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.

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.

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.

The first rounder fifth year contractual option has changed this landscape drastically. If you consistently hit on first rounders, as the Ravens do as well as any team, then that fifth year option really helps

When you look at both trades, I think they’ve ultimately made the front office a little gun shy of trading back out of the first round entirely from the 20s. Kindle and Upshaw did not meet the standard of a Ravens number one pick