Getty ILB Patrick Queen celebrates intercepting former college teammate Joe Burrow in a regular season game on October 9, 2022.
Now that the 2022 season is officially in the rearview, Pro Football Focus’ Gordon McGuinness revealed the most improved players from every NFL team for the 2022 season based on who made the biggest jump in their grading system compared to the 2021 season.
For the Baltimore Ravens, the player that raised their game the most from the previous year was inside linebacker Patrick Queen whose overall grade improved by 26.2 from 43.5 in 2021 to 69.7 in 2022.
“Queen has flashed at times throughout this three-year career in Baltimore, but the consistency just wasn’t there,” McGuinness wrote. “While he was still a little up and down for the Ravens this past season, we also saw the longest stretches of improved play. After improving his PFF grade from 29.7 to 43.5 from 2020 to 2021, Queen once again saw a huge jump in 2022, including career highs in PFF run-defense grade (64.6) and PFF coverage grade (65.5).”
After a rough start to his third year in the league the 2020 first-round pick out of LSU was incredibly and consistently disruptive in the second half of the season. Even before the Ravens acquired First-Team All-Pro inside linebacker Roquan Smith from the Chicago Bears at the midseason trade deadline, Queen had already started ascending in the right direction.
Patrick Queen comes up with his first INT of the season! 😈
Around Week 5, he began elevating his play and showing more consistent flashes of the dominant force the team “envisioned” when they selected him at No. 28 overall almost four years ago.
Patrick Queen has the highest PFF grade of any Ravens defender over the past three weeks
“We think he made a jump,” general manager Eric DeCosta said at the season-ending press conference on January 19, 2022. “He showed play-making ability, leadership. He just really, really over the course of the season became the player that we kind of envisioned him being.”
Once he and Smith joined forces, the two formed arguably the best and elevated the play of the entire defense. The unit was one of the best down the stretch allowing an average of just 13.9 points and 283.3 total yards per game in their final 10 games of the regular season and wildcard round of the playoffs.
Even though his playing time got reduced at one point during his early season struggles, Queen still appeared and started in every game and finished as the team’s leading tackler for the third straight year with a career-high 117 combined that included 9 for a loss according to Pro Football Reference. He also recorded career highs in sacks (5), quarterback hits (14), interceptions (2), pass deflections (6), fumble recoveries (2), and forced a fumble as well.
Patrick Queen is really coming into his own. He had 3 tackles for loss today, including a sack, and had a season-high 11 tackles.
Patrick Queen’s Long-Term Future With Ravens Remains Cloudy
As impressive as Queen’s play was overall in 2022 and especially to close out the season, he still may not be in the team’s plans for the long haul. When the topic of whether the team intended to exercise his fifth-year contract option that would secure his services through the 2024 season with a cap hit of $12.7 million in the last year per spotrac.com, DeCosta said that he wasn’t “prepared to make that announcement at this point” but didn’t completely rule it out either.
“If he’s a great player, we’ll find a way to make it work,” he said. “If he’s playing at a high level, we want to keep as many good players as we can. So, I would never rule out right now signing a player two years from now, potentially.
“I think we have the best two young inside linebackers – the combo, the tandem, it’s exciting – in football. They make our defense a problem for other teams, and it’s something that is going to cause a lot of teams problems moving forward.”
Since the Ravens decided to sign Smith to a well-deserved record-setting contract worth $100 million over five years to make him the highest-paid off-ball linebacker in the league, it is widely assumed that Queen’s days with the team are numbered.
A possible and likely major impact that could hold up or delay the Ravens’ decision to exercise his fifth-year option is the contractual status of franchise quarterback Lamar Jackson who is expected to be franchise-tagged if a long-term deal can’t be reached before the start of the new league year on March 15.
If the two sides can’t come to terms this offseason and negotiations drag on into next offseason, even if they do pick up his option they might be forced to trade him ahead of the 2024 season to make room for a potential second straight franchise tag cap hit for Jackson.
Patrick Queen Scrubs Ravens From Social Media Profiles
A common trend among the younger generation of professional athletes in major sports leagues but especially in the NFL is the scrubbing of any mention and association of their current team from all of their social media platforms, mainly photos and their bio graphs.
It is typically done by disgruntled players who are not satisfied with either their current contract and are seeking high compensation sooner rather than later as well as by those that desire to be released or traded from the team for a fresh start, reset, or a change of scenery.
Last offseason, Arizona Cardinals franchise quarterback, Kyler Murray, used this passive-aggressive signal to pressure the team’s front office into signing him to an early extension even though he still had two years left on his deal and one poor playoff appearance in his first three seasons.
Ravens fans are currently in a frantic stir after Queen recently did just that on Twitter and Instagram. Some have speculated about whether this is the start of his version of what Murray did in Arizona since DeCosta wasn’t exactly committal about picking up his contract option.
Patrick Queen has removed everything related to the Ravens from his social media accounts… Baltimore has not yet decided whether to pick up his 5th year option. Definitely something to monitor
This actually isn’t the first time that Queen has done this and caused the Raven’s Flock to lose their collective minds. He did the exact same thing last May following the 2022 NFL Draft and the speculation was in a similar frenzy then that it is now.
Podcast: @KylePBarber and I discuss how the draft may impact Patrick Queen and a social media change:
Whether he has it listed in his social media bios or not, Queen is going to be on the Ravens roster for at least another year and hopefully two or more depending on what happens with Jackson in the coming months to a year.