Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs has seen a number of his longtime teammates leave the team over the last few years, including the departure of defensive tackle Haloti Ngata in a trade with the Lions this offseason.
Suggs said Tuesday that “the show must go on,” but the veteran knows that his final chapter isn’t too far away. Suggs is entering his 13th NFL season and said he’s “definitely on the back nine” of his career, although any further talk of how long he’ll be rushing quarterbacks for Baltimore will have to wait until after the 2015 season.
“When you get in the teens, you kind of just take it year-by-year, how your body felt, especially when you’ve got a team like this and you do some special things,” Suggs said, via the Baltimore Sun. “We lost in the divisional [round] last year. Now, it’s time to get back to the success we’re used to. You kind of just take it from there. I’m really looking forward to this year. At the end of this year, we’ll talk. But I mean, you just kind of take it year-by-year and see what you can do.”
Suggs had 12 sacks last season with seven coming in the final six weeks of the regular season, so there’s not much sign that he’s ready to be put out to pasture just yet. The Ravens hope he’ll provide more of the same this year while also serving as a leader to help the team’s next wave of young defenders step into the roles vacated by Suggs’s former teammates and, one day, Suggs’s own role on the edge of the defense.
