I am not surprised by this and I am sure more than few Ravens started to tune Ray Lewis out after awhile. No one is questioning that Lewis is a great leader, but there are only so many Creflo Dollar speeches you can hear before you start to laugh.
Flacco has the ring and the cash, so he has no fear is saying how he really felt about Ray Lewis.
“Oh, it’s funny,” Ravens quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Joe Flacco told USA TODAY Sports at a charity event Saturday. “His speeches come from the heart, but there’s definitely times where I’m sitting there kind of chuckling to myself. It’s all good. There’s nobody that’s more passionate about what he does than that guy.
“So you just sit back and take it all in, but there’s times where he says some stuff and you’re like, ‘Man I don’t know what that meant, but I like how he said it.'”
Flacco says while he respects the way Ray Lewis goes about being a leader, he does it in his own way and it has been effective for him.
“I don’t do what Ray does, but I’m the leader of the football team,” he said. “I do it in my way. There are people that do it different ways and obviously we’re able to do it pretty well.”
Once you have the ring, things become a lot easier. The monkey is off your back and the respect you get not just from your teammates, but around the league is very evident.
You are no longer Joe Flacco of the Ravens, you are Super Bowl winning quarterback Joe Flacco of the Ravens. That’s why Flacco’s confidence is bursting at the seems, even when he is in the drive-thru at McDonald’s.
I think Joe Flacco will be even better with Ray Lewis gone, because now he is the undisputed leader of the team.