Fourth Round Will Be Critical for Ravens In This Year's Draft

Baltimore needs players ready to make impact.

OWINGS MILLS, Md. — The Ravens have five selections in the fourth round of this year's NFL draft.

GM Eric DeCosta expects to take players that are ready to make an immediate impact. 

"My mindset is every guy that we take in the fourth round this year better be playing for us – that’s why we’re taking him," DeCosta said. "That’s our expectation from Day One; they go out here, they hit the ground running, and they play. So, that’s just the way that we look at it. Now, does the data back that up? Probably not, but that’s what we think. That’s what we expect. We make every pick with that type of conviction, so that’s just the way we play the game.”

The Ravens had mixed results historically with selecting players in the fourth round.

They struck gold with players, such as Dennis Pitta, Kyle Juszczyk, Za'Darius Smith and Edwin Mulitalo, among others.

The Ravens had less success with Jaleel Scott, Nico Siragusa and John Simon. 

Joe Hortiz, the Ravens director of college scouting, is looking forward to the challenge of finding playmakers in this year's fourth round. 

"It makes it fun on Friday night – I can promise you that," DeCosta said. "We’ll be excited, and we’ll get together like we do and kind of assess things. Obviously, [executive vice president & general manager] Eric puts the guys in preferential order for our team and through the Draft meetings, so I think the stacking of the board is going to be the same throughout the meetings, and then once we get into the gameplan and gameday, that’s when Eric will put the guys in the best order for us to pick."