Ray Lewis knows a thing or two about character concerns, and he talked about them on Sunday.
Lewis made his debut on ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown on Sunday morning, and one of the topics that he and the crew covered was Aaron Hernandez and the New England Patriots. He reflected back on his own legal troubles, stemming from a 2000 murder at a Super Bowl party in Atlanta, and offered some thoughts on the Patriots’ handling of the situation.
“New England had to know something, just like 31 other teams had to know something about Aaron Hernandez’s background, and that’s your red flag,” Lewis said. “Now, it’s up to you to say, ‘You know what, I’m still going to try that.'”
Lewis didn’t get into the specifics of his own connection to a murder trial or that of Hernandez’s, but, when pushed by colleague Keyshawn Johnson, he did note a difference between the two saying that there were no concerns over his character coming out of college.
“They didn’t have to do a background check on me coming out of college,” Lewis said of being drafted by the Ravens in 1996. “I was clean off the field.”
When pushed further on the issue by Cris Carter on potential character questions coming out of the University of Miami, Lewis blankly stated “Absolutely not.”
Sunday’s comments weren’t the first from Lewis publicly on the Hernandez situation, but they were the most pointed and detailed since the former Patriots star was arrested and charged with the first-degree murder of Odin Lloyd in June.
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