Deion Sanders Doesn’t Believe Ray Lewis is Retiring
By Josh Hill
The biggest news of the NFL week on a week that features a lead up to the first weekend of the postseason, is news that Baltimore Ravens legend and future Hall of Famer Ray Lewis will retire after the end of the Ravens season. While the sports community is in a spiral of looking back on what a career Lewis has had, one former teammate and friend isn’t buying the talk.
Deion Sanders appeared on NFL Network this morning to dish on how he felt about the news, and he said straight up that it’s not true — at least he’s not buying it.
“I don’t believe it — I really don’t,” Sanders said in an interview with Andrew Siciliano. “We all know that he’s been hampered with injuries over the last several years.”
The first player fans in denial are pointing to is Brett Favre, who notoriously flip-flopped on his retirement. That probably won’t be the case with Lewis, but fans in Baltimore don’t have to think back that far to see an example of a Ravens player that retired, then came back after an offseason of pondering. Derrick Mason announced he intended to retire and then came back to the NFL for a few more seasons.
Sanders doesn’t think that Lewis will become the next Brett Favre, but he thinks an offseason of hard thought will change his mind.
“He could say, ‘You know, I could do this again because we’re almost there,’” Sanders said. “But if they’re not close, then I can see Ray Lewis saying, ‘This is a wrap.’”
If you listened to Lewis in his announcement, he sounded like his mind was made up and that he was prepared to go out on his own terms, rather than being pushed out by the Ravens. Not that Baltimore would want to push out Lewis, but no one thought Green Bay would end it’s relationship with Favre the way they did, so anything is possible.
There’s still a lot of time before an official announcement will be made, and let’s not forget Randy Moss took a year off an returned this year to the 49ers. But no matter what Ray Lewis does, like everything he’s ever done, it won’t please everyone.