Ray Lewis didn’t make the play, but he made the call.

Clinging to a 34-29 lead over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII, the Baltimore Ravens’ defense needed one last stop. Their run of gutsy playoff wins led them to this, their second Super Bowl appearance in franchise history.

With one stop, they could bring Baltimore a second Vince Lombardi Trophy.

Lewis knew this was it.

He had missed most of that 2012 season with a torn triceps, an injury he re-aggravated the night before the game. Lewis returned for the Ravens’ playoff run and, with San Francisco facing a fourth-and-goal from the 5-yard line, stared at 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

“One of the passes that Kaep couldn’t throw was a back-shoulder fade,” Lewis said. “If that’s (Tom) Brady, if that’s (Peyton) Manning, if that’s (Aaron) Rodgers — you can’t call that. They’re perfectionists at the back-shoulder fade.

“The back-shoulder fade was a problem for him being so young. So cover-zero for us was the way to go.”

San Francisco lined up with two receivers to the top of the formation and one, Michael Crabtree, to the bottom.

Lewis told his defense to keep Kaepernick in the pocket. Don’t let him win it with his legs.

He looked to teammate Dannell Ellerbe before the snap.

“You’re a young lion, you’ve got young legs,” Lewis said. “This is not about me or no glory. I need one play from everybody just doing their job. Don’t try to do nothing else.”

The ball was snapped and Lewis rushed the line, occupying the left guard. It gave Ellerbe a lane to burst through and pressure Kaepernick. He got the pass off to Crabtree, who was battling to shed cornerback Jimmy Smith near the goal line.

It floated out of Crabtree’s reach and fell incomplete: Turnover on downs. Ravens' ball.

Ed Reed, a longtime teammate and friend of Lewis, grabbed the ball off the turf at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. The Ravens’ elder statesmen celebrated together in the end zone.

“I looked to Ed and I said, ‘Can you believe this?’ ” Lewis said. “ ‘Can you freaking believe this?’ ”

LOYALTY

There was never a time that Lewis considered leaving Baltimore.

Outside a six-year stretch from 2002-07, the Ravens were a consistent playoff contender. The cover of the popular video game series Madden NFL featured Lewis in 2005. When you thought of Baltimore, you thought of him.

Butch Davis coached Lewis in his final season at the University of Miami and against him for four years after taking over as head coach of the Cleveland Browns.

“I can remember sitting there talking in staff meetings and talking prior to the game,” Davis said. “We better make damn sure that he’s accounted for, that somehow, some way we get a helmet on him. When you’ve coached for a long time and been around a lot of great players, you know the ones that are difference makers.

“He was clearly one of those.”

There was a 13-day period in 2009 when Lewis tested free agency for the first time. He was courted by the Dallas Cowboys and San Diego Chargers. Thirteen years into his career, Lewis thought about more than money. He thought about his legacy and about loyalty.

He could never bring himself to leave.

“Never,” he said. “I am loyal to the core. I’m not putting on another uniform. It doesn’t even feel right to me. I’m serious; I don’t know how guys do it. Make money? Go do it. But legacy? I’ll never give up my legacy. I’ll never turn in my legacy.”

Lewis takes great pride in the fact that he played his entire 17-year career in Baltimore.

He helped build the franchise into what it is today. How could he leave that?

“That’s like me saying I could go put on a Pittsburgh uniform. Never,” he said. “New England? Never. I couldn’t. If somebody offered me a gob of money right now and said, ‘Give me 10 plays in a New England Patriots uniforms.’ I will run from you.”

RISE OF THE RAVENS

The Quad City DJ’s released their lone hit in 1996.

The poppy dance tune called "C’mon ‘N Ride It (The Train)" reached No. 3 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 charts that year. Lewis still remembers hearing that song during the Ravens’ first game at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.

“I had the players doing the little train, the fans doing the train,” he said of his first NFL game against the Oakland Raiders.

Lewis remembers Raiders receiver Ricky Dudley running an up-and-out route. He read the play and ran with him into the end zone. Billy Joe Hobert forced a pass into coverage and it appeared Dudley came down with the ball.

Lewis got a hand under the ball and pulled it out of Dudley’s grasp in the end zone.

“I intercepted it, and when I got up, I’m running back to my teammates and I’m watching this entire city, everybody, just hitting the train as I’m coming out,” Lewis said, reaching up and pulling down the air as if he were pulling a train whistle. “I grabbed the ball and started hitting it too coming out.”

The Ravens won that game 19-14 but finished the season 4-12. Lewis and Ogden, the first hall-of-fame duo ever selected by the same team in the same draft, grew into Baltimore’s leaders during a bumpy year.

“There was no leader, so, I raised my hand,” Lewis said. “Hello, I’ll lead us. I’ll boldly do it. Yeah, we may not be the favorites, but I promise you if we put the right teams together this could be really rough. My organization started to understand that. Art Modell started to understand that. Ozzie Newsome started to understand that.”

The Ravens steadily improved and, as time went on, Lewis became more involved with discussing personnel moves with Newsome. Current Cincinnati Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis — then Baltimore's defensive coordinator — asked Lewis what type of players he wanted to play with.

