Before the Ravens ever made a pick, they executed a move that would eclipse their draft, signing quarterback Lamar Jackson to a five-year extension that will keep him at the center of everything the franchise does. The Ravens also drafted six players, led by another target for their franchise quarterback, shifty wide receiver Zay Flowers from Boston College. Their 2023 team is taking shape.
Here are five things we learned from the draft.
The Ravens made good on their promise to ‘attack’ their wide receiver shortage, but there’s risk in using another first-round pick on the position.
General manager Eric DeCosta and coach John Harbaugh were not kidding when they said wide receivers would be their No. 1 project of the offseason, aside from extending Jackson. They began with a modest free-agent addition, Nelson Agholor, turned up the heat by signing injury-prone superstar Odell Beckham Jr. and garnished their meal with Flowers, a 5-foot-9, 182-pound bundle of gliding speed and ferocious confidence. If 2021 first-round pick Rashod Bateman is as healthy as Harbaugh pronounced him Thursday night, the Ravens could have their most talented crew of wide receivers since Anquan Boldin and Torrey Smith helped them win a Super Bowl in 2012.
It’s easy to understand why the Ravens would go all in on playmakers as a loud vote of confidence for Jackson and new offensive coordinator Todd Monken, who’s expected to design a more sophisticated passing game after three years of mounting fan frustration with his predecessor, Greg Roman.
But let’s not pretend this plan is a guaranteed winner given the injury histories of Beckham and Bateman and the team’s spotty record selecting and developing wide receivers in the upper reaches of the draft. Flowers was a beloved prospect for many evaluators, as much because of his relentless effort and vibrant personality as for his steady production in an undermanned Boston College offense. He won over Ravens’ scouts, who considered him the top wide receiver in the class because of his versatility and determination to add yards after the catch. There’s every reason to think he’ll get the most out of his career.
Except we’ve heard the Ravens spew optimism about their young wide receivers before only to end up with one of the league’s least productive groups. DeCosta acknowledged their past difficulties when he met with reporters at the NFL scouting combine: “If I had an answer, that means I would probably have some better receivers, I guess. Sometimes it is tied to the quarterback, and I think it’s tied to things like durability; it’s tied to a lot of things. We’re going to keep swinging. There have been some guys that have been successful players for us that were draft picks. We’ve never really hit on that All-Pro type of guy, which is disappointing, but it’s not for lack of effort.”
Some fans look at this and wonder why the Ravens did not use their first-round pick on a cornerback — Deonte Banks of Maryland or Joey Porter Jr. of Penn State — to play across from Marlon Humphrey.
Well, they see this as the time to reverse their offensive decline from the last two seasons, to trust in Monken, a former wide receivers coach widely praised for his ability to communicate with pass catchers. But as DeCosta suggested when he said they would “keep swinging,” the payoff is not guaranteed.
Trenton Simpson was a Ravens pick if there ever was one.
No one had inside linebacker at the top of the Ravens’ list of needs. But they went into the draft’s third round with a list of seven or eight players they thought would be good values at the No. 86 pick, and Simpson was the only one left by the time they selected. They could have traded back but did not see enough value in that proposition. So DeCosta followed the credo he learned from Ozzie Newsome long ago: take the best player on your board.
There’s much to like about Simpson, the Clemson linebacker whom some analysts slotted at the top of the second round. He’s one of the best all-around athletes at his position in recent memory, with a 4.43-second time in the 40-yard dash (about the same as Flowers) and a 40.5-inch vertical leap. He can drop into coverage or rush off the edge as readily as he chases ball carriers. Harbaugh described him as a “missile.”
Like Flowers, he’s not lacking self confidence. “You’re not going to regret this pick,” he said Friday night. “I’m going to maximize every opportunity, and Trent Simpson is going to go down as one of the greats for the Baltimore Ravens — believe that.”
The pick added urgency to questions about the Ravens’ plans for their 2020 first-round pick, Patrick Queen, who thrived playing beside Roquan Smith last season. They have until Tuesday to pick up Queen’s fifth-year option for 2024, and it seems unlikely they would pay him $12.7 million for that season when they’ve already made a massive commitment to Smith.
“Sheesh,” Queen tweeted seconds after the Ravens selected Simpson.
But that does not mean they need to rush Queen out the door via trade. This is a team built to win in 2023, and he will help them do that if he stays. The versatile Simpson, meanwhile, could fill in all over the field and prepare to become a starter in 2024.
