Hall of Fame bound linebacker and new ESPN NFL analyst Ray Lewis says the New England Patriots had to know something about Aaron Hernandez's wayward ways before the former tight end was jailed on the first-degree murder charges he now faces.
Lewis, who once faced two counts of murder himself before striking a deal with prosecutors and pleading to obstruction of justice charges, told fellow pregame show hosts Cris Carter, Keyshawn Johnson and Tom Jackson he's convinced the Patriots had some idea about all Hernandez's "off field baggage."
In addition to the murder charge, Hernandez faces five gun related charges stemming from the June 17 execution-style killing of one-time associate Odin Lloyd. The 27-year-old former semi-pro football player's bullet-riddled body was found in late June less than a mile from 23-year-old former tight end's North Attleborough mansion.
He remains jailed without bail and relegated to solitary confinement. Hernandez is also being investigated in a 2012 double-slaying in Boston that remains unsolved.
"I want to make sure we clear something up because we have to do this for our brand of the National Football League: Our numbers are very small when it comes to the pain and the crime that happens in everyday America, the numbers of athletes that get in trouble," Lewis said in response to Carter's on-air claim that Hernandez's case could harm the NFL's image. "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. Now, it's up to you to say, 'You know what, I'm still going to try that.'"
Watch the video of Lewis speaking about Hernandez here.
By contrast, Lewis argued the Baltimore Ravens didn't have anything to worry about when they drafted him out of the University of Miami in 1996."They didn't have to do a background check on me coming out of college," he said. "I was clean off the field."
As for the aforementioned charges he was hit with in 2000, Lewis insists once he got in trouble he got a call from then-Ravens owner Art Modell that made all the difference.
"I think the biggest phone call I received after my mom's phone call when I went through that was Art Modell," said Lewis. "He's dead and resting in peace now. That shows you the connection I had with my organization is they knew who I was as a man. They had been with me for five years at that point in my career. Before we're athletes, we're human beings. The bottom line is we will find a way as human beings to make a mistake somewhere down the road. The biggest thing I had to change was I had to change the people I was around because the people I was around wasn't thinking the way I was thinking, they weren't training the way I was training, they wasn't doing the things that would take me to where I needed to go. They were actually making me regress and make me go backwards."
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