I wrestled with the word “obligation” a little bit this week.
As in, why do we say that a baseball team has an “obligation” to improve at the trade deadline when we don’t typically suggest that football teams have the same?
You can hear yourself saying it, right? Perhaps you used a different term like “responsibility” instead. But in July, you know that whether it was on the phone with a radio host, on Twitter or in conversation with your friends, you said something like “I don’t know if they’ll win the World Series, but Mike Elias has an obligation to try to give this team the best chance to do something special this October.”
And yet, we don’t tend to use the same terminology when it comes to the NFL. We might suggest that we “want” to see the Ravens acquire a certain player or feel an amount of excitement about the possibility, but we don’t necessarily feel like they’re “obligated” to make a move. If you’re a fan of both teams, you probably feel a bit more indifferent about the Ravens coming up empty-handed at the deadline than you would have back on Aug. 1 if the Orioles had chosen to stand pat (which, ironically, would have been the much better decision in hindsight).
To be fair, there are legitimate reasons why our emotions aren’t the same. If you make a mistake at the trade deadline in baseball (as the Orioles did), you have the opportunity to make up for it in free agency. You can spend your way through replacing a prospect you might have lost. By nature of the salary cap, that option isn’t the same in the NFL. If you recklessly trade away multiple draft picks for a player who just isn’t a fit, the cap prevents you from just being able to spend overwhelmingly in your attempt to make up for the lost picks.
But the concept is still similar even if the rules of engagement aren’t the same. The Orioles had an “obligation” to try to improve because they were in the thick of the race to win the division for the first time in nearly a decade and, even if there is a solid foundation that we think should make them contenders for years to come, you just never know if this year might have been their best opportunity to try to win a World Series and they needed to try to capitalize on it.
And that’s the part of the conversation that I can’t shake when it comes to the Ravens’ inaction. It would be “drunk college kid on Halloween” levels of recklessness to suggest that the Ravens’ failure to improve at the deadline will prevent them from winning the Super Bowl. The only acquisition the Chiefs made at the deadline last year was Kadarius Toney, who was responsible for 22 receiving yards per game (playoffs included). But it isn’t irresponsible at all to suggest that the Ravens’ failure to improve the roster might end up making a difference when it comes to their ability to win a Super Bowl.
We remember that the Super Bowl LVI champions (the Rams) acquired Von Miller at the deadline. That proved to be VERY SIGNIFICANT! And as much as I liked the idea of Saquon Barkley or Josh Jacobs or Derrick Henry bolstering the Ravens’ offense, it was admittedly the Montez Sweat trade that was the most disappointing to me. As insane as it is for me to keep obsessing about the edge rush concerns of a team that (checks notes) leads the NFL in sacks, I keep thinking about the Murderers’ Freaking Row of offenses the Ravens might have to go through in the postseason.
If the season ended today, the Ravens’ path to a Super Bowl appearance would involve them facing Josh Allen in the first round, Patrick Mahomes in the second and either Tua Tagovailoa or Trevor Lawrence in the AFC championship game. And yeah, Joe Burrow is suddenly lurking again.
As brilliantly as Mike Macdonald has schemed pressure from this group and as far beyond expectations as Jadeveon Clowney and Kyle Van Noy have played, I just can’t shake a nervous feeling about this roster not necessarily having the player whose pressure doesn’t need to be schemed. That could make the difference in the fourth quarter of a game against the Chiefs.
Sweat felt like the perfect combination of skill set, availability, price and signability to help the Ravens address that. Alas, it’s hard to blame the Bears because when you have the opportunity to play your way out of a top-five draft pick but also not play yourself anywhere close to playoff contention, you simply have to take a shot at it.
I worry that it might hurt the Ravens to not have that guy. Maybe they can keep scheming it up. Maybe Clowney and Van Noy will play at high levels all season. Maybe Odafe Oweh will finally turn the corner and become a consistent force. Maybe David Ojabo and/or Tyus Bowser will eventually return to help solve the problem.
But we all remember what happened the only time a Lamar Jackson-led Ravens team beat a Patrick Mahomes-led Chiefs team. The Ravens did everything they needed to do offensively. But the Chiefs had the ball in scoring position to win with 1:25 left and they needed someone (Oweh) to win a matchup and make a play in the backfield.
I hope that if they’re in a similar situation this January, they’ll make the play. I worry that they “needed” to acquire that type of playmaker. And I wonder if it’s possible that this might prove to be their best chance to win a Super Bowl.
They absolutely have a roster that’s capable of winning a Super Bowl anyway. It would have been nice to fortify that. But they did not have an “obligation” to do so.
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