Suggs learned from Cane legends Lewis and Reed
Terrell Suggs stepped into a gantlet when the Ravens drafted him in 2003. Now a defensive end for the Chiefs, Suggs praises Ray Lewis and Ed Reed for their mentorship.
Terrell Suggs knows two of his favorite teammates have been hanging around South Florida all week ahead of Super Bowl 54. The Kansas City Chiefs defensive end wants no part of seeing Ray Lewis and Ed Reed until after Sunday, though.
“I ain’t seen them yet,” Suggs said. “I’m kind of avoiding them because right now I like just kind of my mental right now and if I see those football guys then the pressure is going to intensify. I don’t need any extra pressure from my big brothers coming down and being like, ‘All right, Sizzle.’
“It’s a look. They say stuff without saying it — the both of them — so I’m kind of avoiding them right now until after
Sunday.”
Suggs and the two Miami Hurricanes legends will always be linked because of their time together with the Baltimore Ravens. They’re three of the greatest defensive players in NFL history and helped the Ravens win Super Bowl 47 in 2012.
Those two already had a reputation when Suggs was drafted with the No. 10 overall pick by Baltimore in the 2003 NFL Draft. Lewis
was already a six-time Pro Bowl player and a champion after leading the Ravens to win Super Bowl 35. Reed was drafted just a year before Suggs, but was named to the 2002 AllRookie Team, then made the first of his nine Pro Bowl teams when Suggs was a rookie in 2003.
Suggs couldn’t have asked for a better of set of mentors.
“There’s no word that really can describe it. You can’t get a better education,” Suggs said at the JW Marriott Miami Turnberry Resort & Spa in Aventura, where his Chiefs are staying ahead of their Super Bowl matchup with the San Francisco 49ers at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens. “I just learned how to be a professional and not only that, their approach to the game and how football was their life. Their football IQ was like no other. You can’t explain it. There ain’t a class you can take to kind of learn what they know.”
Suggs’ relationship with Lewis was particularly strong. Although he’s a defensive lineman now in Kansas City, Suggs was one of the most prolific passrushing outside linebackers in history in Baltimore. He spent 10 seasons playing in the same position group as Lewis, standing next to him on the field and sitting next to him in meetings before Lewis retired following the 2012 season.
Suggs can still clearly remember the first time he met Lewis. The two were filming a commercial for Madden NFL 2004 ahead of the 2003 Draft, so the two started talking. Suggs made sure to mention the 24 sacks he had as a junior in 2002 — still an NCAA record. Lewis didn’t care.
“I would tell him, kind of like trying to brag a little bit, and he was like, ‘You may fall to us, Sizzle,’ and I was like, ‘What number are y’all?’ He was like, ‘We’ve got the 10th pick.’ I was like, ‘Nah, I’m going to be gone way before that. There’s no way I’m falling to 10th,’ and he was like, ‘Nah, Sizzle, I think you may fall to us.’ ”
He did, of course. It was just the start of Lewis nagging the future superstar.
Suggs wasn’t happy with the Ravens’ offer to him as the No. 10 pick, so he held out going into his rookie training camp. The day he arrived, Lewis pied him in the face.
“He told me to get my ass to camp on time next year,” Suggs said. “They broke me down at first — they didn’t care that I was a first-round pick and did all these things in college. They didn’t care — they broke me down first, and I had to grow by wanting it.”
Ultimately, it let Suggs blossom into one of the NFL’s most distinctive personalities, the sort of player who can easily flaunt the T-Sizzle nickname and can believably say he attended “Ball So Hard University” in pregame introductions.
“They encouraged us to be ourselves, especially those two guys,” Suggs said. “We had 10 or 12 distinct personalities in the locker room and it all worked — organized chaos. I remember giving [Ravens coach] John Harbaugh a hug, like, ‘Yo, you deal with a lot every day because of our personnel.’ ”
On Sunday, he will have a chance to join his mentor as a two-time champion. He finally left Baltimore after last season and signed a one-year deal with his hometown Arizona Cardinals in the offseason. The Cardinals, however, prioritized youth down the stretch, so they released Suggs last month. The Chiefs claimed him and he has recorded five tackles, a sack and three quarterback hits in four games since.
Suggs played more than half of Kansas City’s defensive snaps in its 35-24 win over the Tennessee Titans on Jan. 19 in the AFC Championship Game — his most since joining the Chiefs. Playing in the county where his mentors became college stars,
Suggs will have a chance to join Lewis in an exclusive club.”
“He was speaking Japanese to me when I was younger,” Suggs said, “but as I got mature and got older I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m picking up what you’re putting down.’ ”
David Wilson: 305-376-3406, @DBWilson2