“When you’re dealing with an injury like this, one of the things you research is the length of time to come back. We look for the best case, the worst case and the average. That’s the first thing we look at from a football point of view,” General Manager Ozzie Newsome said yesterday in talking about Ray Lewis’ torn triceps.

“Once we got those estimations, we looked at the calendar and started thinking: ‘If there is any athlete in the world who could come back from this in the shortest time, it would be Ray,’” Newsome explained.

“I talked with John (Harbaugh), Steve (Bisciotti) – and Steve was very involved and instrumental in this decision – and, of course, Ray. While I was doing my research with Dr. (Leigh Ann) Curl (team doctor), Ray was doing his homework and his research. I told Ray we were thinking about giving him the ‘designation to return’ tag, and he said he was just going to call me and suggest that he thought he could be back by the end of the season,” Newsome said.

The “designation to return” is new to the NFL this year. It allows teams to commit one player per season to injured reserve who is allowed to return to the active roster after at least six weeks on injured reserve. “When we were talking about whether to do this with Ray, I mentioned to Steve and John that we could save this for another player. But, I also said that some basketball coaches save their timeouts and then don’t use them. Steve said, ‘Don’t save the timeout.’”

Then Ozzie talked about Ray: “They say it’s a slow-healing injury, but that the person could begin rehab three weeks after the surgery. Then you put Ray into the equation. He will attack this like he attacks everything else. Is there anyone who could bring more energy, more motivation, more work to come back? Because it’s Ray, we’re willing to take this chance. We all know he is special, and he’s already chomping at the bit to get going, and he just had surgery yesterday (Wednesday.) If we were going to bet on one player coming back, we were betting on Ray Lewis.”
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