When we think of great Ravens of the past, we remember moments — big tackles, improbable catches, gritty runs. We remember the wins, the disappointments and, for many of them, the moment when they slipped on their gold jackets in Canton.

Lewis. Reed. Ogden. We remember how they defined what it means to be a Raven.

What never leaps to the front of anyone’s mind is how much money they made or whether their final contracts were good values.

In the modern sports environment that encourages fans to keep an eye on salary cap room and draft pick stashes just as closely as on-field statistics, I understand why some might wring their hands over the Ravens’ extension of 30-year-old Mark Andrews’ contract.

He’s in his eighth season, his athleticism has declined along with his counting stats, and even though he is the franchise’s leader in receptions, receiving yards and touchdowns, he has never caught one score in the playoffs (he’s better known for his postseason drops). In the era when fans count beans as much as GMs do, it might have seemed prudent for the Ravens to look to one of the two younger tight ends on their roster.

Try as I might to be skeptical (and, yes, I just went through the exercise this week of second-guessing Eric DeCosta’s decisions), I just can’t get worked up about Andrews being too old or not worth the money, or the decision being a bad bet on the Ravens’ future. Actually, I disagree entirely.

There are players you count on for production and some you count on to set an example and build culture.

Mark Andrews is both.

Although he is not on the “Mount Rushmore” of Ravens history — you’ll have a hard time moving Lewis, Reed, Ogden and, eventually, Lamar Jackson out of that top four — Andrews is (by definition) a franchise great. Whatever hope Baltimore has of making the postseason this year, he’s a driving force in the effort.

In a year in which the whole passing offense is out of whack, it’s distorting to look at Andrews’ decline in receiving yards and receptions and decide he is washed up. He’s second on the team in receiving yards, second in receptions (with 19 more than next-closest Isaiah Likely) and, unlike leading receiver Zay Flowers, Andrews has a knack for finding the end zone (16 touchdowns in the past two seasons).

It defies good sense that the Ravens, who are struggling in the red zone this year more than any other in recent memory, should let their best scoring target hit the bricks. His end-zone chemistry with Lamar Jackson is the fuel this offense has been running on — through different coordinators and teammates — since he splashed into the NFL as a third-round pick.

Even when Jackson has struggled to get him the ball this season, he has made an impact — by running the ball.

Andrews entered this season under the most withering criticism of his career, with many fans eager to see him traded after he dropped a pivotal 2-point conversion at the goal line in a playoff loss in Buffalo. Although the drop initially rocked him, he came to offseason workouts in tremendous shape and with sharpened determination to wash out the bitter taste of that disappointment.

“I’d say I was very patient in this process and just — again — not trying to control things I can’t control and putting my head down, going to work and fighting for this team as much as I could — especially this year,” he said. “But it was extremely important to me — and I expressed that to them — to be able to stay here and play week in and week out for this team.”

If we were talking only about what Andrews does on the field, maybe it wouldn’t be worth making him one of the NFL’s top-paid tight ends. But his work ethic is hard to beat. Andrews’ intensity sets a tone in practice almost to a fault — he sometimes seems as mad at a bad drive on the practice field as on Sundays. In workouts, you don’t catch him skipping sets.

Kyle Hamilton, one of the Ravens’ other leaders, said he was inspired by Andrews as a rookie out of Notre Dame. Watching Andrews impressed upon him that he had to work harder to meet the Ravens’ standard.

“As a 21-year-old rookie coming here, you were ‘the man’ at whatever school you were at,” Hamilton said. “If you’re a first-round [pick], and you see guys like that, who are the man in the league, working like how he works, it’s hard for that not to be contagious.”

Tight ends who manage their bodies well, such as Travis Kelce, Antonio Gates and Tony Gonzalez, can play deep into their 30s. Andrews might have lost a step or two since his best years, but he is savvy enough in space and cares enough about his fitness to make a difference well beyond this season.

Isaiah Likely, long viewed as a potential Andrews successor, said he was “gassed” for his teammate even. The unsaid part is that Likely now faces an uphill battle to get his own contract extension done.

But to view Andrews and Likely as simply jockeying on the depth chart misses something critical — Likely might never have been even this good without Andrews’ guidance. Before Likely got to Baltimore, he said, he ate fast food before every game. Andrews helped him change that.

“I’m just trying to take care of my body, trying to maintain my body, being able to understand defense and not just bet on my athleticism to get me through a play, a down or a series,” Likely said of Andrews’ influence. “Him just teaching me how to study, teaching me how to prep my body and really just teaching me how to be a pro.”

With Andrews outproducing Likely for a fourth straight season, why should the Ravens settle for the pupil when they can simply extend the teacher?

We will never see another 1,300-yard season from Andrews, but yards are not the whole point of the contract. Andrews is an effective player who is the blueprint of what a Raven should be. Furthermore, he wants to be in Baltimore and wants to continue playing with Jackson — so much so that, when the Ravens offered him a chance to bypass free agency and stay put, Andrews leapt at it like a jump ball in the end zone.

“This has become home for me – really every aspect about it. I’ve loved getting to grow up here as a man and play for this city [and] for this organization. There’s no place else I’d rather play.”

The theme of Andrews’ week is commitment. Over the weekend, he asked his girlfriend to marry him (she said yes). On Thursday, he said he wants to retire a Raven — and I think a lot of Baltimore fans would find meaning in that, even in a more cynical, finance-conscious era of sports fandom.

What really separates Andrews from some of the franchise’s true greats is a championship. For all he has accomplished, his subpar playoff record is the last piece of his legacy that needs to be bolstered. Although it’s hard to say whether he will rise to that challenge, Ravens fans should feel confident that no one will outprepare Andrews the next time a playoff game arises.

“Extremely hungry — extremely hungry — for this opportunity,” he said. “And the beautiful thing about this week is that it’s all in front of us. This is the first step to making our dreams happen. As a team, you couldn’t want it any other way.”

It’s hard to imagine, too, the Ravens finding a better value for their money than keeping one of their homegrown legends in the building.

On Sunday, the Ravens are pulling out all the nostalgic stops for the rivalry matchup with the Steelers. They have Ray Lewis and Jon Ogden at the forefront of a celebration of the 2000 Super Bowl squad, the first team in this franchise to truly define the standard by which all other Ravens are judged.

If Lewis and Ogden helped define those teams of the past, Andrews helps define the teams of the present. And, long after we forget the contract machinations that kept him in Baltimore, I’m betting his legacy will be remembered fondly (and hopefully, imitated) in the distant, distant future.