I really like our picks and get the Hollywood trade, but I’m curious what the Ravens vision is right now. The AFC is stacked and it feels like the Ravens don’t want to join that arms race currently. These moves are geared towards future years rather than the 2022 season. Which is fine, it’s ok to admit we’re not a super bowl team this year as much as fans don’t want to. But I’d wish we make up our mind one way or the other. You gotta appreciate the Ravens ability to compete nearly every year, but it seems like we’re stuck in this semi competitive wild card team purgatory.
I'm temporarily treating the Hollywood trade similar to how they had to cut ET. I'm sure there was some "planning" involved and obviously the Ravens knew he wanted to be traded, but I feel like when players make trade demands, whether private or public, there's always this perhaps arrogance from the FO that they'll be able to talk them out of it.
So at WR, I'm not certain we have "a plan" short term. I have a really hard time believing that the FO knew all offseason it was going to trade Hollywood, add nobody in FA, and then come out of the draft with nothing. They had to have known its not a guarantee you can address in the draft to begin with.
Like we can all stand up here and say that we're excited for the opportunities for Duvernay and Proche and Wallace, but come on, nobody really is like "yeah, I like our receiving room a lot right now". Especially when you look at teams like the Bengals, Steelers, Chargers, Raiders, Broncos, etc., all of which have pretty solid receiving groups and all of which we'll need to beat or get past at some point to likely be a contender. That's not even mentioning Bills, Chiefs, etc., who are still great teams, but probably don't have high-end receiving cores.
It's a major question mark right now. It might not be dire straights like 2018-2019 was, but it's not something I'd be highly confident in.
Short term, in my eyes, there is no plan. Plan is to put a stud Oline around Lamar, run the ball a lot better than we did last year, and see what happens. Passing game figures to be heavy Bateman, heavy Andrews, with probably some more multi-TE looks.
Defensively the only questions I have in terms of "direction" is what schematic changes we'll see with a new DC. I'm pretty much not concerned with our secondary at all at this point, and I think we'll still be plenty good stopping the run. Actually like our defensive line today a lot more than I have in recent memory.