Mike Preston: Ravens GM Eric DeCosta has to add more impact players this offseason, no matter the cost | COMMENTARY

Like his pre­vi­ous three draft class­es, Ravens gen­er­al man­ag­er Eric DeCos­ta deserves a cou­ple of years to mature in his deci­sion-mak­ing, but he will be under scruti­ny this off­sea­son while putting togeth­er the 2022 roster.

The Ravens were expect­ed to be seri­ous con­tenders in 2021 but fell apart mid­sea­son, los­ing their final six games and fail­ing to make the play­offs for the first time since 2017. Injuries played a major part as Bal­ti­more placed 25 play­ers on injured reserve and had 46 starters dur­ing the course of the year.

DeCos­ta has to rebuild and remod­el while at the same time tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion that some of the injured play­ers — such as defen­sive end Derek Wolfe, left tack­le Ron­nie Stan­ley and tight end Nick Boyle — might not be ready for the start of 2022.

It’s a tricky situation.

“Every­body is dif­fer­ent; all of our play­ers are total­ly dif­fer­ent,” DeCos­ta said. “Per­son­al­i­ty, abil­i­ty, moti­va­tion, dri­vers, off the field, fam­i­ly sit­u­a­tions, where they grew up, how they grew up — all those dif­fer­ent things fac­tor into how guys play ini­tial­ly and how they play long term. And so, as we’re build­ing a team, one of the worst things that we can do is make a move, bring a guy in, and then the guy behind him emerges quick­ly, and then all of a sud­den, we have two guys for one spot. That’s a frus­trat­ing thing — when that hap­pens — and it’s hap­pened over the years; it doesn’t hap­pen often, but it does happen.

“So, what we try to do, one of the biggest jobs we have is assess­ing our play­ers — what do we have cur­rent­ly? — eval­u­at­ing the play­ers we have on cam­pus. What are they going to be? Where are they going to go? How fast are they going to get there? In some cas­es, we make the deter­mi­na­tion that we don’t have the right guy yet, and we have to find that guy to do that. Hope­ful­ly, if that’s the case, the guy we bring in is good and can play right away and he’s every­thing we think he’s going to be — he’s instant cof­fee — but some­times, the guys have to per­co­late for a while and then they become real­ly good.”

The Ravens, though, shouldn’t be fooled. Except for the Pitts­burgh Steel­ers, they prob­a­bly would not have beat­en any of the oth­er six teams in the AFC play­offs. Those teams played at a faster pace and with few­er penal­ties. They had dynam­ic pass rush­ers and their pass­ing games oper­at­ed at a high­er lev­el than the Ravens.

Most impor­tant­ly, those teams had impact quar­ter­backs in Buffalo’s Josh Allen, Cincinnati’s Joe Bur­row and Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes (except for the sec­ond half of the AFC cham­pi­onship game). There were home run-hit­ting receivers like Ja’Marr Chase, Tyreek Hill, Ste­fon Dig­gs and Travis Kelce.

And then when you look at the Ravens, they’ve got a game-chang­ing quar­ter­back in Lamar Jack­son, when healthy, and tight end Mark Andrews on offense. On defense, they have cor­ner­back Mar­cus Peters, who at age 29, is com­ing back from a major knee injury.

That’s it, folks.

Even when they are com­plete­ly healthy, the Ravens lack star pow­er. Run­ning back J. K. Dob­bins, who missed the sea­son because of a knee injury, is a good play­er but he isn’t in the class of Indianapolis’s Jonathan Tay­lor or Tennessee’s Der­rick Hen­ry. The Ravens don’t have a receiv­er yet in the class of Cincinnati’s Tee Hig­gins much less Hill, and they don’t have a pass rush­er who can win one-on-one matchups like Pittsburgh’s T.J. Watt or Kansas City’s Chris Jones.

And that’s why DeCos­ta should be under the micro­scope this off­sea­son. If the Ravens are to be seri­ous con­tenders, they need more impact play­ers. And of the three DeCos­ta draft class­es, there doesn’t appear to be many among them.

Of the 2019 class, only two of the eight — receiv­er Mar­quise Brown and guard Ben Pow­ers — have had some impact while third-round picks Jay­lon Fer­gu­son and receiv­er Myles Boykin have been dis­ap­point­ments. Brown has played well at times but not to the lev­el of expec­ta­tions when the Ravens made him their first and No. 25 over­all pick.

