Its not really fair to say the Ravens problems are cuz of the last 4 yrs of the draft when a lot of these players are developing and getting a foothold in the NFL. The meats and potatos of a team are your veterans from the 5-9 playing experience range which homegrown we have 4 (Flacco,Webb,Jimmy and Pitta). I don't nessassarily see stars in this group. Just average to good players and this is the main reason we faltering now. I know we had other good players from the 08-12drafts but they not on the team now which is what matters now. Another reason is bad contacts (ex. Signing Zuttah to 5 yr deal when we had enough room under cap to keep him at original trade contract). Zuttah had not even played one snap for us and we extending the deal?
So to me the writer is wrong. He's picking the wrong 4 yrs. 1st of all you cant nessarrily judge a player until after 3 yrs and I believe in a couple of yrs we gonna finally be able to keep and sign our own players even if they not stars and that is critical cuz our aging guys will be coming off the books and keeping continuity is what made our team great in the 1st place.
The bottomline is is hoping guys like Jernigan and Mosley really start stepping up and becoming stars and we resign them and they maintain the same caliber of play and others in these drafts and regain the nice mixture of prime veterans, guys on their 1st contracts(gotta keep drafting strong) and a sprinkling of aging veterans. That's the perfect cocktail.
I do worry that we wont be able to keep guys like B Williams and Wagner due to salary cap problems again but we shall see. I'm hoping we can keep Williams especially since I see star material and then this will start the process or otherwise you can add 2013 draft to the mix.