Four hours before the start of April’s NFL draft, Eric DeCosta and his staff gathered in a circle inside the Ravens’ Owings Mills war room. Per tradition, team chaplain Johnny Shelton led a group prayer. DeCosta has contributed to the organization’s draft process since he arrived as a fresh-faced intern in Baltimore the same year the franchise did. Now, as he prepared for his fifth draft as the team’s general manager, he was more emotional than usual during this annual ritual.

“I basically said, ‘If you have faith, you keep working, you trust people, there is always going to be hope,’” he recalls.

Minutes later, a cacophony of ringtones and phone vibrations filled the room, and the reason for DeCosta’s sentiment became clear: Lamar Jackson was signing a five-year contract extension with the team.

For the public, the superstar quarterback’s contract status had been a season-long melodrama simmering with the kind of juicy ingredients that the sports zeitgeist feeds on: trade demands and franchise tags, sprained ligaments and bruised egos, cryptic Tweets and mysterious memes. But behind the scenes, DeCosta navigated the two-year saga with a measured, drama-free steadiness that one person in particular seemed to appreciate.

“I didn’t have to learn anything about Eric,” Jackson said at the press conference announcing his extension. “He’s a businessman…he was professional the whole process. I was cool with it.”

DeCosta’s level-headedness and dogged determination—along with a keen eye for talent—have fueled his ascent from a 25-year-old personnel intern with an “office” in the hallway, a card table for a desk, and a salary south of $20,000 to one of the most prestigious positions in the NFL. Those are among the qualities that caught owner Steve Bisciotti’s eye more than a decade ago, when he told the then-little-known DeCosta that he wanted him to succeed legendary GM Ozzie Newsome and they’re what kept DeCosta in Baltimore even as ambition gnawed away at him.

Eventually, his patience was rewarded. Now, the kid who dreamed of running a team has a corner office with the only franchise he’s known in his professional life, in the city where he met his wife, Lacie, and where they’re raising their three kids. After an off-season in which he drafted receiver Zay Flowers in the first round, signed coveted (if mercurial) free agent wideout Odell Beckham Jr., and secured his All-Pro quarterback to throw to them, he believes he’s positioned the team for both short-and long-term success.

You could say that he’s cool with all of it.

He keeps the rejection letters in a bottom drawer of his desk, not out of anger or spite, but as a reminder that in a sea of nos, all it takes is a single yes. They came from virtually every NFL team, a cascade of, Thanks but no thanks and Don’t call us, we won’t call you.

And really, who could blame them? NFL bigwigs don’t come from places like Taunton, Massachusetts, the blue-collar town south of Boston where DeCosta grew up. As a kid, he played baseball, basketball, and hockey, but he was also drawn to the wonkier side of sports. After watching Dallas win Super Bowl XII in 1978, he became a Cowboys fan. For six-year-old Eric, that meant more than just watching the games.

“I studied the roster, I studied the front office, I studied the coaches, I studied their drafts,” he says, a hint of his New England accent still poking through. “The Cowboys built their team differently. They had a guy named Gil Brandt who was their scouting director. He was known for unearthing great football players at every level. That resonated with me.”

DeCosta’s father, Joe, who made bolts that were used for Navy subs, and his late mother, Donna, a bank manager, stressed academics. DeCosta has always been a voracious reader. He would devour The Boston Globe sports section and The Sporting News, examining mock drafts and creating his own. He didn’t play organized football until ninth grade, and although he found success on the field, he was lightly recruited in large part due to his slight stature. At 5-foot-9, 180 pounds, he was no one’s idea of a menacing defensive end or a punishing fullback, his two high school positions. Still, Colby College coach Tom Austin found a roster spot for him at the Division III program in Maine.

“We’re interviewing him and this young sprout from high school asked me, ‘Knowing that you’re in the process of rebuilding the program, is the college committed to football?’” Austin says. “It really took me back, because you don’t get those kinds of questions from a prospective.”

At Colby, DeCosta became a team leader, showing up for practice early, watching tape in the coaches’ offices, and calling out teammates who gave less than maximum effort.

“He was respected because he lived it,” teammate Gregg Suffredini told Colby News. “The kid could barely bench his weight, yet he was in the locker room every day…trying to get better, faster, stronger.”

