Ravens GM Eric DeCosta Enters Season 8 Having Done C- Work. Grading Generously

Eric DeCosta is now, firmly, a veteran general manager.

Excluding owners with final say on roster decisions – Jerry Jones and Mike Brown – he is the 10th longest-tenured GM in the NFL. The old saying is, from many a GM I’ve chatted with over the years, they usually get five to six years to show what they can do, tops, they don’t get recycled the way head coaches do and they are lucky if they get to work with two coaches, let alone any more than that.

It’s also quite true that the vast majority come into rebuilding situations with a cupboard bare and things pretty bleak working for bad owners. They don’t get promoted from within and handed a roster including a two-time MVP quarterback that the industry believes is in Super-Bowl or bust mode. And they don’t get to work with a potential Hall of Fame head coach while the Hall of Fame GM who constructed that roster remains in the building to help out that new GM and be a unique sounding board for the owner and everyone else (yet still it hasn’t taken off).

Not all first-time GMs get to enjoy all those creature comforts within a division where during that entire seven-season run this far (2019-2025) there is only one legit starting quarterback on any other roster (Joe Burrow of the Bengals; Ben Roethlisberger was already cooked) and Burrow missed a considerable amount of time to injury overall.

Of the 21 combined seasons the Browns, Bengals and Steelers have played during DeCosta’s tenure, exactly four have resulted in more than 10 wins, and half of those belong to the Browns believe it or not. During all those seasons those three franchises combined for six playoff wins and half of those came in the Bengals’ Super Bowl run in 2021. Every year the sportsbooks and experts put the Ravens among the best odds to win it all, and yet they have a single meaningful playoff run under DeCosta.

This should have been the most robust window to bring a third Lombardi Trophy to Baltimore with Jackson is his peak prime. They haven’t come particularly close, and John Harbaugh got fired and DeCosta had carte blanche to hire his coach. The Lamar Jackson Era is also The Eric DeCosta Era and all the crap that the QB takes for not winning enough when it matters most is on the GM, too. And Jackson has also covered up a preponderance of roster and contractual and drafting mistakes along the way with his historic regular seasons.

I’d give DeCosta a C- for his work, strongly believe owner Steve Bisciotti should have rebooted his football operations when he fired Harbaugh (he was barely up for the coaching search so that wasn’t happening. And, with DeCosta as powerful as any GM in the NFL at this point, things best improve immediately.

Here’s how I reached the grade:

Failed To Address Two Biggest Roster Issues

The biggest questions with the Ravens, even after finally getting around to signing a real free agent pass rusher (Trey Hendrickson a few months back) are the same now as they were when DeCosta took over – who is making plays for Lamar in the pass game and who is getting after the quarterback?

The pass rush situation was embarrassing, he repeatedly wanted to prove how smart he was with guys a year too old but who come cheap enough (akin to Mike Elias with pitching) and it’s blown up in his face year after year and destroyed them in the playoffs, where they have a negative sack ratio and turnover ratio.

It started with him letting Matt Judon leave the building off a franchise tag and the ridiculousness of the David Ojabo and Odafe Oweh selections and the Oweh trade and the Yannick Ngakoue trade and keeping Justin Houston too long and Kyle Van Noy too long. It was the No 1 weakness he needed to address and it took him seven years to get around to doing anything real about it and he still talked himself out of Maxx Crosby to settle on and older and lesser alternative.

And while the development of Zay Flowers is great, he doesn’t show up in the redzone or the endzone and last year no one else could make a damn play in the pass game and it’s one of the biggest issues with the current roster as well. So much time and money wasted on bad receivers at the end of their careers. Evaluation failure after evaluation failure.

It’s been called out year after year by any smart NFL analysts in real-time. None of the dudes they brought in here to help Lamar has gone anywhere else after and done a damn thing, and they couldn’t get a fourth-round pick for Andrews last offseason but extend him at $13M a year anyway.

Godpseed!

Contract Failures

The fact Jackson is weeks away from entering what could be a walk year at a time the head coach and offensive coordinator have never spent a real day on the job is nuts. That’s friggin’ looney man. And DeCosta spending last offseason talking about him not needing to do much contractually, only to watch Josh Allen get signed and then Patrick Mahomes get signed again. Bonkers to be right back here again.

It never should have taken so long the first time with this QB the trade demand and non-exclusive tag and here we are again. At the same time this saga drags on again, almost the entire 2022 draft class – DeCosta’s one signature draft amid many failures (read below) – walks out the door this offseason save for Kyle Hamilton, who he did manage to get extended, and Travis Jones (a solid player but not the first-round-value talent they hyped when he was selected).

Whining about the salary cap and whining about the Deshaun Watson contract and whining about Tyler Linderbaum not taking their offer. Playing silly games trying to rub Mark Andrews’s contract extension in Isaiah Likely’s face while trying to make the playoffs … I’m over all of it

Just win, baby.

Draft-And-Develop Failures

So about those drafts.

Continues to strikeout at an almost comical rate finding edge difference makers. If you don’t want to spend real money – up until this point – to address those roster issues listed above – then Rashod Bateman (1st round) needs to be a winning football player and not a half-season wonder – and you can’t repeatedly swing-and-miss at every mid-round offensive lineman you select and keep coming away with guys you don’t want to slap with a fifth-year option or franchise tag.

When pivotal picks like JK Dobbins and Hollywood Brown and Patrick Queen (and Ojabo and Oweh and I could go on) are one contract-guys here and you don’t win anything of significance with the comp picks and return you got for moving on from them, you can’t take victory laps about your evaluating acumen and thump your chest about your draft-and-develop model.

Study the current roster, and even with the Ravens setting team spending records – consider how much of that money is going to players at the end of their careers and/or Ravens tenure. Not ideal.

Playoff Failures

They had a potentially historic 2023 season. And the lack of pass rush and lack of playmakers killed them at home to Kansas City and they haven’t met expectations any other year. They’d have you believe it was mostly Harbaugh’s fault. We’ll see.

DeCosta has a 3-5 playoff record and DeCosta’s team was the betting favorite in six of those games. DeCosta is 2-2 at home in the playoffs, including a loss in Baltimore as a 10-poinnt favorite.

They defeated the Titans after the 2020 season, the Texans at home in the rain in CJ Stroud’s playoff debut (he’s yet to show he’s cut out for postseason football) and the Steelers at home with Russell Wilson pretending to be an NFL starting quarterback. That’s what his vaunted rosters have advanced past when it truly matters.

That’s not what you were sold when he was handed a franchise supposedly on the brink of greatness. And there are no more excuses to be made.

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