Fourth round felt like being in a game
5 picks set NFL record, created time pressure
The process took a little less than 90 minutes, about half a football game in real time. There were moments in the war room Saturday at the team’s facility in Owings Mills when it felt like that — a game — to Ravens coach John Harbaugh during the fourth round of the NFL draft.
“It was very much the same, it was like being on the sidelines in a game, and these guys were calling plays and making decisions and it was just fun to be a part of it,” Harbaugh said later, after the Ravens finished a productive threeday draft that resulted in 11 picks, including an NFL-record five in the fourth round.
While some of it was done on the fly, particularly in the two cases during the fourth round when the Ravens had only one spot between a couple of their picks, the team had gone into the round with what assistant general manager Eric DeCosta called a “great game plan,” mapped out with the help of scouts, assistant coaches and draft analysts.
It was relayed to team owner Steve Bisciotti, general manager Ozzie Newsome and Harbaugh before the draft began Thursday night, and again after
each of the first two rounds. The Ravens knew since March they would have four picks in the fourth round, then added a fifth after trading down on Friday.
“Eric had put a very good plan [together] based on the meetings [Friday] night and the board came out basically the way we thought it would,” Newsome said. “We were able to get some good young talent to come in here and compete to make this roster. Right now the Baltimore Ravens are a much better football team.”
In adding the five fourth-round picks — Temple cornerback Tavon Young, Cincinnati wide receiver Chris Moore, Nebraska offensive tackle Alex Lewis, Michigan defensive tackle Willie Henry and Louisiana Tech running back Kenneth Dixon — the Ravens are hoping to address several positions of need for a team looking to rebound quickly from last season’s 5-11 record.
The feeling inside the war room was similar to any Sunday in the fall for DeCosta, as well.
“We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to nail those picks,” DeCosta said. “We’ve said it a lot, this is a critical part of our draft, the fourth round. It became a mission, I think, for all of us to do the best we could, to get the best players we could.”
Considering what typically occurs through the course of a draft — teams having the same needs or liking the same players or simply wanting to take a player away from one of their rivals to gain any kind of competitive edge — the Ravens stayed remarkably close to the game plan.
“I’m just thankful that we got the guys we wanted,” DeCosta said. “It fell that way [Saturday]. We had a bunch of players, we had a sense of who might be there in different spots and the players that we targeted, they were there. We would wait on a guy and he’d be there, and then we’d go back down and we’d wait on another guy and he’d be there. “It just came out the right way for us.” Not that picking players six minutes apart, as was the case between Lewis at No. 130 and Henry at No. 132, or four minutes apart, as happened between taking Henry and Dixon at No. 134, was without stress.
“I think just the excitement that was rolling through the room as we were making those picks, guys were feeling good about each other, and the players we were getting, I wouldn’t say it was electric, it was just a different atmosphere than I had been involved in,” Newsome said.
Said Harbaugh, smiling: “It was flying in the room, the bullets were flying. Just watching these men, in the heat of battle, the way they work, it was something to behold.”
Harbaugh compared it being on the USS Enterprise during an episode of “Star Trek.”
He even went so far as to compare his colleagues to characters from the sci-fi series.
“Ozzie was like Jean-Luc Picard [played by actor Patrick Stewart] just sitting there in the captain’s chair, directing things, very calmly under control,” Harbaugh said.
Pointing to DeCosta, Harbaugh said, “You had to go to Spock sitting over there, he had all the analytics down. He told us two or three times exactly who was going to get picked and by whatever team. He talked us into being patient, talked me into being patient a time or two, which was great.”
Then pointing to Joe Hortiz, the team’s director of college scouting, Harbaugh said, “We had over here, ‘Scotty, I need more power’ and he would say, ‘I have nothing for you, Captain,’ then he would find the power. Pat [Moriarty, senior vice president of football administration] pounding on his calculator, trying to figure out the trades, he was the doctor. ‘Captain, I’m a doctor, not a magician.’ ”
And Harbaugh?
“I’m James Kirk, man,” he said with a cocky laugh of which William Shatner would be proud.
The 85 minutes between picking Young and Dixon had their lighter moments, too.
One came when Harbaugh tried to call Lewis to congratulate the Cornhusker on becoming a Raven.
A female voice who turned out to be Lewis’ mother answered the phone.
“I asked, ‘Is Alex there?,’ ” Harbaugh said. “And she goes, ‘No he’s not, can I ask who’s calling?’ I’m like, ‘It’s John Harbaugh with the Ravens.’ She said, ‘Oh, how can I help you?’
“I said, ‘We were hoping Alex would become a Baltimore Raven and we’re thinking about drafting him. Is he there right now?’ She said, ‘No, he’s not right now, he went to the store. Who is this team again?’ ”
The connection was eventually made, and the fourth round kept going — and going –— for the Ravens.
The Ravens will welcome their 11 draft picks and a slew of free agents to rookie camp this week.
Newsome knows what he experienced Saturday, particularly during the fourth round, might never be duplicated. Or will it? “We’ve been trying to figure out how we can have one next year like that, but we haven’t been able to figure it out yet,” Newsome said.