Getty Ravens GM Eric DeCosta won't risk losing out on a coveted prospect just to gain more draft capital.
Typically when a team is set to enter the draft in any given year with just a handful of picks, they will often look for a way to accumulate more so that they can address their top needs and add more depth with inexpensive talent.
The Baltimore Ravens are no exception as they are currently slated to have just five selections in the 2023 NFL Draft with none in the second or seventh round.
“We wish we had more,” general manager Eric DeCosta said in a pre-draft press conference on April 5, 2023. “Our goal is probably to get more along the way – if we can – depending on how things fall.”
One of the most common practices that front offices use to accumulate more draft capital is by trading back with a team looking to move up because they like a particular prospect or group of prospects.
DeCosta and his predecessor Ozzie Newsome built a strong reputation for having an accurate feel for how the board will fall. He is confident that they will be able to trade back and pick up some more picks if the opportunity presents itself but won’t pass up on a prospect they covet if he’s the best player available at their original selection.
Eric DeCosta on the possibility of adding more picks:
“I think the chances for us to be able to do it (trade down) are pretty decent,” DeCosta said. “Of course, if we’re in love with somebody while we’re on the clock, we’re going to make the pick.
Part of a general manager’s job during the three-day event is to convene with his fellow top decision-makers and evaluators in such situations and gauge how strongly they feel about a particular prospect that is available when they’re on the clock versus a chance to move back and gain additional picks.
“Sometimes, you get lucky in that there’s a guy that you might really want, you make the tough decision to trade back and you can still get him,” DeCosta said. “It happens more than you think. We have to look at the capital that we can get by trading back, and we’ll make the best decision that we can.”
A recent example of what he might be referring to in the quote above was the circumstances in last year’s draft that resulted in them finding two starters for only moving back a couple of spots. They traded the additional first-round pick they got for trading wide receiver Marquise ‘Hollywood’ Brown to the Arizona Cardinals to the Buffalo Bills.
The original selection was No. 23 overall and they only moved back two slots to No. 25 overall so that the Bills could leapfrog the Dallas Cowboys and take Florida cornerback Kaiir Elam. In exchange for moving back, the Ravens received the No. 130 overall in the fourth round.
With their second first-round pick, they were still able to land the top center prospect in the draft in Iowa’s Tyler Linderbaum and with the extra fourth-rounder, they selected Penn State punter Jordan Stout. They wound up being the only two rookies on the team to appear and start in every game and Linderbaum established himself as one of the best players at his position in year one.
Having Less Might Actually Be What Is Best
As much as the Ravens would like to have more picks to address some of their needs on both sides of the ball with multiple swings, they are fine with having a lighter amount of capital this year. Considering how they got to that amount and the recent injection of youth they’ve gotten in the past few draft cycles, having less isn’t as bad as it sounds.
“To say that our second round pick was Roquan Smith, I’m pretty happy with that.”
GM Eric DeCosta on how the strategy changes based on number of picks:
“For us to say that our second-round pick was Roquan Smith? I’m pretty happy with that,” DeCosta said. “If we only have five picks this year, I’d like to get back to nine or 10 picks next year, for sure, but having a smaller amount of picks this year based on what we’ve done in 2018, ’19, ’20, ’21, ’22, that’s not necessarily the worst thing.”
He reiterated that adding more picks is always their goal in years where they are short on capital and the draft is full of quality depth at multiple positions of need as this year’s class just so happens to be.
“In saying that, I think it’s important to note that we’ve had a lot of picks over the past four-five years,” DeCosta said. “You get to a point where maybe having too many picks isn’t necessarily the right thing. You almost have to have a purge at some point because you have all these young players on the team, and they can’t all make the team if you just keep stacking these huge, massive draft classes.”
While they’re traditionally a team that likes to build through the draft and even go as far as to call it ‘the lifeblood’ of their roster construction process, giving their young recently drafted players ample opportunities to develop through playing time is paramount.
DeCosta and Co. tied the Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, and New York Giants for the most selections made in last year’s draft with a whopping 11-man draft class. Due to roster tight roster crunches at the end of the preseason, not all of them were able to make the roster, and of those that did, only five played regularly. The others either being reserves, playing primarily on special teams, or being healthy scratches even when they were cleared to play in games coming off injuries.
Ravens Defend Conservative Free Agency Strategy
Since the new league year began on March 15, 2023, the only outside free agent that the team has signed is veteran wide receiver Nelson Agholor. However, they have been active on the free agency front when it comes to retaining their own players.
“We had a lot of guys we wanted back, is what it amounts to.”
EDC on free agency:
“We’ve signed a lot of free agents; they just had played for us in the past,” DeCosta said. “We had a lot of guys who we wanted back, is what it amounts to, and guys that have played winning football for us.”
The list of players that they re-signed since mid-March includes running back Justice Hill, long snapper Nick Moore, safety Geno Stone, inside linebacker Del’Shawn Phillips, and cornerback Trayvon Mullen.
Outside of a few years where they’ve made a few splashes at premier or undervalued positions, the Ravens have historically not been among the biggest spenders in free agency year after year and are extremely selective when they do break that trend to go after a notable name.
“We very much pick and choose, [and] it’s based on a lot of different factors, so it’s a bigger-picture team-building strategy that I believe in and that goes back to Ozzie that John and Ozzie have developed over the years, and Coach [Brian] Billick and Ozzie,” DeCosta said.
He would go on to further reiterate that “the draft will always be paramount” and the primary venue in which they improve the team’s roster for the foreseeable future.
“As Ozzie has said a million times, ‘the roster is not set until September’ and we’ll have a lot of different opportunities pre-Draft [and] post-Draft to build a strong football team,” DeCosta said. “We’ll take advantage of every single mechanism that we can – free agency, undrafted free agency, trades, waiver wire pickups – whatever that might be, to build the best team we can. So, this is just really the beginning, not the end.”
Head Coach John Harbaugh doubled down on his colleague’s defense of how the organization goes about roster construction, resource allocation, and player development.
“When you look at kind of the way we’re built, we’re really not a team that you’d go in and say, ‘Hey, this team is going to sign a lot of free agents,’ because of all the Draft picks we’ve had,” he said. “We’ve had eight, nine, 10, 11 draft picks in [each of] the last three years, so most of those guys are still there.”
He brought up third-year defensive back Ar’Darius Washington who signed with the team as an undrafted free agent coming out of TCU in 2021 as a prime example of a player they’d like to give a chance to prove himself before just moving on because they spent a draft on his position.
“We like him as a player, just to give you one name,” Harbaugh said. “We think he’s got a future as a player. We’re going to go out and sign players on top of these players that we’re still developing.
He is proud of the number of their own free agents that they were able to bring back because of the mere fact it’s proof that the “cupboard is not bare” as well as validation of their ability to draft or sign and develop young talent.
“Let’s see where these guys grow and they develop, and trust our evaluation, trust our development, and give these guys a chance to go play,” Harbaugh said. “I think that was more the mindset this offseason.”