Outside linebacker Elvis Dumervil joined the Baltimore Ravens in 2013 as they were coming off a Super Bowl victory. While he was more than happy to re-sign with the Denver Broncos at the time—only a faxing snafu evidently prevented it—his hunger for a ring in part fed his eventual flight to Baltimore.
Now that he watches some of his former teammates with the Broncos donning Super Bowl rings of their own in the Denver orange and blue, he is hungrier than ever to get that ring as he finds himself having been sandwiched between two Super Bowl runs that he was unable to be a part of himself.
Dumvervil, a Pro Bowl talent, is 32 now and coming off a season plagued by injuries, so he knows that the sand is quickly sliding down the sides of the hourglass. “Hopefully this is the right year”, the year that the Ravens make it back to the Super Bowl and win, he recently said on ESPN, as transcribed by CSN.
“That’s all you want to play for”, he spoke about winning a championship. “Financially you’ve been blessed. If you’re able to play more than 10 years, obviously you have a good body of work that you’ve been doing. At this point, you know, the window is [closing]. You know you’re not going to play 20 or 30 years, especially at our position. The Super Bowl is the most desirable situation, no doubt”.
In his 10 seasons in the NFL, Dumervil has only seen the postseason a handful of times, missing out on it altogether in his first several seasons with the Broncos. While he has been to the Divisional Round three or four times, he has yet to know what it’s like to even play in a Conference Championship game.
In two of his three seasons since he signed with the Ravens, Baltimore has failed to make the playoffs, including the 2015 season, during which they won only five games. While the offensive side of the ball had its host of problems, the loss of Terrell Suggs for the year and Dumervil ailing with a foot injury limited their pass rush.
The duo combined for 29 sacks in 2014, when the Ravens squeaked into the playoffs as one of two AFC North teams to get through via the Wildcard, and Baltimore eclipsed the Steelers in that game, but they fell short to the eventual champion Patriots in the Divisional Round.
That is as close as Dumervil has ever gotten to tasting the Lombardi Trophy, and it goes without saying that even that is a long, long way off. He knows he doesn’t have much time left to get there, either.
The Steelers have their own aging veteran who nearly saw his former team taste the sweetness of reaching the pinnacle of the game. running back DeAngelo Williams signed with the Steelers after the Panthers released him because he saw them as a team that can win it all. But Pittsburgh fell to Dumervil’s former Broncos, who went on to beat Williams’ old Panthers in Super Bowl 50.