“I LIKE URGENCY…SOMEBODY THAT PLAYS LIKE IT’S THEIR LAST PLAY EVERY TIME. ”

DeCosta’s football class at Colby was the first to graduate with a winning record in 33 years, but he was too savvy to fool himself into thinking he could play pro ball. So he decided to pursue coaching and landed a graduate coaching fellowship at tiny Trinity College, where he earned a master’s degree in English.

He thought he might be a writer until one day he ran into a friend who had just finished an internship with Washington’s NFL team. That inspired DeCosta to send letters and his resumé to every team. It wasn’t long before the floodgates of rejection opened. The responses ranged from businesslike to bizarre.

“While we appreciate your motivation, we do not have any openings at the present time nor do we anticipate any in the near future,” wrote Green Bay Packers GM Ron Wolf.

“Presently there are no positions available, nor are there any future changes contemplated,” the New York Giants put it. “We will keep your resumé on file and notify you if things change.”

Then, lest DeCosta had missed the screamingly obvious: “The thrust of this letter is one of pessimism…”

Twenty-eight of the league’s then-30 teams blew him off—but one that didn’t changed the arc of his life. Washington hired DeCosta as a training camp intern, and instantly, he was hooked. Wheeling TVs into meeting rooms, setting up phone lines—whatever the task, he attacked it with vigor. When the gig ended, DeCosta headed back to Trinity. He thought his NFL dreams were dead. He applied to law school at the University of Connecticut and was awaiting a decision when he got a call from the new NFL team in Maryland. His bosses in Washington had recommended him. Was he interested in a position?

“The day they offered me the job I remember I got the acceptance from UConn,” he says. “My mom wanted me to go to law school. My dad and I were playing tennis, and my dad said, ‘Eric, if your heart tells you to do this, you gotta do it.’ And he hesitated and said, ‘But don’t tell your mother I told you that.’”

DeCosta was Baltimore bound.

As an area scout for the Ravens, DeCosta was responsible for evaluating college players in 17 Midwestern states. He’d hop into his Pontiac in August and return in November with 30,000 more miles on the odometer. Early in his tenure, he brought tape of cornerback Duane Starks to Newsome, who ended up drafting the future stalwart in the first round.

“He has a passion for scouting,” Newsome says. “He’s not afraid to voice his opinion, but he’s able to listen to others and change his mind.”

DeCosta, who was named the team’s director of college scouting in 2003, has a distinct philosophy when it comes to analyzing players.

“I like urgency. Twitchiness. Guys that get from point A to point B quick and with anger,” he says. “I like guys that are physical and productive players. I don’t want to bet on guys. Sometimes I don’t have time for development—I’m looking for instant gratification. I want somebody that plays like it’s their last play every time, is quick to the ball, sudden, and plays with an element of physicality that others don’t play with.”

In 2007, DeCosta attended a party for Ravens front office staff and coaches at Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills. Toward the end of the night, someone grabbed his arm. It was Bisciotti. The owner asked the scout to stick around for a drink. DeCosta didn’t know Bisciotti well and was “nervous as hell.”

DeCosta assumed other scouts would be there as well, but when he showed up to the bar, he found just Bisciotti and his wife, Renee. Over a bottle of wine, they discussed DeCosta’s future.

“He said, ‘You know, you remind me of me. I want you to be my general manager,’” DeCosta recalls, a hint of disbelief still registering in his voice even 16 years later. “He said he didn’t know when it will be but when Ozzie retires, you will be my next GM.” Then he pauses. “I didn’t expect to wait 12 years.”

By the time DeCosta became assistant general manager in 2012, the word was out in the NFL: He was a hot commodity. Seattle, Chicago, and Green Bay were among the teams that pursued him for a front office position, but DeCosta sat tight. He and his family were immersed in the community. Lacie is a Baltimore native, and he’s served on the board of the Maryland SPCA (where he’s still an ambassador) and the Irvine Nature Center.

Finally, in February 2018, Newsome made it official—he would be stepping down at the end of the season. Bisciotti announced that DeCosta would become the team’s new GM. The owner said “everything” about DeCosta made him confident that he was ready for the job.

“I think he has learned from Ozzie,” Bisciotti said at the time. “I think he’s a great leader of the scouts. It’s Ozzie’s department, but most of the interaction with all the scouts is with Eric. I’ve seen the way he goes about the business, I’ve seen the way he’s embraced technology and analytics and I like working with him. There are people that are running other franchises because Eric wouldn’t take it.”

