It’s hard to take issue with any of the individual moves the Ravens made this offseason, but there’s no denying the team is worse off (on paper, at least) than it was heading into the 2018 season.
Baltimore said goodbye to veteran leaders like Terrell Suggs, C.J. Mosley, Za’Darius Smith and Eric Weddle and did not really replace them with known quantities. Earl Thomas is an upgrade over Weddle, but the pass rush was decimated by free agency. At the same time, the Ravens’ future looks brighter as a result. Baltimore could’ve used having a QB on a rookie contract as an excuse to deviate from its typical plan of building through the draft and to spend big on veteran free agents, but first-year GM Eric DeCosta didn’t take the bait. Instead, he focused his roster-building efforts on the draft and brought in a robust and talented class.
Notable draft picks: WR Marquise Brown, OLB Jaylon Ferguson, WR Miles Boykin, RB Justice Hill
Key acquisitions/re-signings: S Earl Thomas, RB Mark Ingram, CB Tavon Young*, QB Robert Griffin III*
Losses: LB C.J. Mosley, S Eric Weddle, WR John Brown, OLB Terrell Suggs, OLB Za’Darius Smith, WR Michael Crabtree, QB Joe Flacco
*Re-signed with team
The Ravens wanted to keep Mosley around but with the Jets willing to hand him over $50 million in guarantees, the front office didn’t have much of a choice: Let the Jets overpay for a position that doesn’t make all that big of an impact on games and allocate those resources elsewhere. Baltimore could just replace him in the draft with a cheaper option.
Letting Suggs and Smith must have been a much tougher pill to swallow. Pass rush is obviously important, but research on the relationship between the rush and coverage suggests that it’s smarter to spend big on the secondary rather than paying for sacks, and that seems to be what the Ravens are doing after they splurged on Earl Thomas and re-signed Tavon Young with the money they could’ve used on Suggs and Smith.
The Ravens entered the draft with massive holes at the receiver position, and it looks like they’ve filled them — and they didn’t need to overspend (with money or draft capital) to do it. Baltimore took a calculated risk, traded back for more picks and still landed Marquise Brown late in the first round. Then they found a receiver with round-one potential in third-round pick Miles Boykin, who may have gone higher in the draft if he had played with better quarterbacks at Notre Dame. Those two may not be an immediate upgrade over the John Brown-Michael Crabtree duo Baltimore employed in 2018, but they’re cheaper and have more upside.
The Ravens took a small step back these last few months — though that could be mitigated by an improvement from Lamar Jackson — but to could lead to more significant steps forward in the near future.
