Despite never having coached football at the collegiate or high school level, former Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis has been seemingly floated for the vacancy at Florida Atlantic University.
FAU recently fired second-year coach Tom Herman. The former Texas head coach compiled a 6-16 record across two seasons with the Owls.
With questions arising over who might be interested in taking over, ESPN’s Adam Schefter says that Lewis has ’emerged as a candidate’ to head to Boca Raton.
But Schefter’s reporting was followed up by another report from Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger, who tweeted, ‘Pretty blunt intel from the folks involved in the coaching search at FAU about the ESPN report that Ray Lewis is a candidate for coach: “It is not happening.”‘
Schefter specifically said that Lewis would be following the Deion Sanders-to-Colorado model, but that isn’t exactly true.
Before arriving at Colorado, Sanders had accumulated multiple years of head coaching and assistant coaching experience within Texas high school football. He then jumped to Jackson State University, an HBCU, and coached there for three seasons before his move to Boulder.
Former Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis has emerged as a candidate for the FAU coaching job
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By all accounts, Lewis does not have that same experience. After retiring from the NFL in 2013, Lewis joined ESPN as a contributor for their NFL coverage.
After being let go by ESPN, he moved to Fox Sports 1 in 2017 but was let go again shortly later. Since then, Lewis has mostly been out of the public eye.
Lewis was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on the first ballot in 2018 after compiling one of the best careers a linebacker has ever had at the professional level.
He holds the NFL record for the most combined tackles (2,059) and the most solo tackles (1,568) in a career – as well as the most solo tackles in a season.
Lewis won the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year award twice in 2000 and again in 2003. With the Ravens, he won Super Bowl XXXV in the 2000 season and Super Bowl XLVII in the 2012 season in the final game he ever played.
Outside his football accolades, Lewis is also known for a highly public murder trial in the aftermath of a Super Bowl party in Atlanta in 2000.
Lewis and two members of his entourage were indicted on murder and assault charges after a fight broke out with another group of people – leading to the stabbing deaths of two men.
Two weeks into the trial, Lewis agreed to a plea deal with the Fulton County District Attorney which led to his murder charges being dismissed in exchange for a testimony against two members of his entourage accused of committing the stabbing.
Lewis was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2018 as one of the sport’s greatest
He won two Super Bowls across his career – including in the final game he ever played in 2013
Lewis pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction of justice and admitted to giving a misleading statement to police the morning after the killings.
He was sentenced to 12 months probation and was fined $250,000 by the NFL – believed to be, at the time, the highest fine levied against an NFL player for an infraction not involving substance abuse.
The two members of Lewis’ entourage said that they acted in self defense. At trial, the jury acquitted the two men of all charges.
Four years later, Lewis reached an out-of-court settlement with the families of the two victims.
