Before he had his Hall of Fame career in the NFL, Ray Lewis was doing his thing at the University of Miami almost as long ago as the last time the Miami Dolphins won a playoff game.
The longtime Baltimore Ravens linebacker had some interesting thoughts when he talked about the Dolphins on the eve of the AFC and NFC title games this weekend and how they could get back to prominence after they missed the playoffs this season and finished with a losing record for the first time in five years.
“Sometimes you gotta go through these rebuilding phases,” Lewis told Samantha Rivera of CBS Miami at Pegasus World Cup thoroughbred race in Miami on Saturday. “I think when you have a lot of rock stars, superstars, I will take more chemistry than I would take rock stars. Give me people I can get to work together, and then it all pans itself out. But they got so many personalities, so many people, and then so many directions that they really don’t know … like, when you think of the Dolphins, what’s the identity? Speed? OK, great, but that’s a tangible thing, that’s a talent. I think community. What does it mean to be as a team? When we come in there, who’s the leader? There’s no defined leader.”
Lewis played his entire NFL career with the Ravens, arriving as the second first-round pick of the Ravens’ first draft after they moved from Cleveland in 1996 and leaving after the 2012 season. He was a two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year and seven-time first-team AP All-Pro, and helped Baltimore win the Super Bowl in the 2000 and 2012 seasons.
He was on the opposing sideline the last two times the Dolphins hosted playoff games, helping Baltimore defeat Miami 20-3 in 2001 and 27-9 in 2008. The Dolphins, of course, last won a playoff game December 30, 2000 when they defeated the Indianapolis Colts in overtime.
