rmcjacket23

Same could be said of any FA available. People want us to sign Mangold or Boldin or a bunch of other guys... why are they still unsigned? Most recent game film would definitely show Webb as a better safety than Byrd. But then again... Byrd is still available also, so you'd have to ask yourself why is he still on the market and nobody wants him? Same principle applies. Every team has 4 safeties... the question is whether any of them are any good. Chiefs weren't that close to letting Berry walk. If they thought their 3rd safety was really good, then they wouldn't have given Berry an all-time contract for a S. Its a pretty laughable notion that teams are just walking around with great players on their bench. There aren't even like probably 30-40 good safeties in the entire league. The idea that an individual team is sitting on 3 or 4 of them isn't very realistic.

Would be difficult to sign Swearinger, given that he's under contract with the Redskins... And depth players are mostly average players by definition. If they were significantly better than average, then they probably wouldn't be depth... they'd be starters. Feel free to point me in the direction of a team that has a really good third safety. There's more teams that don't even have one good safety than there are teams with 3 good one's.

Well, there's really no such thing as being "overpaid". By definition, you're paid what your employer values you at. Whether or not people agree or disagree with that value doesn't really matter. And obviously teams don't get the luxury of getting in a time machine and looking into the future to see if the player "plays up" to the contract he was given. Top third at a position is probably again a bit of stretch for evaluating the success of a round. In fact, I would bet if you looked back over time at 2nd round picks taken by every team, they'd have significantly more "busts" (such as guys who are injured constantly, never play, aren't good enough to be a starter, etc.) than they would guys who end up as top 3rd at their position. Naturally then we go down the rabbit hole of how exactly do you determine who a top 3rd player at their position is? Isn't that just yet again another huge subjective measurement with very little verification and a lot of assumptions? You could argue contract size is a reflection of that, but its flawed to the level that it won't take into account rookie contract players who play well. Round 2 also obviously isn't just for the "top players coming out". Its just how a team PERCEIVES a player to translate to the NFL. There's guys going in the 2nd round who did jack in college. They're being evaluated by attributes, not by game film production, because some of these 2nd rounders and even 1st rounders don't have much of that.

Decosta is delusional. Wagner I liked and was a good pick. But he is not better than Lane Johnson. And Eric Fisher plays left tackle. Decosta must feel pressure if he is always trying to deceive with illusions his draft success. Saying that he has a 64% success in round2. A player being a starter is not indicative of a successful pick. It means that player is your best option for that position. It doesn't indicate you have a standout player. Calling Cody a somewhat success shows his delusional thinking. Jernigan wasn't a successful pick if you shipped him off to move up in round3. Then there is Max Williams and Correa that are busts thus far. I know everybody is going to say Correa is only going into year2. If you think he shows NFL skills I don't know what to say. He is totally awful. Well, realistically, if the only thing that makes a drafted player a good pick is based on whether he's a "standout player", then every team in the league just sucks at drafting, because there aren't any teams in the league I see that churn out "standout players" out of the 2nd round consistently. I'll concede that its all a subjective measure of what a good player is. In the case of somebody like Jernigan, he was easily one of the best defensive players on our team for at least 2 years, and a year from now (or sooner), he's going to be signing a very large contract with another team. The moment that happens, the league itself is telling you that he's a standout player... will likely be signed as one of the top 10-15 players at his position in the entire league. I do generally agree that the 2nd round has been our achilles heal, but there are some starting caliber players in there, and in a league where the talent pool is clearly decreasing rather than increasing, that's about what you can expect out of a 2nd round player.

Or both.

I still don't see why we are perceived as being desperate? I think YOU think we are desperate, but I don't see anything from the FO to indicate we are desperate. Its April, not September. Could draft a Center. Could sign a Center... now, or in May, or June, or July, or August, or even September. Frankly, a better player may be available 4 months from now then right now... we simply don't know. Certainly don't see any logic to the notion that we "forced a trade", because there's nothing to suggest we would get a better pick now or in the future. That's just a straight gamble and speculation. We have the same leverage in a trade that we did a month ago when he was still here. You don't think other teams around the league have reasonable insight into what players may be available from other teams? You don't think that other NFL teams realized that we weren't happy with Zuttah's performance and he would probably be available via a cut or trade? Seems like very unwarranted paranoia on your part. Definitely don't agree with your perception of desperation in the least bit.

Well, sort of. We've seen plenty of 2nd and even 1st round players who barely played in college, didn't perform all that well in college, etc. All about individual team perception.

We need a deep threat for Flacco? Our entire WR core on the roster right now are basically deep threats. That's the problem. We have too many of those guys and nobody who's willing to go over the middle and win contested catches on critical downs.

Still could be cuts, though. I doubt they keep both Watson and Pitta on the roster, and you also got a guy like Arrington who we are probably waiting to get healthy so we can cut him. Can create cap space for draft picks if we need to certainly.

He will get more than that. I could see $2-3M maybe.

During the early stages of FA, I would agree. But in this case, it could be a combination of a number of different things. Certainly possible Mangold wasn't happy with the offer and wants to wait a bit to see if other teams are interested in him. That could benefit him or backfire... time will tell. Also possible that the Ravens don't want to commit to him yet. Could wait until after the draft to see if another veteran becomes available, or could even draft one. My guess is you'll see us sign him prior to the draft. His market is pretty cold from what I see.

