The Ravens and quarterback Joe Flacco still haven’t worked out a long-term deal. Regardless of how the dominoes fall, assistant G.M. Eric DeCosta made clear during an appearance on Thursday’s Pro Football Talk that the team plans on keeping Flacco around for the long haul.
“We have no intentions of letting Joe Flacco leave Baltimore,” DeCosta said.
Still, DeCosta didn’t put the chances of Flacco leaving at zero percent. “Probably negligible,” DeCosta said.
So does that mean the Ravens will use the exclusive level of the franchise tag, if push comes to shove?
“We don’t know that,” DeCosta said. “We’re not sure. We’ve had a lot of meetings, about three or four different scenarios, and I know that his agent, Joe Linta, and our cap guy, Pat Moriarty, will have some discussions in the next few days, over the next week, and hopefully we can get some things ironed out and at that point we can kind of move forward with what are plans are going to be if we can’t get a deal done.”
If the Ravens don’t use the exclusive level of the franchise tag, Flacco will be able to negotiate with other teams and sign an offer sheet. If the Ravens can’t or won’t match an offer that likely would be heavily front-loaded, the Ravens would receive two first-round picks as compensation.
As DeCosta said, the chances of that happening are “probably negligible.” But he didn’t say zero, which means there’s still a chance the Ravens will roll the dice with the non-exclusive tag — and that another team will make a run at the reigning Super Bowl MVP.