard Pollard. And Bernard hit that boy and made him fumble . . . on the 40-yard line. Bernard just about put him to sleep—night, night!

  On the 40-yard line.

  • • •

  So many great stories came out of Super Bowl XLVII. It was the first time in Super Bowl history that two brothers faced each other as head coaches—John Harbaugh on our side of the field, and Jim Harbaugh on the San Francisco side. And Beyoncé was set to play the halftime show, so that also got a lot of coverage. Heading into the game, I gave a ton of “last dance” interviews, but I didn’t talk about the pain I wa
s dealing with. It worried me, but I didn’t let on—pain had never stopped me before, and I wasn’t about to let it stop me now. It was just something to deal with, to get past—a gauntlet all its own. But this pain in my arm was like nothing I’d ever experienced. This pain was debilitating. Playing through pain, it was no big thing. But this wasn’t about playing through. This was about powering past, rising above, getting my body to do things it wasn’t designed to do. Every one of these playoff games, it set me back, sent me reeling. All those tackles, those hits, they sucked a little life out of me—and by the end of this postseason run, I’d be credited with fifty-one tackles, a playoff record I’m betting won’t be broken anytime soon. Got to where I couldn’t lift my arm without feeling like I’d be better off just ripping it from my shoulder. Got to where, the night before the Super Bowl, holed up in my hotel room in New Orleans, I had to rig a makeshift traction device just to get some relief. I tied some shoelaces together, made myself a sling, ran it over the little sprinkler head that came out of the wall over my bed. And I sat like that—half asleep, half not—trying to close my eyes, trying to will myself past the pain, waiting for the sun to come up so I could get ready, get to the stadium and get dressed. Distract myself from the pain by putting myself through these paces one final time.

  For a beat or two, I didn’t think I’d make it. It hurts me to admit it, but it was so. I couldn’t even crawl into the bathroom to splash some water on my face, but then I found a way to scramble to the sink, and as I let that faucet run I looked at myself in the mirror. There was the story of my life, right there in my reflection. There was the pain of my father abandoning me. Abandoning us. There was the pain of these other men, beating on me, beating on my mother. There was the pain of going hungry, the pain of all that weight I had to carry as a child, taking care of my brother and sisters. There was the pain of losing my best friend to the butt end of a rifle, the pain of being falsely accused in Atlanta. The pain of being incarcerated, abused, violated. The pain of being judged for a terrible crime that had nothing to do with me. The pain of fighting back from a career’s worth of injuries, surgeries.

  And finally, there was the pain of this right here—only, I couldn’t tell anybody about it. I couldn’t tell our team doctor. I couldn’t tell my coaches, my teammates. I could only stare myself down in that bathroom mirror and find a way to power through. To rise above. To ask my body to do the impossible. I thought about what it meant to be a leader—because, really, that’s the spot I was in. I thought how I might lead if I couldn’t really play. I thought, How do you go into the greatest battle ever and not tell your soldiers what’s really going on? But to tell them would have been to take away one of our greatest weapons. Didn’t matter just then that I couldn’t fire with the same intensity I’d always brought to the game. Didn’t matter that I couldn’t execute. It only mattered that I took the field and put it out there that I was a force to be reckoned with. The same force I’d always been. I could lead my teammates just by putting on my helmet and lining up on that field.

  I ran the shower, thought I’d stand and soak for a while, maybe calm down the pain in my triceps. But finally I just had to suck it up and roll. I made my way to the stadium, to the locker room, the whole time trying not to let on the kind of pain I was in. I couldn’t drop my arm—it wouldn’t go. But I thought if someone saw me carrying my arm in this way, favoring it, we were done.

  As I walked into the locker room, I locked eyes with Brendon Ayanbadejo, a special-teams player out of UCLA—a solid guy, played some linebacker for us, too. He could see I was suffering, struggling. There was no one else around, and I could see in Brendon’s eyes that he didn’t know what to do, what to say. And in my eyes, he could see that this wasn’t something we needed to talk about. All he said as I walked past was, “I ain’t gonna say nothing.”

  And I said, “Please. Not now.”

  There would be time for all of us to say something later. For me, now, it was time to lead. I couldn’t play—not the way folks expected me to play—but I could lead.

  And, so, I did—tried to, anyway. I knew that my job that day, on that field, was to set an example, to set a tone. To lead.

  (Baltimore Ravens/Shawn Hubbard)

  Readying for battle before heading out to the Super Bowl.

  All week I had this kid quarterback in my head. We’d run through all these great quarterbacks just to get to this game: Andrew Luck, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and now we had Colin Kaepernick, who could do things with the football none of those other three could do. Man, that’s a gauntlet right there. The young guns and the old guard. That’s a big-time lineup—potentially, four future Hall of Fame quarterbacks—and we picked ’em off, one by one. But Kaepernick required a whole different game plan than the other three. Those guys were classic pocket passers—they didn’t move around a whole lot, so you could contain them with a decent pass rush. But this kid out of Nevada? Oh man, he could run. He could take a broken play and turn it into something special, so he was in my head when I took the field. A good distraction from the pain.

