Veterans showed Bowser what it takes to succeed. Now he has to take charge.

When Tyus Bowser arrived in Baltimore in 2017, Terrell Suggs was a teammate. So were Za’Darius Smith and Matthew Judon. Two years later, Pernell McPhee was back in the Ravens locker room. Bowser, over his first four NFL seasons, came to see almost every iteration of the team’s outside linebacker prototype: big and strong, outspoken and unapologetic, a pain to deal with on third-and-long.

After signing a four-year, $22 million contract extension last week amid a flurry of offseason moves, the soft-spoken, contemplative Bowser is now the unlikely face of the position. McPhee is there, too, and so is the similarly old-school Jaylon Ferguson, a former Day 2 draft pick like Bowser. But with the free-agent market thinning and the front office’s first-round plans next month uncertain, it is Bowser leading the Ravens’ edge rushers into the 2021 season.

“I feel like that would be a big step for me coming into this year, being a fifth-year guy [and] a fifth-year vet with a young team, especially in my group, being really the only guy besides [McPhee] who just signed back,” Bowser, 25, said during a virtual news conference Monday. “To be able to lead that group, lead this defense and also lead this team to where we want to be, and that’s to win a Super Bowl.”

Bowser, who agreed to a new deal a day before he was set to officially reach free agency, said he never wanted to leave Baltimore. He was comfortable with the scheme, in which he’s asked to drop into zone coverage almost as often as some inside linebackers, and he appreciated the team culture, the “family atmosphere” that he couldn’t bear to leave.