{"id":19410,"date":"2013-02-04T16:33:26","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T21:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=19410"},"modified":"2013-02-04T16:33:26","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T21:33:26","slug":"ray-lewis-ends-brilliant-career-with-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=19410","title":{"rendered":"Ray Lewis Ends Brilliant Career With Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NEW ORLEANS \u2014 <strong>Ray Lewis <\/strong>will ride into retirement as a champion.<\/p>\n<p>Baltimore\u2019s standout middle linebacker began his final night on the football field with a motivational speech to his teammates. He ended it looking upward into a shower of silver streamers and purple confetti after the Ravens beat the San Francisco 49ers 34-31 Sunday night to win the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n<p>Standing tall in the middle of a defense that survived a frenzied comeback by <strong>Colin Kaepernick <\/strong>and the 49ers, <strong>Lewis<\/strong> put a lovely bow on his 17th NFL season by earning his second Super Bowl ring \u2014 12 years after the first.<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday night, <strong>Lewis<\/strong> and his defense played a supporting role to <strong>Joe Flacco<\/strong> and the offense. The 37-year-old <strong>Lewis<\/strong> had only two solo tackles through the first three quarters and sometimes struggled to cover receivers venturing into his area. Wide receiver<strong> Michael Crabtree<\/strong> caught a 19-yarder on San Francisco\u2019s second series, and tight end <strong>Vernon Davis <\/strong>eluded <strong>Lewis<\/strong> twice before making second-quarter catches.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lewis<\/strong> did, however, made two tackles during the 49ers\u2019 final drive. San Francisco had a fourth-and-goal from 5 when <strong>Lewis <\/strong>charged in on a blitz. He didn\u2019t get to <strong>Kaepernick<\/strong>, but the quarterback\u2019s pass sailed out of the end zone.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lewis<\/strong> can saunter into the sunset after putting his fingerprints on the Lombardi Trophy for a second time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW ORLEANS \u2014 Ray Lewis will ride into retirement as a champion. Baltimore\u2019s standout middle linebacker began his final night on the football field with a motivational speech to his teammates. He ended it looking upward into a shower of silver streamers and purple confetti after the Ravens beat the San Francisco 49ers 34-31 Sunday [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}