This is the way the Ravens have always done business, stockpiling talented young athletes and piecing the puzzle together when the time comes. Fans who have celebrated this philosophy should applaud the Simpson pick, even if it was not the one they had in mind.
If the Ravens liked this cornerback class, they sure didn’t show it.
In the first round, the Ravens took Flowers over several cornerbacks they were linked to in mock drafts. In the third, they went for an inside linebacker over Georgia’s Kelee Ringo, whom the Eagles traded up to take at the beginning of the fourth round. DeCosta said Friday night there could still be good values at the position in the fourth and fifth rounds. But with a chance to take Darius Rush of South Carolina at pick No. 124, they instead went with 6-foot-6 pass rusher Tavius Robinson from Ole Miss.
Robinson is a smart, high-effort player who was trending in the right direction at the end of his college career and showed a knack for creating turnovers when he reached the quarterback. DeCosta compared him to Za’Darius Smith for his inside-outside versatility. But analyst Dane Brugler of The Athletic had a sixth-round grade on Robinson, projecting him as a “rotational defensive end.” Not exactly a prospect the Ravens had to take if there was a cornerback they fancied on the board.
They finally made a value play when they took four-year Stanford starter Kyu Blu Kelly in the fifth round. Kelly, whose father, Brian, played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, is a long-armed, quick-footed cornerback who was regarded as a third-round talent by some analysts but lacks top-tier speed. He’ll compete for snaps with the large pool of defensive backs the Ravens have drafted in recent years.
“We realize the value of that position, and we’ll continue to address that via the draft, via other means,” DeCosta said Friday night.
It’s looking like “other means” will be the primary answer, and no one will be surprised if the Ravens announce they’ve signed Rock Ya-Sin or Marcus Peters in a few days. They might even add two veteran cornerbacks, with a Kyle Fuller reunion among the other possibilities. That’s fine for 2023, but at some point, they’re going to have to find a young starter to pair with Marlon Humphrey.
The Ravens made this draft more about the future than the present.
Flowers will be expected to impact the offense this season, but it’s not clear how many snaps the rest of this class will play in 2023. Simpson’s speed and versatility could force the Ravens’ hand, but it seems he and Robinson are more likely to push for major roles in 2024. The two mauling offensive linemen the Ravens added in the sixth and seventh rounds, Malaesala Aumavae-Laulu of Oregon and Andrew Vorhees of USC, are developmental prospects (Vorhees because he tore his ACL at the NFL scouting combine).
With just five picks and no second-rounder, the Ravens did not go in with a lot of chances to boost their short-term fortunes. DeCosta as much as said this was part of their plan after they drafted 29 players over the previous three seasons.
They did not trade down for more picks in part because they did not anticipate having open slots for rookies (though they did use a 2024 pick to jump back into the seventh round when they saw a chance to snag Vorhees).
“We think our roster is pretty good,” DeCosta said. “It’s going to be hard for guys to make the team. We’ve had a lot of draft picks in the last three or four years and so we went into this year really not thinking that we wanted 10 picks.”
Not that they would have turned away from a potential starter if they saw one sitting there in the fourth round, but they did not, so they went with players they can develop at positions where you can never have too many talented bodies.
Even if this class makes a modest early splash, the Ravens are at their most optimistic point since 2020.
That’s the power of locking in Jackson after two years of stressful negotiations that left fans, and even players, uncertain where the franchise was headed. The Ravens had already laid some exciting groundwork before Jackson texted DeCosta last Tuesday night to say a deal was finally within reach. Fans had spent the last two seasons calling for Roman’s ouster, and Monken, known less for a specific offensive philosophy than for tailoring plans around his talent, was a lauded hire. The signing of Beckham, still a great technician and big-play threat when healthy, added a dose of star power.
But those moves would have been nothing more than pleasant finger food if Jackson had not signed on to be the main course.
The Ravens outplayed and outhit the Cincinnati Bengals in the wild-card round of last season’s playoffs. Though they lost on a fluky fumble return, their defense was championship quality, and they moved the ball, even with Jackson’s backup, Tyler Huntley, at the controls.
If we take that as the jumping-off point, it’s not difficult to envision a Jackson-led version of a similar team — with better skill-position talent — pushing deep into January. Flowers could add sizzle to this win-now machine, but the Ravens won’t need much from their rookies. This was the way they designed it after they added a huge class last year and used their 2023 second-round pick to add Roquan Smith, their new defensive fulcrum. Signing Jackson was the one move they had to make to complete the puzzle, and they got it done.
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