My official NFL Draft Guide - For Fans of the Baltimore Ravens is complete for 2024. As always, in it, you’ll find in-depth reports on all the top prospects in this year’s draft and detailed traits-based grading on all the full reports completed. Thorough evaluation is backed up by countless hours of film study. But, on top of that, you’ll find a considered opinion on how that player might fit wearing Raven purple on gameday.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… the Baltimore Ravens used to scoop up the very best prospects in the Draft picking outside the top 10. As other teams made mistakes, addressing need first and foremost, forsaking the finest talents in the first round, formidable players fell into the Ravens’ lap. From the outside looking in, you could speculate that the Ravens have moved away from this approach in recent years. The Best Player Available mantra being thrown aside somewhat…

My official NFL Draft Guide - For Fans of the Baltimore Ravens is complete. In it, you’ll find in-depth reports on all the top prospects in this year’s draft - over 100 player reports. Thorough evaluations backed up by countless hours of film study. But, more than that, you’ll find a considered opinion on how that player might fit, wearing Raven purple on gameday. Every prospect has been evaluated with fidelity to a process to identify their potential but specifically with the Ravens organization in mind, when projecting them to the league.

Without further ado, here is the guide…

The Ravens have been looking for leaders on and off the field in previous draft classes. They’ve been looking for young, socially conscious, campus leaders who can add to their already impressive locker room. This year will be no exception. And Josh Paschal fits the bill, not just with his play on the field – that stands on its own merit, but with his character off it too. That, only adds to the case that he be marked with a red star on the Ravens draft board this April.

He excels as a fit and finisher as a Gap blocker. He has great strike zone recognition and excellent power in his hands, he can roll his hips on contact and displays explosive strength at the point of attack. On Down blocks he can obliterate a whole side of the line of scrimmage, and as a Drive blocker he displays his impressive core strength. He’s good on double teams and his athleticism will help him as a puller. You can see him stop his feet on contact but he’ll always make the block functional if he does.

He is easily the most fearsome YAC-getter in this class. And this was in the SEC, not some flat-track bully in a lesser division. He was beating the best athletes in the nation with both speed and physicality on a regular basis. Arkansas would put the ball in his hands as much as possible, on both screens and out of the backfield, and let him go to work. The potential with a guy like him lining up on the offense as both a runner, receiver and decoy is mouth-watering.

5 years ago, the Baltimore Ravens sat in the middle of the 1st Round of the 2017 NFL Draft, picking at number 16. It was the second year in a row that the Ravens had picked in the first half of the first round, before that, it had been ten years since their last pick that high. I know most considered Tight End as a pressing need and a supposedly, generationally talented Tight End, in OJ Howard sat on the board. I was high on Howard too so I can’t avoid all the ridicule here but I had another surely-Ozzie-will-pick-one Alabama player rated higher.

This year, I’m putting together a draft report that will focus on the 2022 prospects from a Ravens perspective. Evaluating prospects generically without a team in mind can be difficult… That’s why each of my reports will feature a section that makes a projection about the player and then projects their fit with the Ravens. You’ll get the full report later in this draft season but when I designate a red star player – one who fits perfectly with the Ravens, I’ll publish that report early in one of these pieces entitled “Play Like a Raven”. Here’s the first, on Daxton Hill…

I was 8 years old when I saw my first alley-oop. I thought it was the most spectacular thing I’d ever seen. I was already a sports fanatic and I sat, aghast at such a display of sporting prowess. Even then I was prone to noticing the little things in sporting endeavor though. I remember thinking that, yes, the athletic ability of the player hanging in the air near the basket to catch the ball mid-flight, with impeccable timing to their jump, to finish with a dunk, was remarkable. But I remember being more taken with the player passing the ball.

By Michael Crawford (@abukari)

In this piece, I take a look at snap participation for the Ravens defensive backs in the 2020 and 2019 seasons. I also try to unpack what roles they ask these players to fill and in which situations they use them. This may be the most important thing I say in the entire piece - thank you to @yoshi2052 (on Twitter) for providing this data. If not for him, none of what you’re about to read would exist. What’s in a name? Defensive Backs or DBs, includes Cornerbacks (CB) and Safeties (S). But those lines can blur. Sometimes a player listed as a CB may play like a S or the other way round.

