Draft success at receiver eludes GM
Ravens’ Newsome tries to find gem
OWINGS MILLS, MD. Maybe before his brilliant career is done, Ozzie Newsome will draft a wide receiver who blossoms into a Pro Bowl stud. Hasn’t happened yet. “Would that be the last hurrah?” the Baltimore Ravens general manager pondered Wednesday during the team’s predraft news conference. “Once I do that, I can go off into the sunset and life would be good? No. My job is to build the best 53- man roster and use all of the resources, and the draft is just part of it.”
Still, it’s striking that for all Newsome has accomplished — after a playing career as a Hall of Fame tight end, he became the NFL’s first African- American general manager and built two Super Bowl winners for the Ravens — he never has struck oil when drafting a receiver.
Newsome, whose draft résumé includes Ray Lewis, Jonathan Ogden, Ed Reed and Terrell Suggs, has even drafted a fullback ( Le’Ron McClain), a punter ( Sam Koch) and a returner ( Jermaine Lewis) who made the Pro Bowl. But no receiver. Frustrating? “In that I was a wide receiver coming out, I guess you could say yes,” Newsome, a first- rounder from Alabama in 1978, said with a chuckle. “But then I got moved. Maybe I don’t know about wide receivers.”
It’s not that Newsome hasn’t acquired some big- time receivers. Steve Smith Sr. just finished his Hall of Fame- credentialed career as a Raven.
Anquan Boldin, whom the team could re- sign as a free agent, was a key contributor on Baltimore’s last championship team.
The blip here might just be about luck and circumstance. But players such as Patrick Johnson, Travis Taylor, Mark Clayton and Torrey Smith never fully panned out.
Then again, another opportunity looms to buck the trend.
Baltimore holds the 16th pick overall in the draft, and Eric DeCosta, the team’s assistant general manager, expects that Clemson’s Mike Williams and Washington blazer John Ross still might be on the board. Western Michigan’s Corey Davis also could be in the mix.
Newsome maintains that, despite us- ing a first- round choice in 2015 on Breshad Perriman, he would not hesitate to select a wideout if the draft board dictates as much.
It would clearly address a need that quarterback Joe Flacco would appreciate, with injury- dogged Perriman and Mike Wallace as the only viable options in a thin corps.
“If we feel like it’s the best player at 16 and he’s a wide receiver,” Newsome said, “and we feel like he’s going to help Joe and help the other guys, we’ll turn that card in, in a hurry.”
With no guarantees, of course, that it is a ticket to the Pro Bowl.