Steve Bisciotti Making A Draft Pick Isn't A Big Deal. But Doing So Now Is Incredibly Revealing

I’m not going to get in a lather about the Ravens owner taking ownership of their final pick in the fifth round.

In the grand scheme of things that give me considerable pause about this front office – as presently constructed - coming close to winning a Super Bowl, it’s incredibly low down the list. We have no idea if this coaching staff is up to task and they don’t have a starting center or a swing tackle and they drafted another “pass rusher” in a part of the draft that been a total washout for them, and they abstained from a wholehearted embrace of adding multiple pieces to their interior offensive or defensive line, again.

So, like, is the owner picking a player a ‘lil too cute by half? A little too cheeky for me? Sure. But it’s also not a huge deal.

A Time And Place For Everything

Is it the wrong time and place, coming off a lost 2025 season in which Steve Bisciotti decided future Hall of Fame head coach John Harbaugh – his boy for life – had to go and after the team failed to extend the contracts of a swath of young veterans who left en masse in free agency? Heck yeah.

Did it leave me shaking my head at the post-draft press conference when general manager Eric DeCosta went to length explaining who was actually behind selecting receiver-turning-running back Adam Randall at pick 174. Of course.

Did it leave multiple general managers from other teams I asked about it quite confused and flummoxed? Damn straight. “How do you know that?” one GM responded, thinking I was putting him on. “Why would they do that now? Why was it that pick? Are you (kidding) me?”

And it’s especially confounding given that DeCosta has become the poster boy for hording comp picks and trying to maximize his draft selections, because they are so precious and such valuable commodities in roster construction. And now DeCosta’s son and his boss are going to make the pick. Okay.

It’s not enough to make me upset, and I suspect most Ravens fans are basically okay with it. It’s also not a total nothingburger and, more than anything else, it’s another portal into a billionaire on the back nine in the NFL (I’d say the 17th hole if this season is another disappointment and Lamar doesn’t have a new deal), who should be selling this team sooner rather than later).

It’s telling that at this stage of his tenure – on record that he isn’t keeping it in the family and will take it to market one day – having just fired the one coach he figured he would only ever work with, now we get this. I guarantee you that, a year ago, had you told Bisciotti he would be nine months away from blowing everything up, while the media hyped his alleged Super Bowl roster, he wouldn’t have believed it himself.

If you told him after wrapping last year’s draft that before his nest one, he’d have a rookie head coach and a 30-year old offensive coordinator who has never called a play and Lamar Jackson still wouldn’t have a contract extension and DeCosta would offer two first-round picks for Maxx Crosby and then rescind the trade, he would have thrown you off his yacht.

And, yeah, a year ago Bisciotti wouldn’t have made this draft selection, either. Yet here we are.

There’s a reason it didn’t happen before. There are reasons why Bisciotti, once learning if he had to sit in on one head coaching zoom, he’d have to sit in on them all – opted to outsource his head coach process while he “checked out” til the very end.

And it stands to reason if this season goes awry, Bisciotti probably isn’t up for overhauling an entire front office (if the GM and team president deserve to go, who can you pawn the hiring process off to?) either. But he’ll also probably be done making picks, and maybe he’d be mulling getting out of this business entirely in a far more immediate way than ever before.

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