Former Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis said earlier this month that he believed that the blackout in the Superdome during the Ravens’s Super Bowl victory was not an accident.
A longtime teammate of Lewis’ feels the same way. During an interview with Lisa Salters for ESPN, Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs said he shared Lewis’ belief that there were people behind the scenes maneuvering to get the lights out as a way to halt the momentum that had carried the Ravens to a 28-6 in the third quarter of the game.
“I was like Vegas, parlor tricks, you know what I mean?” Suggs said, via the Baltimore Sun. “I was like, ahh, [NFL Commissioner] Roger Goodell, he never stops, he always has something up his sleeve. He just couldn’t let us have this one in a landslide huh?”
Salters asked if Suggs meant that Goodell was responsible for the lights going out in New Orleans.
“I thought he had a hand in it. Most definitely, he had a hand in it,” Suggs said.
Suggs went on to say that his suspicions about Goodell’s slant began before the playoff game against the Broncos when he saw the commissioner talking with John Elway on the Broncos sideline. There’s no mention of whether Goodell also had conversations with Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, General Manager Ozzie Newsome and/or other members of the Ravens organization, although that probably wouldn’t do much to change the mind of someone who wants to believe that sleight of hand was the reason why the lights went out.
That’s clearly something that some members of the Ravens are willing to believe, whether or not there’s any concrete evidence to confirm their suspicions.