In the first half of Super Bowl LV, the Kansas City Chiefs were flagged eight times and fans weren’t the only ones turned off by it.
Ray Lewis was not only frustrated, he actually turned the game off.
Lewis said he turned the game off late in the first half after two key pass interference calls combined to give the Buccaneers 42 yards through the air, which set them up for a key touchdown just before halftime.
“It’s hard. It’s hard to watch the game,” Lewis told ESPN First Take on Thursday, via Pete Grathoff of the Kansas City Star. “I’m going to give you a few names and you tell me why you guys remember them. When you think about Jack Lambert, when you think about Dick Butkus, when you think about Mike Singletary, when you think about Ronnie Lott, when you think about those type of players, what do you think about?
“You think about physical football. You think about defenders having the offensive coordinator fear you, because on the other side you could deliver that hit. But now, Stephen, Max, I turned the TV off in the Super Bowl once they made those few calls against Kansas City, because you can’t call those types of calls, but that’s the way the game has gone.”
Lewis told Fox News the game is not the same as when he first took the field in 1996 as a rookie on the Baltimore Ravens.
“I can’t watch it,” Lewis told Fox News. “I’ve seen this before; I don’t want to watch this.”
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“It’s a league that makes it hard to watch from a defensive player. The art of why the game started, you know, tackling, you know, the big hit, the change in the course of a game, changing the way players from the offensive side think about the defensive side when you got to attack Dick Butkus or Mike Singletary,” Lewis said, adding that “the essence of the game is leaving.”
He believes his sentiment is shared with fans across the league.
“You can’t go nowhere and that’s not the conversation,” Lewis said, adding that the only thing he believes keeping people engaged is fantasy football and gambling.
“The only thing to me … that’s saving the game or making the game, you know, the ratings, so high is fantasy, right? The gambling. Like there’s no loyalty in sports. The game used to be about loyalty. If you’re a Ravens fan, you’re a Ravens fan,” Lewis said, who played his entire 17-year career with Baltimore.
It’s not just the rules that bother Lewis, but also the lack of loyalty.
“When you think about Baltimore when you think about the city, you think about one person. That’s the legacy. I don’t think they [players] even think that far. Sometimes I think they get mad at management, and they get mad at owners and they just want to do it their way. And it’s like, well, I want out and I get it. I get it. And I could have said that you know, we went three, four years, you know, without having a winning season. But, I wouldn’t leave my city because I wanted to walk on the other side of that when the game was over,” Lewis said. “… But, you know, maybe I’m a unicorn, one of the last ones.”
The 13-time Pro Bowler and two-time AP Defensive Player of the year retired in 2013. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2018.