But the mentor and his protégé still had work to do. Before Newsome’s departure, DeCosta advocated for a quarterback whom he described as a “magician.”

“Every year he would be ahead of me in evaluating college prospects,” Newsome says. “He was doing a corner from North Carolina. He came to the office and said, ‘I want you to take a look at this.’ I said, ‘Okay,’ so he pulled up the play. It was Lamar Jackson throwing this post pattern…it was Louisville versus UNC. He said, ‘Did you think Lamar could make that throw?’ And I said, ‘I do now.’”

The Ravens did their homework on Jackson, interviewing him, bringing him to Baltimore, and soliciting opinions about him from their own coaches and others outside the organization. When the 2018 draft arrived, he was on their board—meaning, among the players they coveted—but they felt they could get him with a pick lower than the 16th, which they held. After trading down several times, they drafted tight end Hayden Hurst with the 25th pick. At that point, a Ravens official came into the war room and asked Newsome and DeCosta to go downstairs for the traditional press conference.

What transpired next seems like a scene straight from the Kevin Costner movie Draft Day. DeCosta looked at Newsome and said that they should probably stay upstairs. Philadelphia had the final pick of the first round, and he wanted to ask Eagles’ GM Howie Roseman about trading for it. Newsome gave him the green light.

“So I called Howie and said, ‘If our guy is there, we might want to trade back into the first round,” DeCosta says. “I said, ‘What are you guys looking for?’ He said, ‘We’ll take your second round pick this year and we’ll take your second round pick next year.’”

“IT’S HARD TO NEGOTIATE WITH A FRIEND OR SOMEONE THAT YOU REALLY RESPECT. ”

The men waited nervously while the remaining six teams selected. Had any other team seen the same potential in Jackson that they did? Finally, Philadelphia’s pick—the last of the first round—came. DeCosta quickly called Roseman back and consummated the trade. Lamar Jackson was a Raven.

The Ravens have gone 53-29 since that day; Jackson’s record as a starter is 45-16. He’s thrown for 12,209 yards and 101 touchdowns. Still, another number looms large: zero. That’s the number of Super Bowls the Ravens have been to with Jackson at QB.

DeCosta is undeterred. Signing Jackson to an extension that works for the quarterback and the franchise had been a top priority for years. Most players want to communicate via text these days, DeCosta says, but he also negotiated with Jackson face-to-face, one-on-one many times. (In an unconventional move, Jackson served as his own agent.)

“It’s hard to negotiate with a friend or someone that you really respect,” DeCosta says. “Anybody that’s been married knows that. It’s hard to be honest and truthful sometimes with people that you love because you think it might hurt them. I tried to be humble and honest and as transparent as possible. I tried to look at it from Lamar’s point of view, too. If you can do that, sometimes it makes it a lot easier to meet halfway or find a common ground. We all get so wrapped up in our own positions that we think it’s about us and them and we make it a competitive, confrontational thing. A negotiation doesn’t have to be that. It took a long time and there were many hurdles, but we got there.”

DeCosta’s office is a bit fancier than his original workspace in the hall. There’s a sitting area, a bookshelf (Blink, The Extra 2%, and Finding the Winning Edge are among the titles), and a Peloton in the corner. The bike, along with a new pastime—pickleball—are two of his post-pandemic obsessions. Lacie says hobbies are not her husband’s thing.

“Eric works seven days a week most of the year,” Lacie says. “He’s extremely devoted to giving all of his time to the team and to our kids. He really doesn’t have any other pastimes except pickleball.”

On the wall hangs the typed rejection letter the 23-year-old DeCosta got from the Packers’ Ron Wolf. Also framed is a handwritten note Wolf sent to DeCosta a quarter-century later, congratulating him on becoming the Ravens’ general manager.

“You are a testament to pa- tience and perseverance,” he wrote.

After the draft room erupted that momentous day in April, DeCosta retreated to his office, where he was soon joined by Ravens coach John Harbaugh, who brought a bottle of whiskey. The two took small celebratory sips.

“Alright,” DeCosta said after briefly savoring the spirit, “it’s time to get to work.”

