Every offseason, we see nearly every mock draft for the Baltimore Ravens include a wide receiver early on. It’s 2019, and things haven’t changed. In Draft Wire’s latest mock draft, the Ravens select Arizona State wide receiver N’Keal Harry at the No. 22 overall pick in the first round.
Baltimore has been a favorite landing spot for Harry for obvious reasons. The Ravens still desperately need help at the position after their attempts to remake the wide receiver corps in free agency last offseason largely failed. Now with the possibility of Willie Snead being the team’s only proven weapon at wide receiver, Baltimore simply needs to find bodies to put on the field, giving them a glaring need for draft experts in mocks.
Harry checks a lot of boxes the Ravens should want to be checked. Harry is big (6 feet 4, 213 pounds) and knows how to be physical at all points of the field. He’s got good speed and solid hands. It’s easy to see how quarterback Lamar Jackson would fall in love with a target like that and how Baltimore could believe they’d grow into a dynamic passing duo over time.
While no wide receiver in the 2019 NFL draft class appears to have set himself apart as a transcendent talent, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Harry has been mocked all over the first round, showing just how high his ceiling is viewed by some experts. But if Harry is available toward the end of the first round, the Ravens simply might need a player they can plug and play immediately and hope he develops into the type of playmaker some think he could be.
With only D.K. Metcalf off the board on Draft Wire’s mock draft, Baltimore would have their pick of options. If they view someone like Marquise Brown highly enough, they could even drop back and hope he falls to them after he dropped out of the Scouting Combine to have Lisfranc surgery.
