‘LUCK-DRIVEN PROCESS’
Entering NFL draft, Ravens see opportunity to build roster in the unknown
A cigar dangling in his left hand, Steve Bisciotti considered the question and looked toward the horizon. Amid the serenity of a postcard-perfect day in Palm Beach, Florida, the late-afternoon sun bouncing off the sky blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean, came a nervous excitement. Someone had just asked about trading draft picks.
“I drive Eric crazy,” the Ravens owner said at the NFL owners meetings last month. The trade machine in his own head started to whir, calculations Bisciotti had learned from watching general manager Eric DeCosta, the architect of the strength-in-numbers strategy that has come to define Ravens drafts.
“I can tell you what I could turn that 14th pick into right now in a million different scenarios,” Bisciotti said, and he replayed a typical conversation with DeCosta: What if the Ravens traded down nine spots in Thursday’s first round to get another second-round pick, somewhere in the 50s? Then what if they traded out of the first round altogether, dealing No. 23 overall for No. 39 and an early-third-round pick? Wouldn’t that be something, trading away the team’s highest pick in six years for three more top-70 selections?
“You know, the phone has to ring,” Bisciotti recalled DeCosta telling him. “I said, ‘Oh, I understand that. This is a game that you can’t play by yourself. You actually need somebody to call you, right?’”
As the Ravens prepare for a draft that could stabilize a franchise reeling from a losing season — their first since 2015 — and grapple with the uncertainty of quarterback Lamar Jackson’s financial future in Baltimore, there are limits on what team officials know. They don’t know who will be available at No. 14 overall, though they have a pretty good idea.
NFL draft
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Las Vegas
“I can tell you what I could turn that 14th pick into right now in a million different scenarios,” — Steve Bisciotti, Ravens owner
INSIDE: Sun writer Jonas Shaffer and editor C.J. Doon offer opposing views of how the Ravens’ draft might go this weekend.
They don’t know who might call Thursday, Friday or Saturday or what they might offer. They don’t know who might listen when they call with their own proposals.
But the Ravens, maybe more than any NFL front office, see opportunity in the unknown. The draft, DeCosta said last year, is a “luckdriven process” that rewards teams that collect picks like lottery tickets. The Ravens have 10 selections in this year’s draft, including four in the top 100, and DeCosta has said that the team’s goal is to have nine to 12 overall every year. To experts around the league and even outside it, the Ravens’ conservative approach is an honest reckoning with the realities of team building and the uncertainties of the draft.
“I think there’s a lot of truth to it,” NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah, a former Ravens scout, said in a conference call last week. “I do think that every draft has some players that come in clear packaging, where I feel like you know exactly what you’re getting. There’s not a lot of them.
“Outside of that, the vast majority of these players, it’s going to be largely dependent on where they go, how they’re used, how they’re coached, who they’re with. I think there is a lot of logic behind trying to get as many bites at the apple as you can, or using those resources to try and find those clear-packaging players. …
I think the moral of the story is when you have all these picks, you give yourself a lot more options. I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that.”
Since DeCosta’s promotion to assistant general manager in 2012, the Ravens have drafted at least nine players in all but four years. Compensatory picks have helped them build their stockpiles; by passing on expensive homegrown free agents, the Ravens have been awarded mid-round selections that they’ve used to draft standouts like fullback Kyle Juszczyk, center Ryan Jensen and tight end Nick Boyle. The team has three of the top 13 compensatory picks in this year’s draft alone.
The Ravens have been just as willing to trade away their most precious picks. Since 2010, they’ve traded down in the first round in four drafts, down in the second round in two drafts and down in the third round in one draft. Their biggest gamble — moving into the end of the first round in 2018 to take Louisville quarterback Lamar Jackson — came after moving back from No. 16 and again from No. 22. The Ravens’ 12-player class that year included three future All-Pros: Jackson, tight end Mark Andrews and offensive tackle Orlando Brown Jr.
Overall, only the Vikings (46 picks) have drafted more players than the Ravens since 2018, according to a team spokesman. The Bengals are tied for second with 38. Just behind them, with 37, are the Packers, Colts, Rams, Patriots and Commanders. Only the Commanders haven’t won a playoff game in that period.