The rollicking 33-minute Hall of Fame enshrinement speech from former Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis included a reference to the 32-minute blackout during his final NFL game.
With the Ravens leading the 49ers 28-6 early in the third quarter of Super Bowl XLVII, the lights went out. When they came back on and the game resumed more than a half-hour later, the 49ers launched a comeback that nearly stole the walk-off championship from Lewis.
“I promise you those lights just didn’t go out,” Lewis said with a laugh during a performance that had sweat soaking through his new gold jacket.
It’s not the first time Lewis has suggested that someone kicked the plug out of the wall in the Superdome.
“I’m not gonna accuse nobody of nothing -- because I don’t know facts,” Lewis said in the NFL Films America’s Game feature based on the team’s championship. “But you’re a zillion-dollar company, and your lights go out? No. No way. Now listen, if you grew up like I grew up -- and you grew up in a household like I grew up -- then sometimes your lights might go out, because times get hard. I understand that. But you cannot tell me somebody wasn’t sitting there and when they say, ‘The Ravens [are] about to blow them out. Man, we better do something.’ . . . That’s a huge shift in any game, in all seriousness. And as you see how huge it was because it let them right back in the game.”
The suggestion that the power outage happened deliberately continues to have absolutely no factual support. More than five years later, however, that continues to have no relevance to Lewis.
