OWINGS MILLS, Md. – Ray Lewis remembers when he was a twenty-something kid on the Baltimore Ravens en route to a Super Bowl title.

Back then, a dozen years ago, he was the one paying attention to the advice offered, and example set, by a pair of Hall-of-Famers-to-be in their 30s: tight end Shannon Sharpe and safety Rod Woodson.

"Shannon, because he had done it already," Lewis recalled this week. "Rod, because he hadn't done it. ... To look in his eyes, to know how he wanted to touch that Lombardi [Trophy] together, and then to listen to Shannon tell him how calm you had to be and how prepared you had to be."