On Thursday night, April 27, in Kansas City, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will step to the microphone and announce, “With the 22nd pick in the NFL Draft, the …”
Will the Baltimore Ravens be the team making that pick? They are slotted to do so, but it will come as no surprise if they don’t.
Ravens fans might want to settle in for a long night, because the chances are good that the Ravens trade down toward the bottom of the first round — or even out of it — to acquire more draft capital.
As of now, the Ravens have only five picks in the 2023 draft, which would be their fewest total since 1999, and general manager Eric DeCosta, like his predecessor Ozzie Newsome, has always taken a strength-in-numbers approach. “The more picks you have,” DeCosta said before a previous draft, “the more likely you are to hit on the pick.”
At this year’s predraft news conference in early April, DeCosta said, “Our goal would be to add picks, if we can, at some point.”
“Of course, if we’re in love with somebody while we’re on the clock,” he added, “we’re going to make the pick. We always have to gauge that. How strong do we feel about the prospect who’s available versus a chance to go back and get additional picks?”
But, as he has also said, they need the phone to ring. Some other team needs to want to move up to their spot and be willing to give up something to do it.
DeCosta enjoys the wheeling-and-dealing aspect of the draft, and rare is the year when the Ravens don’t make a deal. In the past 21 seasons, only once (2017) have the Ravens made every pick on turn, with no trades along the way. Usually, their dealing involves moving back to acquire more picks.
And, especially in the first round, it wouldn’t take much. Last year, the Ravens made waves when they announced during the draft that they had traded wide receiver Marquise Brown and a third-round compensatory pick to the Arizona Cardinals in exchange for the Cardinals’ first-round pick at No. 23.
The Ravens then traded the No. 23 pick to Buffalo for the No. 25 pick and a fourth-rounder. They drafted center Tyler Linderbaum at No. 25, and, with that extra pick they acquired by moving back two spots, they selected punter Jordan Stout.
Of course, hindsight shows that it doesn’t always work out. In DeCosta’s first draft as GM in 2019, he traded up nine spots in the third round, giving up a pair of sixth-rounders in the process, to select wide receiver Miles Boykin, who made little impact in Baltimore before being released after three seasons.
In this year’s draft, many observers, including Ravens evaluators, have praised the depth of the cornerback group, which is one of the team’s top positions of need.
DeCosta said there are up to a half-dozen first-round-caliber corners in the draft, so no doubt he will be watching to see if any run on cornerback materializes in the middle part of the first round. Ideally, at least a couple of the cornerbacks DeCosta views as plug-and-play will remain available at No. 22, which might make him more receptive to moving back.
If those top six corners all go off the board in a flurry of first-round picks — and recent drafts have greatly valued cornerbacks — the Ravens could look to supplement their wide receiver group or defensive line group, two other areas of need.
If the board really shakes out against them, DeCosta would be even more inclined to move back, as the Ravens are not a team that historically reaches on draft picks. Again, they’d need to find a trade partner.
In 2012, the Ravens traded out of the first round altogether, giving up their No. 29 pick and picking up an additional second-round and fourth-round pick in the process.
The Ravens as of now do not have a second-round pick, and DeCosta said he agonized during the 2019 draft as the Ravens watched 60 players go off the board between their picks; they had dealt their 2019 second-round pick the previous year as part of the package that gave them the 2018 No. 32 overall pick, which they used on quarterback Lamar Jackson.
This year, they gave up their second-round pick as part of the midseason trade that landed Chicago Bears linebacker Roquan Smith, who quickly became a defensive cornerstone and signed a long-term extension late in the season.
“For us to say that our second-round pick was Roquan Smith … I’m pretty happy with that,” DeCosta said.
There is one big advantage, though, to staying in the first round: Teams hold a fifth-year option on all first-round draft picks, which was a specific factor in their decision to trade back into the first round and select Jackson with the final first-round pick in 2018.
Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox