Next football season, Ray Lewis will be on the sideline, perhaps saving up his pregame speeches — motivational, to be sure, but sometimes indecipherable in their ferocity — for his son’s first season at the University of Miami.

It is almost impossible to imagine the N.F.L. without Lewis, without the eyeblack streaked across his face, without his wild dances as he emerged from the stadium tunnel, without his punishing hits.