“With the 28th overall selection, the Baltimore Ravens select Patrick Queen, linebacker, Louisiana State University,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said, live from his basement.

Around 11:45 p.m. Thursday, with the pick finally in, Ravens coach John Harbaugh air high-fived in the direction of the computer screen on his home office desk.

It was late. “A long, long day,” said Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta, who was on the receiving end of Harbaugh’s video congratulations. And the nearly five previous hours were different from all of the other communal draft nights the Ravens’ braintrust has known. “We were together, sort of,” DeCosta said.

The Ravens and all NFL teams, popular as they are, are not immune pandemic-generated social-distancing rules, either. And so for the first-time ever, the league’s college draft—normally an in-person primetime spectacle held at some place like Radio City Music Hall and attended by thousands of passionate fans—went entirely virtual.

In essence, the traditional conference-style War Room at Ravens’ headquarters in Owings Mills was replaced by a home-office-themed internet-based Zoom Room. We saw Harbaugh sitting at his desk amid bright book-lined shelves, and DeCosta celebrating with his three children in his pink-ish wall-colored workspace.

It felt and looked like a fantasy football draft—where John Doe’s around the country analyze and choose players from their couches for fake teams and a little money—except this remote draft was real and the lifeblood of a billion-dollar pro football business.

Young twenty-somethings hearing their names called, like Charm City’s new (Patrick) Queen, have the potential to become household names and new millionaires. All the while, front-office guys such as DeCosta wore collared shirts and jackets, and ate good food (Jimmy’s Seafood, in his case) rather than gorging on cheap pizza and beer, while trusting encrypted league-mandated Microsoft Teams channels and their own custom team IT setups.

Thankfully, it all went off without a visible glitch—from the technology setup to the Ravens’ draft choice itself. DeCosta manned the Ravens’ battlestation from his cozy office, where a half dozen computer monitors displayed information, like the team’s draft board of names, arranged as if they were meetings on a Google calendar.

One by one, the blocks disappeared as the 27 other picks were made. But by the time it was the Ravens’ turn, they still nabbed one of their preferred targets. Queen, a 20-year-old, 6-foot, 230-pound quick and versatile linebacker—who’s a good tackler, blitzer, and pass coverage option—was defensive MVP of LSU’s national championship-winning team in January.

“He plays like a Raven,” DeCosta said. “When you watch the tape, you notice him. He’s a great fit for our defense and a great fit for Baltimore. He was a need, but also the very best player on the board for us. When that happens it’s a great win for the organization.”

Quarterback Lamar Jackson commented from his place on Instagram shortly after the selection and took the analysis further, saying simply, “Ray Lewis, Jr.” Harbaugh noted Queen’s potential after starting just one year at LSU: “His best football is in front of him.”

It was even later, close to 1 a.m., when Queen joined reporters live in a video chat from his family’s living room in the small town of Ventress, Louisiana, where his family was celebrating (his dad, Dwayne, is a former college football player) and a dog barked.

“It was a long, long, long, long night,” Queen said to start, one upping DeCosta’s claim by a few “longs.” And as a few people offered congratulations to the new Raven before asking a question, he responded with a sincere “Thank you,” before answering each query.

On the inevitable comparison to Ray Lewis, a linebacker who the Ravens also selected at the end of the first round back in the day, Queen smiled. “The bar is set high,” he said.

On critics who might say he’s undersized for the rough world of the NFL, he said, “I’m so tired of hearing that,” and added that he’s proven people wrong everywhere from his small Louisiana high school to the big-time world of college football at LSU. “The tape shows.”

On what fans can expect from him, he said, “Ya’ll going to get the most energetic player from this draft, the most passionate, the most dominant, the most studious person that you can get. I bring a lot to the table.”

Those are more than enough reasons for an air high-five.

For instance, Queen is the first player from LSU the Ravens have ever drafted, perhaps because longtime Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome—who was also part of the Zoom Room—played at the University of Alabama, one of LSU’s rivals.

“He kept saying something, but we muted him,” DeCosta said sarcastically of Newsome before the pick was made. “He kept waving his hands then his video went out. That’s the thing with technology sometimes, it can be manipulated. Maybe it was the Russians, I don’t really know.”

To that point, the GM indicated he would have preferred that ESPN didn’t have a camera in his office recording everything he did, one of more than 100 live video feeds coordinated for the broadcast. “It’s a bit unsettling,” DeCosta said.

