Ravens win Super Bowl XXXV, 34-7 • Ray Lewis named MVP as Baltimore uses stifling defense to force 5 New York Giants interceptions
By DAVE GOLDBERG
AP Football Writer
TAMPA, Florida (AP) — This Super Bowl was a roll in the mud, not a grand passing duel between future Hall of Famers.
No one in Baltimore cares.
The city without a football championship since the old Colts won a Super Bowl 30 years ago got another one Sunday, when the Ravens beat the New York Giants 34-7 behind a smothering defense led by Ray Lewis.
“If you put this in a storybook, nobody would believe it,” said Lewis, who was voted the game’s MVP.
It certainly was for Lewis, who was arrested last year on murder charges in the stabbing deaths of two men at a Super Bowl party in Atlanta. He subsequently pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstructing justice.
“We didn’t just break records, we shattered them,” Lewis said. “We dominated literally. This is what you work your whole life for. You come from childhood, dreaming whatever you want it to be, but now, at 25, to be a world champion, what else can I dream of?”
Lewis, the defensive player of the year, led a defense that intercepted four Kerry Collins passes and held New York to 149 yards of offense, fitting for a team that allowed the fewest points ever in a 16-game season.
Duane Starks returned an interception 49 yards for a touchdown, the first of three TDs on three plays late in the third quarter. The other two were back-to-back kickoff returns for scores by Ron Dixon of New York and Jermaine Lewis of Baltimore, the first time that’s happened in a Super Bowl.
“I feel our defense is the best ever,” said offensive tackle Jonathan Ogden, a sentiment echoed by every one of his 52 teammates after the game.
The victory gave 75-year-old Art Modell his first Super Bowl victory in 40 years as an owner. He won one NFL title in 35 seasons in Cleveland before moving his franchise to Baltimore in 1996, but he had never been to a Super Bowl, losing two close AFC title games in Cleveland.
Modell won by beating his good friend Wellington Mara of the Giants, who has 75 seasons in the NFL.
“I’m a very happy man,” said Modell, who insists he has no hard feelings about Cleveland, even though the city still has a lot of hard feelings about him.
So effective was Baltimore’s defense that the New York offense never got inside the Ravens 29. Baltimore would have had the first shutout in a Super Bowl if the special teams had not allowed Dixon’s 97-yard kickoff return for a touchdown.
