Eric DeCosta admits he isn’t a particularly patient person, so he is likely to be fidgeting and pacing around the Ravens “war room” at their Owings Mills facility as he watches one good player after another come off the board during the opening round of the NFL Draft on April 25.
The Ravens are set to make their first pick late Thursday night at No. 30 overall, and DeCosta will be hoping one of their first-round targets — possibly a plug-and-play offensive lineman — remains available at that time.
Yet DeCosta is also someone who covets picks — “The more picks you have, the more likely you are to hit on a pick,” he said before a previous draft — and if DeCosta’s first-round board is ravaged by the time he’s on the clock, the Ravens could opt to trade back into the second round to acquire an additional pick or two.
Yet any move out of the first round comes with an ancillary cost: Since 2011, teams gain a fifth-year option on any player selected in the first round. The cost of the option can vary based on performance, according to the 2020 collective bargaining agreement, but essentially taking a player in the first round gives the team an additional year of contract control, if so desired.
When the Ravens made a trade with Philadelphia for the final pick in the first round of the 2018 draft, they selected quarterback Lamar Jackson with that pick. Then-general manager Ozzie Newsome said that having a fifth-year option on Jackson was definitely part of the calculus in making that deal for the No. 32 pick as opposed to one early in the second round.
So if DeCosta’s phone rings and a team calls looking to jump back into the first round — perhaps to snag a quarterback? — he will consider the value of that fifth-year option as currency in any deal.
“Yes, there is an advantage to having an extra year [of team control], if you want that extra year,” DeCosta said at this year’s pre-draft news conference. “All things being equal, if you trade out of the first round, I think that you should get a premium if you’re going to do that to give up that additional year.”
The Ravens have traded out of the first round twice but not since 2012. (They also dealt their 2004 first-round pick in a 2003 deal for quarterback Kyle Boller.)
In 2010, they traded back 18 spots, from No. 25 to No. 43, picking up two additional picks in the process. Their first pick at No. 43 was linebacker Sergio Kindle, whose career was derailed after he suffered a head injury in a fall before his rookie year. But the two additional picks proved to be tight ends Ed Dickson and Dennis Pitta, both of whom played a role in the team’s 2012 Super Bowl season. (The player the Broncos jumped up to grab at No. 25? Quarterback Tim Tebow.)
In 2012, the Ravens moved back from No. 29 to No. 35 and gained an extra fourth-rounder in the process. That No. 35 pick became outside linebacker Courtney Upshaw, and the additional pick became offensive lineman Gino Gradkowski. Neither made a big impact on the team, indicating that the draft is never foolproof.
The Ravens could opt to move up as well, but giving up draft capital generally is not how the Ravens operate. Of course, they did jump back into the first round in 2018 to select Jackson, and in 2008, they had a bit of draft-day gymnastics, moving from No. 8 down to No. 26 before jumping back up to No. 18 to select quarterback Joe Flacco.
As of now, the Ravens have nine picks in the draft, beginning at No. 30. Barring any trades, they will also have two picks (No. 62 in the second round and No. 93 in the third round) on the second day of the draft and then six more on the draft’s final day, with two in the fourth round, one in the fifth and sixth rounds and two in the seventh round.
DeCosta said that NIL opportunities and the extra year of college eligibility because of COVID have left the overall draft pool not as deep as previous years. That could also lead him to try to package some late-round picks in deals for picks earlier in the draft — provided he can find a suitor.
“I like the idea of having more picks, but I want to have more picks in a specific range in the draft,” DeCosta said. “If we can get that done, then I could see us being in a good position to really maximize our chances to find good players.”
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