But, for one night, the whole mere occurrence—from Queen’s authentic answers and apparent skills, to the awkward musings of Goodell from his basement as he announced picks, to the office backgrounds of Harbaugh and DeCosta, and light-hearted jokes—was a welcome respite for pandemic life.

Yet hopefully it’s not needed in the long run. “I don’t think I’ll ever experience another draft like this,” DeCosta said, noting he had tell his kids to be quiet at times. “But I’ll never forget it.”

It doesn’t seem like Ravens coach John Harbaugh is a fan of the old sports adage that a player shouldn’t lose his or her job because of injury. “We’re going to go back to junior high clichés, now?” Harbaugh said this week, when asked if he subscribes to that theory. “We’ll do what gives us the best chance to win, period, end of conversation.”

Ah, but when we’re talking about Joe Flacco—and the Ravens coach was, as the question was asked about the quarterback—it’s really just the start of the conversation.

Is the Joe Cool Era over?

Even when he’s been healthy (which Flacco is not right now, missing the last two games with a hip injury and likely to miss another this weekend), even when he was piloting the offense of an eventual Super Bowl championship team in 2012 (which he’s not—the Ravens haven’t made the playoffs the last three seasons), and pretty much every week during the fall and early winter the last 11 years, Flacco’s play, his contract, his sideline demeanor, his commercials, press conferences, everything, has been analyzed, scrutinized, and debated. Each nuance led to this main thought: Is Flacco the right quarterback for the Ravens? It comes with the territory of having the job in the first place.

Now that the former Super Bowl MVP hasn’t played since Nov. 4 against the Steelers, which was then the Ravens’ third straight loss, the volume has been raised on the hottest of hot-button sports-talk topics around these parts the last decade.

Flacco is 33 years old, relatively young in life standards, but getting up there in the pro sports world, and we know what he brings to the table. Meanwhile, 21-year-old rookie Lamar Jackson is something new. His running ability is exciting. His 190 rushing yards are the most for a rookie QB in his first two games. He makes plays we haven’t seen in a while, earning high praise.

“It’s the Lamar show,” said veteran wide receiver Michael Crabtree. “You just have to sit back and watch, because he’s electrifying.”

Jackson’s passing skill has been questioned. But, about that . . .

While Jackson has only started two games against suspect opponents, he’s won them both. That’s still nothing compared to Flacco’s body of work, but it suddenly looks like Jackson, the former Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Louisville, might be part of a core of young players that new general manager Eric DeCosta could build around once he fully takes over from the retiring Ozzie Newsome after this season. Teams don’t draft quarterbacks in the first round of the NFL draft, as the Ravens did with Jackson, to not play them.

There’s also the unavoidable awkwardness of the Ravens coaches wanting to get the fast and elusive Jackson on the field, even when Flacco’s on it, pushing the incumbent starting quarterback off to the side as a decoy wide receiver, or vice versa. And there’s also the fact that Harbaugh said in a post-game press conference a few weeks ago that he’d like to get Jackson on the field more.

And then there’s the money. The Ravens could cut Flacco after this season (he’s due $25 million next year) without taking as big a salary-cap hit as they would in years past.

Of course, the idea of this quarterback transition happening so soon could all be a moot point and a huge overreaction.

Maybe the Ravens lose on Sunday with Jackson making his first road start in Atlanta, drop back to a 6-6 record and never fully recover. Maybe Jackson gets hurt while running like a madman around the field, or not going out of bounds to protect himself. Maybe Flacco is healthy next week and starts anyway. Or maybe Jackson plays so well this week that you can’t bench him with the Ravens riding a three-game winning streak and in line for a playoff spot.

There’s a lot of maybes. Ultimately, Harbaugh, who has worked in unison with Flacco since Harbaugh took the job as Ravens coach in 2008, when Flacco was a rookie, says he’ll decide who to play if Flacco’s health allows him to return.

“I don’t think there’s anybody in a better position than the head coach,” he said. “I feel very, very confident that I have a good handle on it, understand the team and what we need to do when the time comes—which is not here yet. I don’t think you start making these decisions until you get to the bridge. I’m not crossing the bridge until we get to it. I think that’s a pretty good cliché, pretty apt.”

