INDIANAPOLIS -- Ray Lewis welcomes the ultimate chess match.
He barks out signals to his Baltimore Ravens teammates and occasionally calls the plays he thinks Peyton Manning will run. Sometimes he's right, sometimes he's wrong, and sometimes he just gets a wry smile from the Indianapolis Colts quarterback.
What has become an annual meeting between two of the league's biggest headliners, both former Super Bowl MVPs, has turned into more than a traditional cat-and-mouse game: It's a contest of wits.
"I just mess with him a lot of times," Lewis said with a menacing laugh. "When he walks up there, I might just say something, 'All right, now, you better hurry up with that play clock going.'
"I'm really, most of the time, trying to listen to the little checks, what dummy calls are real, what are not real, things like that."
Perhaps he wants to distract Manning from making those masterful strokes with his innate ability to call audibles.
Manning doesn't have quite the same reverence about this rivalry, which will be renewed Sunday in the city the Colts now call home, Indianapolis, rather than the one they called home for more than three decades, Baltimore.
Sure, Manning, the competitor, enjoys plotting moves and countermoves against Lewis and the Ravens, but it requires additional work and the ability to keep a straight face.
"I can hear him sometimes," Manning said. "There have been plenty of times where Ray has called out the play we're running, and he's fairly accurate."
Yet despite their different outlooks, Manning and Lewis have a deep respect for one another on the field.
Especially for one another's study skills.
"He takes a lot of pride in his profession," Manning said. "I can just tell how much he studies when I play against him and watch him play, and the times I've been around him at the Pro Bowl and talking football with him. He's very knowledgeable."
Neither needs to spend much time looking at trends this week.
