Wide receiver Marquise Brown quickly felt right at home in the Ravens’ locker room after the team selected him with the No. 25 overall pick in 2019. He could look around and see tight end Mark Andrews, tackle Orlando Brown and guard Ben Powers, all of whom were Brown’s teammates at the University of Oklahoma. And he could see Lamar Jackson, who like Brown had wowed fans on fields in South Florida when they were younger.
Brown, though, gradually grew dissatisfied with the Ravens’ run-first offense built by former coordinator Greg Roman and orchestrated by Jackson.
“The system wasn’t for me,” he said later.
Brown asked to be traded, and Eric DeCosta complied, dealing away his first-ever draft pick as general manager to the Arizona Cardinals.
The Ravens will get reacquainted with Brown this weekend when the Ravens (5-2) visit the Cardinals on Sunday, Oct. 29, at 4:25 p.m.
Brown is “one of my dear friends, since Oklahoma,” Andrews said. “I love Marquise to death, and it’s going to be fun being able to play against him.”
Jackson said if it were up to him, Brown “would’ve still been here.”
“That’s his decision,” Jackson added. “He has to feed his family at the end of the day, and if he believes it’s the right decision for him, that’s on him. It’s not on me. It’s not my decision to make.”
Brown certainly has gotten his wish to be involved; Brown led the Cardinals in targets last year, and his total of 60 targets this season is more than twice that of any other wide receiver. But Brown hasn’t found success in the standings with the move. The Cardinals have scuffled to a 1-6 record this year and are 5-19 in Brown’s two seasons there.
He has, though, found more money. The Cardinals picked up Brown’s fifth-year option, a byproduct of being a first-round pick in 2019. He is making $13.4 million this year on the fifth-year option and is set to become a free agent after the season. His name has surfaced frequently in recent days with the trade deadline looming next week.
In his first career game, Brown caught four passes for 147 yards and two touchdowns from Jackson, including an 83-yarder, as the Ravens dismantled the Miami Dolphins, 59-10.
He finished that season with 46 catches for 584 yards and seven touchdowns, tying the Ravens record for touchdown catches by a rookie. In 2021, Brown became just the second Ravens wide receiver drafted by the team to have a 1,000-yard season with the team, as he finished with 91 catches for 1,008 yards.
Still, Brown by then had grown disenchanted, and on the first night of the 2022 draft, the Ravens announced that Brown and a third-round pick had been dealt to the Cardinals in exchange for Arizona’s No. 23 pick in the draft. (After a trade down to No. 25, that pick became center Tyler Linderbaum.)
In his first season in Arizona, Brown finished with a team-high 67 catches for 709 yards and three touchdowns. He also led the team in targets with 107. In his final season in Baltimore, Brown tallied 146 targets, the most by a wide receiver and second on the team behind Andrews (153).
This season, Brown leads the Cardinals with 32 catches for 383 yards and three touchdowns, but starting quarterback Kyler Murray has been sidelined all season recovering from a torn ACL. Murray has returned to practice but remains on injured reserve. The passing offense, led by backup quarterback Joshua Dobbs, ranks No. 28 in the league.
Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey spent three years lining up opposite Brown on the practice fields, so he knows all about Brown and his speed.
“I know he was wide receiver 1 here and wide receiver 1 there, so (that’s) obviously a guy we have to keep a lot of eyes on,” Humphrey said after practice earlier this week. “… Once a Raven always a Raven, but when you’re on the other team, not so much. It will be exciting to match up against him.”
“We know how he moves a little bit,” Humphrey added, “but he’s added a little bit of sauce to his game.”
Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said Brown “looks good. We’ve always respected him as a player. We love him as a person. Marquise’s a great guy, and he looks good out there. He’s their No. 1 target threat for sure, crossing routes, shallow routes, go routes, over routes. Those are things that are in his wheelhouse. … So we’ll have our hands full.”