He hasn’t proven to be a No. 1 receiv­er yet. DeCos­ta spoke last week about pick­ing up Brown’s option year in 2022 worth about $13 mil­lion. When that hap­pens, maybe DeCos­ta should talk to him about gain­ing some nas­ti­ness and play­ing hard­er even when Jack­son is not play­ing, and tell him that he needs to make clutch catch­es in the end zone or along the side­lines in the final and biggest game of the sea­son against Pittsburgh.

DeCos­ta insists that Brown needs more time, and maybe he does. But he could be on his way to say­ing the same thing about the 2020 draft class as far as lack­ing impact play­ers. Mid­dle line­backer Patrick Queen was tak­en in the first round and Malik Har­ri­son was one of four play­ers tak­en in the third. It’s still ear­ly but so far no one is jump­ing up and down over at the Cas­tle in antic­i­pa­tion of them becom­ing the next Bart Scott or Adal­ius Thomas, much less Ray Lewis or Peter Boulware.

Guard Tyre Phillips, anoth­er third-round pick, can’t stay healthy enough to get bet­ter and receivers Devin Duver­nay and James Proche II have become after­thoughts in the Ravens’ run-first offense. There is hope for defen­sive line­men Justin Madubuike and Brod­er­ick Wash­ing­ton, but they need more time to mature as well — just hope­ful­ly less than Brown.

Free agency could be a way for the Ravens to improve, but they don’t like to play along.

‘’We’ve nev­er been a big, huge free agency team,” said DeCos­ta, who offi­cial­ly became the team’s new gen­er­al man­ag­er on Jan. 11, 2019. “We’ve dab­bled in it a lit­tle bit. We’ll con­tin­ue to look for play­ers that ben­e­fit the club in dif­fer­ent ways, cer­tain­ly. Right play­er, right price, as always. We’ll con­tin­ue to look at play­ers that we have whose con­tracts are expir­ing to try to get some deals done. I’m com­fort­able with that process.”

The Ravens are cheap and aren’t will­ing to give up draft picks in pos­si­ble trades. That’s why in the DeCos­ta era they have signed some good free agents like defen­sive end Calais Camp­bell, Peters, run­ning back Mark Ingram and guard Kevin Zeitler, but have more dis­ap­point­ments like Yan­nick Ngak­oue, Robert Grif­fin III, D.J. Fluk­er, Ale­jan­dro Vil­lanue­va, Jor­dan Richards, Earl Thomas III and Sam­my Watkins.

So, if they don’t have those big-time play­ers on their ros­ter and won’t gam­ble in free agency, where will they get them from?

When Ozzie New­some was the inter­im gen­er­al man­ag­er soon after the team moved to Bal­ti­more from Cleve­land in 1996, expec­ta­tions were low because the Ravens had lit­tle cash to spend in free agency. But that all changed when Steve Bis­ciot­ti became a minor­i­ty own­er in 2000, and he lat­er pur­chased the fran­chise from Art Mod­ell on April 9, 2004.

DeCos­ta deserves as much patience as New­some even though the cir­cum­stances are dif­fer­ent. The Ravens have shown they have enough qual­i­ty depth to com­pete with most teams in the league, but not the star pow­er to go deep into the post­sea­son. Last week, DeCos­ta talked about pos­si­ble changes, like get­ting younger on the defen­sive line and adding two offen­sive linemen.

He said he was con­fi­dent in his team doc­tors and thought a lot of key play­ers would return healthy for next sea­son. Like coach John Har­baugh, DeCos­ta appeared excit­ed and ready to move into next sea­son, espe­cial­ly with the Ravens hav­ing nine picks in the first four rounds of the draft.

“If you think about our list, our mas­ter list, if we have 100 play­ers ranked, we feel like all of those nine picks will prob­a­bly come with­in our top 80 play­ers,” said DeCos­ta. “So, if we do our job cor­rect­ly, if we stack the board the right way [and] if we’re able to play the com­bi­na­tions cor­rect­ly — what I mean by that is draft­ing the play­ers with an eye toward max­i­miz­ing each pick posi­tion­al­ly — I think we have a real­ly good chance to build some seri­ous and qual­i­ty depth to help this team be the best it can be.”

We’ll see. Com­bined with the ongo­ing con­tract nego­ti­a­tions with Jack­son, this will be DeCosta’s most inter­est­ing offseason.

Every­body is watching.

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