Ray Lewis

Ravens Nation, you feel better about things, don't you? The great panic is officially over. Oh, it was rough there for a while, watching the Ravens clean house and get rid of the old guys and the locker-room lawyers and the over-valued players who somehow had other teams lobbing sacks of money at them. You looked around one day and everything had changed. Ray Lewis and Matt Birk retired. Then Anquan Boldin was gone and so was Paul Kruger and Dannell Ellerbe, Bernard Pollard and even Ed Reed.

Here is what five national NFL analysts are saying about how the Ravens did in the 2013 NFL draft. --- Mel Kiper Jr. of ESPN gave the Ravens an A-minus grade and said they did a good job addressing needs. “The Ravens needed to come out of this draft with an inside linebacker and a safety, and with their first two picks, they got two really good players at those positions. Matt Elam has played high-level football at Florida, can move around (particularly up to the line of scrimmage)

Eighteen years ago during their inaugural draft, the Ravens landed future Hall of Fame middle linebacker Ray Lewis late in the first round. It was a masterful selection, especially since there were questions surrounding Lewis at that time due to a lack of ideal size. Lewis wound up winning a pair of NFL Defensive Player of the Year awards, providing leadership for two Super Bowl championship teams. Now that Lewis has retired, the Ravens are tasked with replacing him to bolster an inside linebacker spot weakened by Dannell Ellerbe signing with the Miami Dolphins and Jameel McClain still not medically cleared from a spinal cord contusion.

Each weekday through tomorrow, the day before the first round of the NFL draft, The Sun will look at where the Ravens stand at each position, the likelihood that they will address that spot early in the draft and some of the prospects that they may consider. Today we'll examine inside linebacker: Current inside linebackers under contract : Jameel McClain, Rolando McClain, Albert McClellan, Josh Bynes, Bryan Hall, Nigel Carr Chances that the Ravens draft an inside linebacker in first three rounds : High.

Most Ravens fans will tell you that inside linebacker Ray Lewis was the greatest draft pick in franchise history. But the fine stat heads over at ESPN have calculated that Lewis was the NFL's most valuable pick since 1994. In this week's ESPN the Magazine, they put together a chart of the best draft picks from each franchise based on Surplus Approximate Value (AV), which essentially measures the difference between what each player produced during his career compared to what he was expected to produce based on where he was drafted.

Here is a roundup of which first-round draft prospects the Ravens are linked to in 2013 NFL mock drafts. --- Pat Kirwan of CBS Sports predicts the Ravens will take LSU inside linebacker Kevin Minter at pick No. 32. “Some believe Manti Te'o is a better pick for the Ravens,” Kirwam wrote. “But I studied both and prefer Minter because he has better pass-drop awareness and plays under more control.” --- Don Banks of Sports Illustrated also thinks the Ravens will draft Minter -- unless they trade the pick to someone else . “If the Ravens don't choose to replace one of the inside linebackers they lost (Dannell Ellerbe and Ray Lewis)

The conversations didn't just start in the aftermath of the Ravens' victory in Super Bowl XLVII. They actually began four months earlier when Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome , owner Steve Bisciotti and coach John Harbaugh started to meet and plan for 2013 and beyond. “What happened after we won the Super Bowl, that's something that Steve, John and I probably started talking about in October, November, as to what the team was going to look like in 2013,” Newsome said yesterday.

I mentioned this on my Twitter account, but I wanted to go into a little more detail here. Eight of the nine oldest Ravens - and the six oldest overall - from the team that won the Super Bowl two months ago are no longer under contract with the team. That group includes Ray Lewis (37, retired), Bobbie Williams (36, released), Matt Birk (36, retired), Brendon Ayanbadejo (36, will be released), Ed Reed (34, signed with Houston), Ma'ake Kemoeatu (34, free agent), Bryant McKinnie (33, free agent)

Neither Ray Lewis nor Ray Rice will be on the cover of the next “Madden,” if you care about this sort of thing. Both players were eliminated in the Sweet Sixteen of the 64-player bracket to determine who will be on the cover of “Madden NFL 25,” which is the 25th anniversary edition of the popular pigskin video game franchise. Lewis, who retired after the Ravens won the Super Bowl in February, was knocked out of the “old school” bracket by former Detroit Lions back and fellow NFL legend Barry Sanders, who got 67 percent of the fan vote.