1. No, its irrelevant to YOU, because you fail to comprehend why its so important 2. That makes no sense. Again, if we know we have zero interest in him being our Center next year (which its clear we didn't), then we gain nothing by hanging on to him. Even if we never sign or draft anybody, he's still a goner. Delaying benefits the Ravens in no possible way. 3. Ignoring the hilariousness of anybody thinking the Pro Bowl is an indication of how good a player is, Gino was here just two years ago. So saying that Zuttah is the best Center we've had in a whopping 2-3 years, considering how bad Gino was, is pretty comical. There's a difference between being a good Center and being a Center that is better than Gino. You're correct that the latter is accurate, but literally nobody that watched Zuttah play this past year thought that he played well. The Baltimore Ravens certainly didn't, since he's no longer here. If you think we're getting a better offer AFTER the draft, you're delusional. All the draft does, by definition, is reduce the market for veterans that aren't signed at that time.

So could a lot of other teams. Hindsight doesn't accomplish anything.

I think we showed our cards waaaay to early by trading zuttah and now Mangold is calling our bluff! His agent knows that we are desperate and that never helps when negotiating for a contract. why did we have to trade zuttah away to move up 12 picks in the 6th round?! 1. For the cap space. 2. Because he's not a very good Center and I don't think we had any intention of him being on the team in 2017 regardless. We cut and trade players all the time with no obvious replacement available. That's what FA and the draft is for. I doubt Mangold really has much leg to stand on in terms of contract negotiations. This isn't the first wave of FA where he has multiple suitors. He maybe only has a couple teams even interested in him at this point. An obvious declining, older player coming off significant injury is not going to be somebody where negotiations are going to be substantial.

Think this is a bit of a myth though. They typically churn out at least 1-2 high quality NFL players every year, which is pretty strong. I think this perception is applied to them because they're getting at least 7-8 guys drafted every single year. Some drafts are better than others, obviously. 2011 had three exceptional players in it (Dareus, Julio, Ingram) 2012 had some quality players (Kirkpatrick, Barron, Hightower) 2013 was a down year 2014 had Mosley but probably not much else 2015 had Amari Cooper and Landon Collins, two stud players

its all about the system gino went to the broncos and won a ring an did pretty good Umm no. For starters, Gino never played a regular season or postseason snap for the Broncos. He was cut during final cuts the year they traded for him. He spent the 2015 regular season on the Atlanta Falcons, where he played in just 4 games. In 2016, he signed with the Panthers as a backup interior lineman. He played 10 games before landing on IR. He has not played well anywhere he has went, and he's on his 3rd team in about 2 years since leaving the Ravens.

In fact, it seems like Groundhog Day every single time the draft is nearing... Every single time people seem to go through the same cycle, trying to fish out relevant info from what these guys say, tghen realize there is no such info there.... Every single time. YXear after year... As if they haven't gone through the same thing multiple times... And of course there won't be any real specifics in what they say... these are company secrets, folks. Wha company execs would give away company secrets? Again, its a bit of both. If fans are expecting teams to actually declare which players (by name) they are interested in, you'll never get that. But teams tell all of us what positions they will be looking to draft, and with few exceptions, they draft those positions. The Ravens are no different. The positions you and I think they will draft WILL be the positions they draft. It might not be in the round we want or the round we think, but they will do it.

Our cap situation, on the other hand, would be a nightmare to watch... Really wouldn't be possible most likely. Would be taking on an $11M+ contract this year. We'd have to cut a few players just to fit him under our cap for now, and then cut a few more in order to sign our draft picks. Not happening, obviously.

Sure, nobody is going to tell you specific names. You don't see any team in the league come out in February and say "we're targeting this player in March in FA". They all say "we're targeting this type of player". But pretty much everytime the team tells you there's a position or two or even more that they would like to address and upgrade, they at least attempt to do that with some sort of signing or draft pick. I think the perception from some fans is that the FO tells them "we need corners" and that means we're going to go sign 2 FA corners and use our first round pick on a corner. In reality, we may sign one veteran corner and then draft somebody in the 3rd or 4th round or even later. It seems to be that too many fans have this perception that we identify needs publicly and then don't address them (which isn't true), or we address a need publicly and then its considered a failure if we don't spend top dollar or a first round pick on said position.

And that would be a mistake on your part. If you listen to what the FO says at the post-season pressers and what they tell you about what they're interested in for the draft, they pretty much do exactly what they say they're going to do.

You do realize that there's a mountain of evidence that directly contradicts this right?

Well lets be clear that this only dates back about two years, and for half of one of those years we were playing without Joe (though he hasn't played well in either of those seasons). In 2014, the offense literally carried the defense. Even in the SB run in 2012 this was the case.

Actually they already told us why they're shutting the boards down, and it has nothing to do with me calling some fans ignorant or uneducated. My apologies for not rewarding participation posts for all the opinions that have no basis whatsoever. Its just not my thing.

Well, top 10 DT money would be at least $9-10M a year now. Frankly, he could probably ask for Brandon Williams money and get it in my opinion. That's easily a comp pick, and likely a high one. The only thing stopping us from getting a comp pick is the caliber of FAs we sign. Obviously if we were to go out and spend that same level of money or a player or two, it would greatly reduce or eliminate the likelihood of us getting that comp pick.

DTs who can reasonable rush the passer got paid big time money. What's the difference in production between Jernigan and Art Jones from a few years ago? He got a top 10 DT contract at that time. A similar question would be... why is Williams more valuable than Jernigan?