Why Ray Didn’t Do His Dance Sunday

With a dance as iconic as Lewis’, why didn’t he perform it at the Ring of Honor ceremony?

Lewis was introduced out of the tunnel Sunday, but acknowledged the crowd and gave high fives to his teammates. WNST’s Glenn Clark asked Byrne what conversations led to the decision for Lewis not to dance.

“I don’t think there was as much [conversation] as people might suspect,” he replied. “I spoke to Coach [John] Harbaugh to say, ‘Look, we’ve brought out our Ring of Honor guys in different ways. In pre-game, we’ve brought them out before we bring the team, we’ve brought them out just before we introduce whatever starting group we’re going to do. Or we can not bring him out.’

“John’s immediate reaction was, ‘No I’m OK with having Ray there in the tunnel and stuff. And I said, ‘Well how about we bring him out just before we introduce the defense. He said, “Yeah, I’m good with that. It will be good to see him.’ That’s basically as much conversation that we had about it.”
Was there any conversation with Lewis about his dance?

Byrne said the topic never even came up. He said. “I never suggested it to him. I never asked him if he wanted to do it.”

The Ravens needed to balance the love the city and franchise have for Lewis with the need to be a separate team in 2013.

“My personal opinion is this was not the time for the dance, but if Ray looked at me and said, ‘Hey, the people would really like it’ or ‘I’m willing to do it,’ we probably would have done it,” Byrne said. “It really just didn’t come up.

“I thought the way it happened was tremendous. In fact, when Ray was in the tunnel and we put a camera on him and showed him on our big screen, the stadium literally shook. It’s shaken very few times since the building’s been up. I was on the field and I could feel the vibrations when they first saw him in the tunnel and that’s before he walked out. … That was like, ‘Holy cow!’ That was a very cool moment for all of us.”


(baltimoreravens.com)