  We came out strong to start the game—just took it to them that first half. Headed into the locker room with a score of 21–6. The 49ers could only manage two field goals, so we were rolling.

  Second half, coming out of that locker room a second time, I was hurting. For the longest time, I was hurting. In the Super Bowl, the halftime runs longer. There are all those commercials, all those commentators need time to do their thing. Beyoncé, she needed time to do her thing. They had to set up that big stage and break it down. And all that time, me cooling down, fighting through that pain, it just made my arm worse. Whatever adrenaline I’d had to get me through that first half, it had leaked away, and now I didn’t know how much longer I could play through this intense pain, and as we walked back out to the field, I dropped to my knees in prayer. I made like I was tying my shoes, didn’t want anyone to step in on this private moment, this personal moment, but I needed some guidance, man. I needed to know how He wanted me to play it.

  And just then, inside this personal moment, me kneeling in prayer by the side of the field, pretending to tie my shoes, He spoke to me. He did. I could hear Him, clear as day, through the din of that Superdome crowd.

  It was me who spoke first. I said, “We’re up by a lot of points, but I don’t know if I can hold my arm up any longer. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

  He said, “Trust Jacoby.”

  Like I said, clear as day—like the voice that spoke to Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come . . .

  Trust Jacoby . . .

  And then: “Give him your strength.”

  I thought, What? Trust Jacoby? Give him your strength? What does that mean? But then it came to me. Then I knew. I ran over to Jacoby Jones, who was getting ready to run out to receive the second-half kickoff. I grabbed him, spun him around. I said, “I’m just doing what God is telling me to do.”

  Jacoby, he looked at me like I had a couple screws loose, but he didn’t do anything, say anything. He just stood there, waited. So I put my hands on his chest and ran them down the front of his jersey. That’s all. And as he ran out to receive the kick, I looked down and saw where we were standing: on the 40-yard line.

  Where else?

  Next, I heard God speak to me again. He said, “Watch this.”

  So I watched Jacoby Jones, deep in our end zone, catching that drive off the foot of the San Francisco kicker, David Akers, tucking it, breaking tackles, and dancing the length of the field. One hundred and eight yards! The longest kickoff return in Super Bowl history. At a time in the game when a leader looks to put the hammer down on his opponent.

  Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. I was bursting with what I was seeing. I was dancing up and down that sideline myself, telling my coaches, “I just touched him! I just touched him!”

  It was the craziest thing, the most beautiful thing. The purest thing.

  • • •

>   In that moment, the game was ours. There was nothing that could stop us. And then there was that “lights out” moment when the Superdome went dark. Folks started calling it the “Blackout Bowl” after that, treating it like a joke, but it was no joke. It took us out of our game. We’d been up 28–6, been keeping the 49ers out of our end zone, but then there was this power outage nobody could explain, the game was delayed more than a half hour, and we got out of our rhythm. Whatever momentum we’d had—and it was huge after that 108-yard kickoff to start the second half—it was gone. Don’t know how it happened, but we let San Francisco back in the game.

  Just like that, we were scrambling. Just like that, it was a whole new ballgame. Colin Kaepernick was a different dude coming out of that delay. It’s like he’d been playing tentative, the big moment maybe just a little too big for him, but then he had this little pocket of extra time to catch his breath and take in the scene without any of the glitz and noise of the Super Bowl, and he calmed down, started to play. First, it had taken him a while to adjust to us, to adjust to this giant stage, and now it took us our own while to adjust to him.

  The 49ers came out of that blackout and scored seventeen unanswered points—touchdown, touchdown, field goal—which cut our lead to 28–23 at the end of the third quarter.

  We hit back with a field goal to go back up by eight. And then Kaepernick did some leading of his own, racing his team across the field for another touchdown. Then Jim Harbaugh looked to tie the game with a two-point play, but Kaepernick failed to connect with Randy Moss and we were holding on to a tiny two-point lead, midway through the fourth quarter.

  Joe Flacco led us on a nice little drive, ate up some clock, ended with a field goal to put us up by five, 34–29, and here is where I had to suck it up one more time. I went out there determined to make one last stand—only, these 49ers, they kept coming. They connected on a pass, pushed the ball on the ground, kept moving those chains. And then, Frank Gore busted a thirty-three-yard run around the left end, took the ball all the way down inside our 10-yard line. There was about two and a half minutes left on the clock, and this was where we doubled down, dialed in. This was where, whatever hurt I was hurting, I had to set it aside. This was where, whatever prayers I was praying, I had to turn up the volume. I knew that if I rushed this one lineman, hard, I would free up a lane for Dannell Ellerbe. I knew it would hurt, but I knew we’d have that clear path to Kaepernick and we could pressure the quarterback, so I counted it a good trade—and as soon as I made that hit, my arm went numb. But the pass fell incomplete, so it was all good. And as I walked back to the huddle, I brought my good hand up to that necklace and ran my fingers across that inscription: