As is seemingly tradition by now, the Baltimore Ravens decided to trade out of their first-round pick on Thursday night, sending their No. 22 overall selection to the Philadelphia Eagles in exchange for the No. 25 pick, a fourth-round selection (No. 127 overall) and a sixth-round selection (No. 197 overall).
Though it’ll be quite some time before the dust settles and offers us a clearer picture on the quality of this trade, the immediate optics certainly look good.
Using Draft Wire’s draft pick trade value chart, both sides got a pretty square deal. The Ravens’ pick was worth 780 points, while the Eagles’ three selections were worth a combined 777.7 points. However, ESPN Sports Analytics’s Seth Walder tweeted that approximate value over replacement projections gave Baltimore’s new picks about 60 percent more in value compared to their previous sole selection.
Numbers aside, any opportunity to pick up more picks — especially a mid-rounder — is a welcome one for Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta.
“But one thing that we’ve shown over the past years is we know how to manufacture picks,” said DeCosta in April. “So if the opportunity is there, we’ll have a chance to trade back and accumulate picks.”
“Those third-round picks and those fourth-round picks, those are gold for us this year. In this draft, having four picks in those two rounds, that’s an ideal situation to be in.”
