As you might imagine, Ray Lewis is confident in his abilities as a television analyst.
But he left himself plenty of wiggle room to avoid talking about one of the things people would most like to hear from him.
Lewis talked about his future role at ESPN with Richard Deitsch of SI.com, and said he thought “the sky is the limit for me.”
“A lot of people have only been introduced to my football mentality -- and it is hard to get people to understand the football mentality unless you’ve lived it,” Lewis said. “I think I am totally different when I’m not thinking about battle, and I’m going to try to be the best at this.
“When people learn my personality and actually get into my head, they are going to be surprised by the way I think on an everyday and every-second basis.”
Of course, many people would like to hear what he has to say about the Aaron Hernandez case, given his own background with such situations. Lewis, as you might remember, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice after being initially charged in a double murder 13 years ago.
But when Deitsch asked if he should be part of the Hernandez discussion, Lewis backpedaled a bit.
“It would only be to give a brief explanation on what you know,” Lewis said. “Because if you are talking about getting into the case -- what happened, how it happened -- that’s the judge’s job, that’s the police’s job. Having gone through the things I have been through, what I learned from that is everybody has something they want to say, and 80 percent of them are illiterate.
“You have to be careful with it. You can’t speak about something you do not know. Give your opinion, and keep it moving from there.”
So, to recap, you can’t really explain football the way Lewis can unless you’ve lived it. But if you’ve lived through a legal situation with similarities to one in the news right now, that might be best left for someone else to explain.