Snow, slush, ice and rain aside, many football fans have much to reckon with this weekend.

We prepare to endure our first weekend in a looooong time without any National Football League teams to root for (please, don’t talk to us about the Pro Bowl). It’s a tough sell for some people, waiting for a Super Bowl without the teams we’ve rooted for all season who broke our hearts.

Let’s get a grip.

That was pretty much the advice that came from Ray Lewis, a man some might consider an unlikely source for inspiration. (Others who have followed his career over the years are less surprised.)

Lewis is big and pretty scary. OK, he’s actually really scary, no “pretty” about it. He’s a linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens, which came this close to beating the New England Patriots in the American Football Conference championship game Sunday. Those who don’t follow football aren’t interested in the details but trust us, the end of the game was a heartbreaker for the fans of the purple-clad Ravens.

This is the sort of loss that frequently precedes news conferences with quarterbacks (and kickers), hanging their heads, eyes moist, pondering how to get through such “adversity.”

Not Ray.

After the game, he spoke to his teammates and put the loss in perspective. His words would work for most occasions when we get caught up in our own problems or what we think of as bad luck.

He began by telling the Ravens that God had never made a mistake, so there was no question that the loss was somehow the result of one bad play. He said the team had done what it was supposed to do in the course of a season; “We fought as a team.”

But only one team can win the Super Bowl, so the way the Ravens felt Sunday was the way someone else was going to feel later that day, and next week, too. Everyone but one team loses. That’s just a fact, he said.

Everyone feels that way sometime. But — he especially told the young quarterback who’d played his heart out (and better than New England’s elite quarterback, even though in the losing effort) — “don’t ever, don’t ever drop your head when you come through a loss ... ‘cause there’s too much pain outside of this that people are really going through.”

How true. Whatever our relatively minor complaint — usually not death or horrible illness, but perhaps a car in the ditch or a party we can’t attend because it’s too risky to drive in the weather these days — there is someone out there who is going through actual pain and loss.

“This right here makes us strong,” Lewis said of the loss. Then he made the suggestion that, were all of us to take him up on it, would make many a situation far more livable. “Let’s make somebody smile when we walk out of here. We got the opportunity to keep going, man.”

We do have the opportunity to keep going. Let’s make the most of it and, in the midst of setbacks, make someone smile.

Who knew Ray was such a softie?