Here’s one certainty, though: If it does become clear that this is Flacco’s last year wearing the purple and black—if he does lose his job because of injury—he deserves a proper send off, like Adam Jones received with the Orioles this year. Joe’s been Cool for more than a decade. He won a Super Bowl championship with a streak of playoff performances that will go down in Baltimore history so long as we’re talking about sports. That shouldn’t be forgotten just because of what might be next.

Draft day in the NFL is just as big an event as the Super Bowl. It’s where college athletes’ dreams come true and fans of all 32 teams wait anxiously—and oftentimes impatiently—to see how the team’s roster will shift for the upcoming season.

Last night, the Baltimore Ravens made two grade-A picks in the first round—according to sports analysts—after trading down twice for the first time in the first round since 2012. With the 25th overall pick, Baltimore selected South Carolina tight end Hayden Hurst and Louisville quarterback Lamar Jackson with the 32nd overall pick.

Like many die-hard Ravens fans, we immediately started our Google searches to find out about our newest recruits and we’ve compiled some facts for you here.

Lamar Jackson is the anti-Joe Flacco.
The 2016 Heisman Trophy-winner is known for his athleticism and ability to move in the pocket unlike Flacco, who is a traditional pocket passer with an insanely strong arm. Jackson has been compared to QB Michael Vick in his prime, but even the man himself thinks Jackson is “five times better” than he was in college.

John Harbaugh says that Flacco isn’t going anywhere.
Speculations have begun that this may be Flacco’s last year in Baltimore due to the recent signing of RGIII and now Lamar Jackson. The Ravens head coach wants to make it very clear that Joe isn’t going anywhere just yet.

“[Jackson’s] a great quarterback. But Joe Flacco is our quarterback,” he said in an interview. “That’s the thing we got to remember. Lamar is going to have a great chance to develop. When you get to this stage in a quarterback’s career, you’ve seen done in New England and you’ve seen done in a lot of places. This doesn’t really change things in a sense that we’re going to go with Joe and he’s going to roll.”

Hayden Hurst was the top tight end in the 2018 draft class.
At 6-foot-5, 250 pounds he has the athleticism to put up big stats in the NFL, Hurst is just the tight end the Ravens need. He’s a force on the field with his blocking and catching. In his last two seasons at South Carolina, he caught 92 passes for 1,175 yards and three touchdowns. Hurst will be able to fill the void the Ravens have with Nick Boyle and Maxx Williams, who are both better at blocking.

Hurst has a history in major league drafts.
He was selected in the 2012 MLB draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates and spent two years as a pitcher and one year as a first baseman in the Gulf Coast League. Hurst went back to football in the summer of 2015 and was an immediate starter. He credits his background in baseball for his exceptional hand-eye coordination and maturity playing professional sports.

“I feel like tracking a baseball is a little bit harder than tracking a football,” Hurst said. “I think that’s the biggest thing that I carry over from baseball is just the maturity. I’ve experienced some things that some guys haven’t with failure.”

Ozzie Newsome was able to work magic with those two trades.
First the Ravens traded out of the No. 16 pick, giving the Buffalo Bills its first- and fifth-round picks (No. 154). In return, the Ravens are getting the Bills’ first-rounder (No. 22) and third-rounder (No. 65).

Then, Baltimore traded back for the second time with Tennessee getting the Titans’ first-round (No. 25) and fourth-round picks (No. 125). Ravens gave Tennessee the No. 22 spot they just got from Buffalo and a sixth-rounder (No. 215).

Newsome called is “masterful” how he was able to trade down twice and still manage to get two great picks in the first round.

Hard hits and motivational speeches are what recent Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Ray Lewis was known for. Baltimore’s 1996 first-round draft pick becomes the second homegrown Raven to earn the honors (aside from left tackle Jonathan Ogden in 2013). When it came time to discuss Lewis’s candidacy, there wasn’t much to say—his talent and natural born leadership speak for themselves.

During his nearly two-decade career, he was a 13-time Pro Bowler, two-time defensive player of the year, and Super Bowl 35 MVP. He is also the only player in NFL history to produce at least 40 sacks and 30 interceptions. Lewis also holds a Ravens’ franchise-record of 2,643 career tackles, including a single-season best of 225 stops in 2003.