With each addition — safety Rod Woodson, tackle Sam Adams, end Michael McCrary — the defense improved.

“When we got together in 1998 and ‘99, we were building toward (being) a bully,” Lewis said. “Nobody knew what was coming; nobody could even see it because we had so many different pieces.”

By 1999, Lewis had solidified himself as the league’s top interior linebacker. He had played in three Pro Bowls and was selected first-team All-Pro after recording 168 tackles, 3.5 sacks and three interceptions.

“Ray was always the best player on the field, and he made players around him better,” said Rex Ryan, a defensive assistant with the Ravens from 1999 to 2008. “He brought out their passion and he raised their level of play. It was an honor and a pleasure to coach him for all those years.

“He was a once-in-a-lifetime player, and I was just so thankful that I had the opportunity to coach him.”

The breakthrough came in 2000. Baltimore went 12-4 behind its historic defense. The Ravens allowed just 970 rushing yards that season, an NFL record for a 16-game season. Baltimore was second in total defense and eighth in pass defense as Lewis was named Associated Press NFL Defensive Player of the Year.

“We were bullies,” Lewis said. “We were the one team that nobody ever picked that year, which was so awesome. We had so much confidence in each other about what we could do.”

For all the success Baltimore had defensively, they struggled on the other side of the ball. Trent Dilfer replaced Tony Banks at quarterback early in the season and gave the team a spark. They finished with the 24th-ranked offense in the NFL, but never needed it in the playoffs.

“I don’t think we had any outside pressure because we didn’t really have any expectations,” Lewis said. “They can’t win. Trent Dilfer is their quarterback. Nope, can’t do it. I cannot go with Trent.

“Every time we played against somebody else, it was like, ‘Oh, can’t do it.' "

Baltimore dominated, out-scoring its four postseason opponents 95-23. Lewis revels in that dominance, that bully mentality. The 34-7 win over the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXXV was the capper. It was special for a multitude of reasons. Lewis was named Super Bowl MVP. It was his first championship.

But it came at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, a half-hour ride from home.

“To win the Super Bowl and come back home 30 minutes from Lakeland, you can write a lot of scripts, you can write a lot of books — that’s why I wrote mine — but sometimes you have to tell a flat-out true story,” he said.

“That story was this old country boy found a way to come back home and be crowned not too far from home.”

LOYALTY

There was never a time that Lewis considered leaving Baltimore.

Outside a six-year stretch from 2002-07, the Ravens were a consistent playoff contender. The cover of the popular video game series Madden NFL featured Lewis in 2005. When you thought of Baltimore, you thought of him.

Butch Davis coached Lewis in his final season at the University of Miami and against him for four years after taking over as head coach of the Cleveland Browns.

“I can remember sitting there talking in staff meetings and talking prior to the game,” Davis said. “We better make damn sure that he’s accounted for, that somehow, some way we get a helmet on him. When you’ve coached for a long time and been around a lot of great players, you know the ones that are difference makers.

“He was clearly one of those.”

There was a 13-day period in 2009 when Lewis tested free agency for the first time. He was courted by the Dallas Cowboys and San Diego Chargers. Thirteen years into his career, Lewis thought about more than money. He thought about his legacy and about loyalty.

He could never bring himself to leave.

“Never,” he said. “I am loyal to the core. I’m not putting on another uniform. It doesn’t even feel right to me. I’m serious; I don’t know how guys do it. Make money? Go do it. But legacy? I’ll never give up my legacy. I’ll never turn in my legacy.”

Lewis takes great pride in the fact that he played his entire 17-year career in Baltimore.

He helped build the franchise into what it is today. How could he leave that?

“That’s like me saying I could go put on a Pittsburgh uniform. Never,” he said. “New England? Never. I couldn’t. If somebody offered me a gob of money right now and said, ‘Give me 10 plays in a New England Patriots uniforms.’ I will run from you.”

Peyton Manning was the perfect rival for Lewis. Both came into the league in the late-1990s. Both were students of the game who emerged as superstar players in the 2000s. The pair developed a friendship over the years in Hawaii at the Pro Bowl.

They met in the postseason three times, one of which resulted in what Lewis said was the most painful loss of his career.

The teams met in the 2006 AFC Divisional round. Lewis remembers Ryan, then the Ravens’ defensive coordinator, promising him that if the defense kept Manning out of the end zone, they would win.

Indianapolis never found the end zone, settling for 15 points on five field goals. Baltimore never found it, either.

“We made one of the biggest bone-headed mistakes ever in Ravens history,” Lewis said of the 15-6 loss. “On the (4) yard line, instead of running with Steve McNair or running Jamal Lewis, we threw the ball and they intercepted it and ended up beating us. Still to this day, that was the one game that bothers me the most."

“If we make that run, as close as we had just come from winning in 2001, it becomes a dynasty very quickly because those next few years we were right there again.”

THE PERFECT ENDING

Lewis ended his career in storybook fashion.

