Ravens assigned FB from German League
Team also claims safety Nacua off waivers from Browns
Christopher Ezeala, a fullback and linebacker in the German Football League, has been assigned to the Ravens as part of the International Player Pathway program.
Ezeala, 22, has been playing for the Ingolstadt Dukes after stints with the Munich Rangers and Allgäu Comets. He’s 5 feet 11 and 243 pounds, and he’s expected to focus on the fullback position.
The Ravens are one of eight teams that will carry an additional overseas player on their practice squad in 2018 with the expansion of the International Player Pathway program.
The program, instituted in 2017, provides international athletes with an opportunity to compete at the NFL level, improve their skills and ultimately earn a spot on an NFL roster.
Alex Gray (Atlanta Falcons), Alex Jenkins (New Orleans Saints), Eric Nzeocha (Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and Efe Obada (Carolina Panthers), participants in 2017, will return to their NFCSouth teams for the upcoming season.
An additional four teams — the AFC North — will carry an overseas player on their roster until the end of the 2018 training camp. At that time, the players would be eligible for an international player practice squad exemption.
The Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers will each be given an exemption for an 11th practice squad member — ineligible to be activated during the season —with two of the players selected coming from the United Kingdom and two from Germany. The AFC North was chosen to receive the international players in a random draw.
The players include Moritz Böhringer (Bengals), who was originally drafted in the sixth round by the Minnesota Vikings in 2016, former British American Football League player Tigie Sankoh (Browns) and former English professional rugby player Christian Scotland-Williamson (Steelers).
For the past three months, the players have been training alongside NFL players and draft hopefuls in Florida, under the supervision of former NFLUK head of football Aden Durde, who was hired as the Falcons defensive quality control coach after this past season’s program, along with IMG Academy coaches including running back coach Earnest Byner, offensive line coach Paul Dunn, defensive backs coach Donnie Henderson and wide receivers coach Larry Kirksey.
Ravens add safety Nacua: Still looking to add depth to their secondary, the Ravens claimed second-year safety Kai Nacua off waivers Tuesday from the Cleveland Browns.
Nacua played in all 16 games for the Browns last season as an undrafted rookie out of Brigham Young. He started three games at safety, played extensively on special teams and finished the season with 14 tackles.
The Browns waived Nacua, 23 on Monday in a series of roster moves.
Nacua will compete for a backup safety job behind starters Eric Weddle and Tony Jefferson. The Ravens also have Anthony Levine Sr., Chuck Clark and DeShon Elliott, a sixth-round pick out of Texas.
Nacua had a productive college career at BYU, finishing with 14 interceptions, eight sacks and165 tackles over four seasons.
New hitting rule, kickoffs on agenda for player-safety meetings: NFL officials will participate in two days of player-safety meetings that began Tuesday in which the topics will include the new helmet-hitting rule and kickoffs.
The meetings are held at the NFL’s Manhattan offices. Troy Vincent, the league’s executive vice president of football operations, wrote Monday on Twitter that the participants will include owners, coaches, officials, former players and representatives of the NFL Players Association.
The sessions come as the league continues to work through the particulars of how the new hitting rule will be applied and enforced. At the annual league meeting in March, owners ratified the rule, which makes it a 15-yard penalty for a player to lower his head and use his helmet to deliver a hit to an opponent during a game.
The NFL said the new rule is not a targeting rule but is broader than that, focused not on a player targeting an opponent’s head with a hit but on attempting to eliminate a hitting technique that is dangerous to both the player receiving the hit and the player delivering it. League officials hailed it as a significant safety development and said they are trying to stop players from using their helmets as on-field weapons.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and others said in March that they expect instant replay reviews to be used to help determine whether a player should be ejected from a game under the new rule. That is not officially part of the rule yet, and it represents a departure from the long-held view by the rulemaking NFL competition committee that replay should not be used to scrutinize judgment calls by the on-field officials.