The good news for the Ravens is that tackle Bryant McKinnie hasn’t put on any weight since the end of last season.
The less good news is that he hasn’t lost any either. John Harbaugh said last week that the tackle was in the same shape he was at the end of last season, but Jeff Zrebiec of the Baltimore Sun reports that the team wants him to be in better shape than he was during the 2011 season so that he can “move better and be a little quicker.” McKinnie finished last year at about 360 pounds after ballooning to nearly 400 pounds before getting cut by the Vikings.
There’s not much chance that they are going to find someone else to take the job protecting Joe Flacco’s blind side next season. They’ve already exercised his $500,000 roster bonus for next season and he’s set to make $3.2 million for a Ravens team that doesn’t have much space to do something different right now.
They also don’t have a ton of options. Zrebiec mentions the possibility that the Ravens will draft a tackle, but that seems like a plan for a future without McKinnie. Unless they want to roll the dice on Marcus McNeill, the present is going to rely on McKinnie staying on track during the offseason.