Don't Expect Ravens To Follow Rams Economic Philosophy

Ravens will continue to build through draft.

OWINGS MILLS, Md. — The Los Angeles Rams spent an exorbitant amount of money on free agents and trades to build their team as opposed to relying on the draft.

It's hard to argue with that philosophy considering they won a Super Bowl last year.

However, don't expect the Ravens to follow suit.

"We have a plan. We have a way of doing things, there’s no doubt about it, but it’s not an either-or- type of deal. It’s not one way or the other way," Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. "Definitely, the way the Rams did it this year was kind of the end of the spectrum, along those lines, but we’ve signed free agents before. We’ve signed free agents this year. We’ve signed big, high-price free agents at times in the past, and we have a lot of draft picks this year. So, for me, your capital is your capital. Your opportunity to add talent and players is what it is. So, let’s make the most of it, get the best players in here that we can, develop them the best we can and try to build the best team that we can. 

"But [executive vice president and general manager] Eric [DeCosta] is not shy about looking at free agents, either. He’s not shy about trades. [Executive vice president] Ozzie [Newsome] wasn’t either. Those are things that we certainly look at, and we’ll try to do it any way we can.”

The Ravens have traditionally built their teams through the draft and they have built a model franchise. 

Teams have aggressively pursued free agents and were willing to pay large salaries this offseason, but these contracts could bog them down in the coming years.

"If you look at the 10-year CBA that expired after the 2020 season, over that 10-year period, the aggregate salary cap, if you add up each of the 10 salary caps, was like $1.526 billion," former Raven president Dick Cass said. "We ended up spending $53 million over that amount, so, roughly, we’re $5 million over [per] year. The cap, in the end, drives you – in terms of cash spending – roughly back to the cap.

"So, teams might spend a lot of money this year, and next year, three, four, five, six years from now, that’ll come back, and they’ll have less money to spend. So, I think every year you’re going to see some teams spending a lot more money than other teams, but in the end, it comes back to the median, basically, to the salary cap.”'