Don’t Be Surprised if These Three Ravens Players Get Cut After Friday’s Preseason Finale

The final dress rehearsal for the Ravens in preseason isn’t going to feature much roster mystery.

It just isn’t. Plenty of people will try to tell you otherwise for clicks and heaven knows the in-house broadcast is going to try to milk “roster battles” and “camp competitions” for all its worth to try to get you to keep watching for three hours. But that’s just not the reality.

Rookie head coach Jesse Minter has made it painfully obvious with how little is really at stake in these exhibitions overall – and especially this final one – in terms of roster decisions by how he’s handled who dresses. And by that I mean, nobody dresses. Not even Trenton Simpson.

Minter is very conservative – as expected, being a product of Jim and John Harbaugh – and that has extended heavily into his first training camp at the helm. They cut way back on how hard they work and push the players – the players gushing about this might not be ideal, but we’ll see – and cut even further back on who participates and for how long in the preseason.

So that’s cut down on the extent of true value in this film in regards to who makes the team and who does not. And they’ve always had a pretty good idea about what their 53-man roster would look like if all the key guys made it off the Physically Unable to Participate list, and if they avoided further significant injuries to their two-deep … And they have.

I’m not going to try to tell you the following three names are huge surprises. I don’t think there will be many/any big surprises, and if there are, it will be in the second wave of transactions as they claim other players on waivers or making small trades.

Adisa Isaac

General manager Eric DeCosta’s selection with late first-round through third-round linebackers have been a total wasteland. It’s a massive blind-spot and has everything to do with the defense becoming a joke the last two years. The industry knows it and we’ve discussed it with Brian Baldinger and Bucky Brooks and Marty Hurney and Pat Kirwan and Charles Davis.

It’s part of the reason none of those guys is banging the drum to expect much from second-round pick Zion Young this season. So no one should be surprised that a third-round pick just a few years ago is firmly on the roster bubble and probably more out than in unless injuries develop.

DeCosta loves taking Penn State players; outside of a late-blooming punter, it hasn’t gone well.

He still looks and plays like a tweener and watching to defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver speak about him this week gave me the distinct impression this is over. Weaver hypes everyone and he could dream on him as a three-technique pushing around guard when you hear – “In the limited exposures we have had out here to him, he has played well,” that’s a red flag. Durability and availability matter and we have seen a bunch of newcomers on the fringes of this roster at EDGE pop like undrafted Ethan Burke.

Corey Bullock

It wasn’t that long ago that the Ravens were pushing him as a viable starting center candidate and had people writing and opining about it and wasting their time on it (and your time on it). Not us.

We reported all along they HAD to sign Ethan Pocic and they did. But even with Pocic late to the party and limited off Achilles surgery and Danny Pinter, the guy No. 1 on the depth chart, suffering a season-ending injury last week, this is a tough climb for Bullock.

We believe in the Maryland product as a deep depth piece, but he has missed too much time to be more than that now. Looks like a practice squad guy to us who wasn’t able to command enough reps in the spring and summer.

Evan Beernsten

With 11 picks, and their usual prediction for unearthing a few potential UDFA gems, no way was every pick making this roster. Their final pick always looked like someone with especially steep odds, and with Gerad Lichtenhan basically gobbling up every single rep at right tackle through two preseason games, this seventh-rounder doesn’t have a shot.

He’s played eight snaps through the two “real” dress rehearsals and the Ravens might throw a ton at him Friday night but that’s just to get them through the game at this point and give him some film to help him catch on somewhere else maybe if he doesn’t crack Baltimore’s practice squad (and I am far from convinced he will).

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