There was another constant though, by his side – Eric DeCosta. So I think EDC makes a fascinating case study in humility, self-development and team-building. He saw a great team-builder change his approach and build two different teams – he was there for all of it. But also because there was so much success, particularly in the draft, during Ozzie’s tenure, that it would be so easy to fall into the crash and burn pitfall that lies in wait if he were to try and replicate Ozzie’s approach, lock, stock and barrel.

I already gave him a lot of credit for trying to play outside, before we even found out, post-draft about the troubles he faced throughout the 2020 season – a lingering turf toe to go with multiple deaths in his family, I honestly wouldn’t completely write him off as an outside corner because of this. I also give him huge credit for trying. Too often in life we see people cut and run to preserve their reputation. Wade stayed and he fought through it.

“It means absolutely nothing for you to have these gifts breathed into you, for you to hold your breath and not exhale them back into the world. So my challenge to you: continue to exhale your time, your resources, your love, your empathy, your compassion.“ Daelin Hayes was a captain, his senior year at Notre Dame, but he isn’t just a leader of football players. He is a leader. Period. The quote above is from the Juneteenth Rally last year at Notre Dame where Hayes spoke and marked himself as a leader of the community, not just on the football field.

We know for sure that Eric DeCosta likes to get better. It is one of the things that makes me feel most secure in his stewardship of this franchise. On night one of the 2021 NFL Draft, he proved to us that he is well and truly, captain of this ship now. The most un-Raven like edge rusher pick in a long time awaited us as the first night drew to a close. It tells us a lot about how DeCosta likes to learn and grow. Odafe Jayson Oweh was, literally, the last guy I expected to be a Raven on draft night. The Ravens are habitual valuers of production at the edge rusher spot and Oweh… Does. Not. Have. It.

O me-o, O mi-o, O Cleveland, Ohio. The host of the 2021 NFL Draft. It was certainly no Rocky steps in Philadelphia, or Broadway in Nashville. But someone had to do it, in this strange, beginning-to-be-post-Pandemic world. The mistake on the lake, really no longer refers as accurately to this resurgent city in general, but for this Draft it might apply to the odd decision to place the stage on the lake but in front of a parking lot. They hid it well but you could still see it if you looked hard enough.

The last piece I wrote was for Russell Street Report and it was a potential, Raven-like approach to the first two days of the 2021 NFL Draft that would see us take four prospects on day two that I believe, play like Ravens on film. My piece was predicated on us having ONE pick in the first round and trading back off that pick to acquire more picks in what I believe to be a loaded day two this year. It was surely this that tempted fate and caused our favorite Right Tackle to be traded to the Kansas City Chiefs on Friday. Giving us two picks in the first round this year and a chasm of a gap to our next pick in the 90s, in a draft where I believe the sweet spot for talent is right in the middle of that pick desert for us.

Then I got a coach who finally got me, who knew that he couldn’t just tell me to believe it and it will happen, like some dodgy superhero wisdom. He told me that the reason some coaches preach belief in yourself, is because it drives guys to run as fast as they can, headlong into the immovable object. Then he told me the formula all good coaches who tailor their advice, tell the thinking man’s football player. Force equals mass times acceleration.

Lamont Brightful, David Pittman, Lardarius Webb, Asa Jackson, Christian Thompson, Tray Walker – all I knew before setting off on this journey through the Ravens draft tendencies was that Ozzie loved a small school corner, he could not get enough of them. Though looking at this list, a one of out of six hit rate and you’re glad they stopped doing this as frequently as they used to. In fact one of the overall tendencies I’ve noticed, is that recently, we’ve reduced the frequency with which we take a player of any position from the small school ranks.

We’ve all done it. Ran a mock draft on PFF or The Draft Network, check the predictive board to see which group of players is likely to be taken next, and calculate that we can forego taking that guy we love until the 5th round. We can sit tight at our spots and execute advantageous trades based on the deviation the simulators have baked in, and not worry about other opportunistic teams trading above us to take guys we might potentially like. We are the only team allowed to trade on the board. Maybe we have a go six or seven times, maybe post version 6.2 to twitter as we got Devonta Smith to fall to 27 that time.

He occupies double teams for breakfast and you can see him split them pretty regularly too. He cedes very little ground from the line of scrimmage when two guys get on him. His footwork helps him here but so too does his raw power, which is significant. He can stand up a little too easily at times and lose the leverage he will need at the next level but more often than not, he will hit you with a heavy and accurate paw early in the rep and then use his feet and base to establish a two way go for himself to make a play on the ball carrier. You cannot escape his grasp if you run at him – he’ll often throw out one of his considerable wings from behind a block and yank the running back to the ground.