“For 17 years, we could point to No. 52 and tell the other players, ‘Follow his lead,” said Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome, who drafted Lewis. “It was our privilege to have him as a Raven. We are all better for having him here. His play on game days speaks for itself. When you talk about the great players of all time, no matter the position, he is among the greatest of the great.” 

Here are some Lewis highlights, from memorable sacks to the patented squirrel dance, that made him a shoe-in for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Lewis was one of the hardest hitting linebackers.
“In the first half of his career, when the run game was the most prominent, he was a beast,” said former Raven Shannon Sharpe. “He singlehandedly shut down great backs like Jerome Bettis, Eddie George, and Fred Taylor. No inside linebacker in the history of the game has the résumé of the man I call ‘Suga.'”

He was an entertainer.
Although Lewis was the on-field hypeman, he was also the main attraction before the coin was even tossed with his famous tunnel dance to Nelly’s “Hot in Herre.” Fans and opponents alike made sure to watch—and even imitate—his signature moves before he hit the field. 

He will forever be the best at motivational pep talks, on and off the field.
“What needs to be said about a guy who was, by far, the best leader I witnessed in my 17 years of play?” said former teammate Rod Woodson. “Not only a great leader to the whole team, but a mentor to teammates and players on other teams—so unselfish and so selfless.”

After watching his team go a third straight season without a playoff appearance, Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti announced a (future) change at the top of the organization Friday.

No, John Harbaugh is still head coach, but Bisciotti told reporters at his annual “State of the Team” press conference at the Ravens’ Owings Mills headquarters that longtime general manager Ozzie Newsome, the architect of the franchise’s two Super Bowl championships, will step down at the end of the 2018 season. Newsome has been on staff since the Ravens’ first season in 1996.

Ravens assistant general manager Eric DeCosta will take over control of the 53-man roster then, a move that’s the culmination of a succession plan hatched after the 2013 season, when Newsome was given a five-year extension with the idea that DeCosta would take over when the contract was through.

“That’s a year away,” Bisciotti said, “so Ozzie will step down as GM, and has assured me that he’s not going anywhere, and that he will work with me and work with Eric for a smooth transition.”

Bisciotti made the announcement in response to a question about whether he considered firing Harbaugh or Newsome after the Ravens missed the playoffs for the fourth time in the last five years.

“It was certainly a consideration, but not one I was inclined to make this year,” Bisciotti said.   

DeCosta, who has been courted by many NFL teams to be their general manager the last few seasons, has repeatedly declined interview opportunities in order to stay with the Ravens, most recently last offseason with the Green Bay Packers. 

It seems his loyalty is being rewarded now, as the team looks to reclaim its perch among the league’s consistent playoff contenders. The Ravens have a 41-41 record since its Super Bowl XLVII win, and since signing quarterback Joe Flacco to a mammoth contract afterward. 

Newsome will remain with the organization after 2018 in a consulting role and Bisciotti joked “he’ll be the highest paid scout in America.” A 1999 Hall of Fame inductee as a tight end, Newsome became the NFL’s first minority general manager when he was promoted from VP of player personnel in 2002.

Bisciotti said he’s looking for changes in the scouting department—recent rookie drafts haven’t necessarily panned out great for the team—and DeCosta is a “great leader of the scouts.” 

DeCosta has worked for Newsome for 20 years. Before being named assistant general manager in 2012, he was the Ravens’ director of player personnel and director of college scouting.

“I think he has learned from Ozzie,” Bisciotti said. “It’s Ozzie’s department, but most of all the interaction with the scouts is with Eric. I’ve seen the way he goes about the business, embracing technology and analytics. I like working with him. … There are people running other franchises who got the job because Eric wouldn’t take it.”

Harbaugh, meanwhile, will appear on NBC’s pregame, halftime, and postgame coverage of Sunday’s Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles. No doubt he’ll be asked about this front office move, and his own future.

Bisciotti said Friday that the coach is safe heading into what will be his 11th season at the helm of the franchise.

“I’m not going to give a playoff or bust edict to you all, or my coach,” the owner said. “He’s been under the most pressure he’s been under his whole life. I may as well replace him now if I tell him make the playoffs or you’re out of town next year.”

He also brushed aside a question asking if the franchise was getting “stagnant.”

“I don’t think we’re stagnant at One Winning Drive,” Bisciotti said. “Disappointed, embarrassed, and determined, but not stagnant.”