Yanda won’t be rushed after shoulder surgery
Report: Team plans to pay bonus, keep Perriman; Urban glad to be back
Conventional wisdom suggested that the reason the Ravens placed right guard Marshal Yanda on the physically-unableto-perform list was the left ankle that he fractured in the third quarter of the second game of last season against the Cleveland Browns on Sept. 17.
But coach John Harbaugh revealed after the team’s first practice of training camp Thursday afternoon that the sixtime Pro Bowl player underwent an operation on his shoulder shortly after the end of the season, and that that development is the reason behind the 33-yearold’s absence.
“Marshal is a situation where he had his shoulder worked on, I think, at the end of January, early February, somewhere in there,” Harbaugh said. “If we were playing a game, he probably could play — as tough as he is. But we’re probably going to be very cautious of that and just kind of do what’s best to get him ready for September. There really is not a timetable. I would say no hurry at this point.”
Without Yanda, the starting offensive line Thursday consisted of Ronnie Stanley at left tackle, Alex Lewis at left guard, Matt Skura at center, James Hurst at right guard and rookie Orlando Brown Jr. at right tackle. When Yanda is healthy, he will likely return to his customary right guard spot, and Hurst and Brown will compete for the starting right tackle position.
Asked whether the ankle was still a hurdle for Yanda, Harbaugh replied, “There’s no issue anymore with the ankle injury.”
In other injury-related news, a pair of rookies in tight end Mark Andrews and offensive tackle Greg Senat were two of three unexpected players missing from Thursday’s opening session. Harbaugh said Andrews, the team’s third-round choice in May’s NFLdraft, is dealing with a “muscle tissue issue” and Senat, the second of three sixth-round selections, is expected to be sidelined for one to three weeks by an undisclosed injury suffered at the end of minicamp.
The other unexpected absence was rookie center Alex Thompson, who did not report. His status for camp is uncertain. In addition to Yanda, wide receiver Quincy Adeboyejo (upper leg muscle), linebacker Bam Bradley (ACL), cornerback Jaylen Hill (right ACL, MCL) and tight end Vince Mayle (high ankle sprain) are on the physically unable to perform list. Payout for Perriman: Breshad Perriman has not lived up to the expectations associated with being the 26th overall selection in the 2015 NFL draft, but that apparently will not dissuade the Ravens from keeping the 24-year-old wide receiver on their roster.
ESPN first reported Thursday morning that the franchise plans to pick up Perriman’s $649,485 roster bonus, which is due Saturday. The move does not guaran- Ravens wide receiver Breshad Perriman, the 26th overall pick in the 2015 draft, will be due a $649,485 roster bonus if he is still with the team Saturday. tee the wideout’s spot on the active 53-man roster, and the team decided in May to decline the fifth-year 2019 option for just over $9 million.
Perriman, who slogged through a disappointing 2017 season in which he caught only 10 passes for 77 yards and was a healthy scratch in four of the final seven games, practiced Thursday afternoon, but did not make himself available for comment after the session. Harbaugh danced around the topic after practice.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t been informed on what the plans are at this point. So I don’t know. That’d be a good question for [general manager] Ozzie [ Newsome]. If he was answering questions, he could probably answer it for you, but I don’t think he will. So you’re probably not going to get an answer on that. We’ll just see that and see what happens.” Urban’s drive: No Ravens player was more enthusiastic about Thursday’s opening practice of training camp than defensive end Brent Urban, who had not been on the field since suffering a Lisfranc injury on the second play of the second quarter against the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sept. 24.
After practice, Urban acknowledged that he missed football greatly and said his objective is to “be an impact player.”
“The goal is to get back to where I left off,” he said. “I’m coming into it feeling pretty good. Mentally, I’m a lot more mature, and I feel like I can do just what I was doing last year. That’s the goal, to get back into the swing of things. We even have an extra week of training camp. So I think that will help me just acclimate and get used to things at a slower pace, which is a good thing for me because I’ve been out of it for so long.” End zone: By virtue of their participation in the Hall of Fame Game on Aug. 2, the Ravens are getting more an extra week to practice and prepare for the regular season. Harbaugh suggested that the NFL might want to contemplate adding a week of training camp before the opening of training camp to help teams reduce the number of injuries in the preseason. “Maybe this is an idea that the powerswould-be would consider,” he said. “An acclimation is really important. If we can get a week instead of two days — not to push it back so we have a shorter time to get our guys ready to play football, but to put it in front of training camp — where we can get our guys ramped up for the collisions and the hard movements and all that that go with football, maybe we could avoid some of these first two- or three-day injuries that we get a lot during training camp.” … Wide receiver Michael Crabtree said quarterback Joe Flacco made the call to gather several wideouts and tight ends for a pair of workouts last week at Northwest Regional Park across from the team’s training facility in Owings Mills. “That’s the leader,” Crabtree said. “[We] do whatever he says. If we’ve got something we bring to the table, then we make it work.” … Running back Alex Collins had some advice for fantasy football owners considering selecting him in their upcoming drafts. “Draft me now before it’s too late, guys.”