Albert McClellan was an understudy. An undrafted linebacker out of Marshall, McClellan joined the Ravens as an undrafted free agent. He and Lewis are both Lakeland natives and Kathleen grads. He knew that, but he wasn’t sure if Lewis did.

And he sure wasn’t going to ask.

He worked hard, studied the playbook and earned a roster spot. By 2012, he was the one replacing an injured Lewis in the Ravens’ lineup. McClellan remembers the speeches he gave — he’s still amazed that a player can flip a switch and improvise quite like Lewis — and he remembers the detailed notes he kept in camp.

But his biggest memory is the speech Lewis gave the night before the Super Bowl.

“When he got out there we already won the game,” McClellan said. “The speech he gave the night before the game, it was the best I’ve ever heard. We just knew. We were already ready for the game the night before.”

The Ravens, as McClellan put it, “just wanted to see Sug’ (short for Sugar) dance one last dance.”

Lewis went down in October and returned for the playoffs in January. Reports surfaced that he inquired with a company about acquiring deer-antler velvet extract to help in his recovery — a claim he denied.

Baltimore made an impressive run upon Lewis' return.

It began with a 24-9 win over the Indianapolis Colts on wild-card weekend.

“Andrew Luck was too young, he couldn’t do it,” Lewis said with a smirk.

They followed with a win over Manning and the Broncos. Deemed the "Mile High Miracle" by some, the Ravens won 38-35 in Denver thanks to Joe Flacco’s 70-yard touchdown pass to Jacoby Jones in the final minute. They upset Tom Brady and the New England Patriots 28-13 to win the AFC title in Foxboro, Massachusetts.

It all culminated in New Orleans with the dramatic win over San Francisco.

Seventeen years, two titles and too many tackles to count, Lewis went out on top.

He retired on his terms and calls that the greatest thing to happen to him in sports.

“What I did in Baltimore, to finish my career off in one city, you don’t see it no more,” he said. “That’s why I think the recipe of true, true, true leadership is just like a captain. When the ship goes down, you have to go with the ship. That was me. Through all of our down years, I’m going with the ship and making sure my city knows, I’ll be here forever.”

Everything changed in Atlanta.

The St. Louis Rams and Tennessee Titans played a classic Super Bowl at the Georgia Dome in 2000.

That’s not the story.

Richard Lollar and Jacinth Baker were slain outside the Cobalt nightclub in the old Buckhead district in Atlanta, an area beaming with nightlife just hours after the biggest football game of the year. Ray Lewis and two other men, Reginald Oakley and Joseph L. Sweeting, were involved in that altercation.

Lewis was charged and eventually indicted on two murder charges by a Fulton County grand jury. Warrants were issued for Oakley and Sweeting.

They faced two counts of malicious murder, two counts of felony murder and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Convictions could have resulted in the death penalty.

The case went to trial and, eventually, a mid-trial plea deal was worked out. That included Lewis pleading guilty to misdemeanor obstruction of justice in exchange for the dropping of each murder charge.

Part of the deal was for Lewis to testify as a prosecution witness against Oakley and Sweeting. He said that both were involved in the fight, but that they were defending themselves.

The jury eventually found both not guilty.

“The hardest thing to do is fight for who you are in front of your family,” Lewis said, “It’s the most challenging thing you’ll ever do in your life.”

Lewis was 24 years old at the time, coming off the best season of his young career. He was the face of the Baltimore Ravens, but he also was the second NFL player to be charged with murder that month. Carolina Panthers receiver Rae Carruth was charged with first-degree murder.

Though he detailed the night in his autobiography, “I Feel Like Going On” in 2015, it’s a moment that has stuck with him. It’s part of his story.

“What hurt me, I’m going to be honest, is what happened in Atlanta because I told him not to go,” said Sunseria “Buffy” Jenkins, Lewis’ mother. “When that happened, that hurt me more than anything in the world. But I knew in my heart that he didn’t do it. I raised (him) the right way.”

Lewis went on to lead the Ravens to a Super Bowl win in 2001. He said that season wasn’t an escape from the hellish offseason he faced.

Ken Allen, the homicide detective put in charge of the investigation, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2013 that the case centered on Lewis because of his fame. He said, “it was like they were star struck and saw this as a case that could make a career.”

“I don’t think Ray Lewis ever should have been charged with murder,” Allen told the paper. “I don’t think he committed a murder. He would not have stabbed anybody. He had no reason to stab anybody.”

Police said Lewis gave misleading statements and did not cooperate with their investigation early on. By the time the case began to unravel in court, Lewis agreed to talk. He was ordered to serve one year of probation, and the NFL fined him $250,000, one of the largest fines ever levied on a player.

Now, it’s been 18 years since that morning.

Lewis won two Super Bowls and retired in 2013. He’s now a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee, the first to come out of Polk County. Asked how he looks back at that time in his life, Lewis talked about being put in situations where “God does not dwell.”

He said that his faith got him through it.

He learned to be careful of dwelling in unclean places.

“I’m here for two reasons,” Lewis said. “I’m here because I trusted my mother and the second reason is because my mother introduced me to God. Without those two things, we’re not talking about Ray Lewis right now.”