Having three 1st or 10 first at wr means nothing if they arent enough to help the team. Campbell plays a more important position but he was 34 and was declining, only ravens fans thought he wasnt. Dnt get me wrong, im fine without having julio because of what we have now but lets stop pretending like this man aint worth a 1st rnd for a contending team. If we didnt have bateman or watkins, im sure most of us would be ok with going hard for julio.
I never said he wasn't worth a first. I would give up a late first for him in a second if I was a WR needy team with the cap space to do it. I don't think the Ravens are a WR needy team, nor do I think we have the cap space for it, so its kind of moot in my eyes.
If I were brutally honest about it (which I am), I'm not sure fans are even vaguely in a position to be determining "trade worth" or even contract worth of players. Like we had people on these very boards who were throwing out opening volleys for an Orlando Brown trade at like two first round picks. That was real. It happened. And he was a young, ascending, healthy player, at a premium position, on a rookie contract still. It doesn't get much more "valuable" than that. And guess what... nobody even got in the stratosphere of offering that.
So if the Falcons don't get a first round pick for him, then guess what? He wasn't worth it. Worth, by definition, is whatever somebody is willing to give you for something. That's true of contracts, and its true of trades also. Its not like they're going to turn down a better trade, unless the trade is coming from their own division, which seems incredibly unlikely.
My understanding from multiple beat writers is we inquired about Julio's availability and price tag before we ever drafted Bateman. I don't think Watkins has anything to do with it. And the price tag we were told was higher than what Eric wanted to pay, which is why he wasn't traded here. I have no idea what that price tag would be. In a normal year, I would suspect Eric would have had zero reservations giving up #27 or #31 in this draft class for Julio. But we couldn't, because the trade wouldn't be finalized until June, and because we still, probably, don't have the cap space to bring him in anyway. I think Eric would have a done a bunch of things to create cap space if he could get the trade that he wanted. But that didn't happen, and here we are.