Ray Lewis Anchored the Best Scoring Defense in NFL History

Ray Lewis led the 2000 Ravens to 165 points allowed over a sixteen-game season, the fewest ever. He finished with an NFL-record 2,059 tackles, won Defensive Player of the Year twice, and was Super Bowl XXXV MVP.

That 2000 defense allowed 10.3 points a game, held opponents to 970 rushing yards for the entire year, and posted four shutouts. Baltimore then went through the playoffs allowing one offensive touchdown in four games and beat the Giants 34-7. Lewis had three tackles, two assists and four passes defensed in that Super Bowl and was named MVP, the first linebacker to win it on the winning side.

The career numbers are the other half. He recorded 2,059 combined tackles with 1,568 of them solo, made thirteen Pro Bowls, was first-team All-Pro seven times, and won Defensive Player of the Year in 2000 and again in 2003. Seventeen seasons and he led his team in tackles fourteen times, which is a way of saying he was the first man to the football for most of two decades.

What the tackle count hides is the diagnosis. Lewis called the front, set the strength and moved ten other players based on what he read in the offense alignment, then still arrived at the ball carrier. Coaches described the 2000 unit as a defense that knew the play before the snap. That was one man reading formations at a level that let everyone else play faster than their own athleticism allowed.

Dick Butkus was more feared and, in a much shorter career, probably the more terrifying pure player. Junior Seau covered more ground sideline to sideline. Lawrence Taylor, if you count him as a linebacker, has the higher individual impact by a distance. Lewis also spent his last years as a run-stuffer whose coverage had slipped, and the raw tackle record partly reflects longevity rather than dominance.

The response is the ring in each half of his career, twelve years apart, and the fact that the defense he ran is the statistical best on record. Butkus never had that. Seau never had that.

The verdict: Ray Lewis. The best defense ever measured, and two decades running it.