Before the draft, Ravens General Manager Eric DeCosta said it’s “insulting” to suggest that the Ravens don’t have any receivers.
Then DeCosta chose one with Baltimore’s first-round pick, bringing in Minnesota’s Rashod Bateman. The club then added Oklahoma State’s Tylan Wallace in the fourth round.
So that “insulting” comment? On Saturday, DeCosta made it seem like that was all a smokescreen.
“I think one thing that people will learn eventually is that sometimes what we say leading up to the draft — there’s different ways to interpret those types of things. And it’s a game,” DeCosta said during his press conference. “The draft is a game. It never serves us any purpose to give away any inside information. We’re not going to talk about players that we love. We’re not going to talk about players that we want to pick, strategies, those types of things. And so for us, we’re competing with other teams.”
Maybe not, but it wasn’t difficult to see that the Ravens needed to improve their receivers. The club now has 10 players at the position after the additions of Bateman and Wallace, led by 2019 first rounder Marquise Brown and recent free agent signee Sammy Watkins.
“We’re very happy the way it played out. We’re excited,” DeCosta said. “But we also want to say that we feel really, really good about the guys who are on campus. Those guys are going to compete. They’re good players. They’re going to help us win a lot of games. All we’ve done, really, is just kind of stack the deck and create a lot of competition.”
Baltimore was the best rushing team in the league last year. But for the club to take the next step, its passing game has to improve from last in the league.