trade ups hit at the exact same rate as sticking at your pick and even trading down...
if you're trading up you better be 100% certain that the guy you're taking is a bonafide zero-risk blue-chip stud... otherwise you're better off sticking and picking
and worth noting that the ravens basically never trade up in the 1st round... and when they do they never give up much capital
from what i can remember they've only traded up like 5 times in round 1 in the last 20 years...
3 of those times it was for a QB in flacco and Lamar and boller (and we even traded down before we took those first 2 in both those drafts too lol... and neither lamar or boller were even the first guy we took in their drafts either)
1 of those times it was a small trade for Michael Oher (who was only average and the guy taken at our original pick was clay matthews who was pretty great) - we gave up a 5th rounder
1 of those times was literally a 1 pick jump to get Haloti Ngata - we gave up a 6th rounder to move from 13 to 12
notably we tried to trade up in 2016 to get jalen ramsey but couldnt stomach giving up a 3rd rounder and were only willing to give up a 4th rounder - that feels like a pretty big indicator of how much we value mid-round picks
if we're trading up, it's either for a QB or it's a tiny trade where we give up below-market-price capital (all of the non-QB trade offers were deals where we fleeced - or would have fleeced - the other team in JJ chart terms)
and to get back to your point about 2016... great so they didnt all work out but we still got a blue-chip player without trading up and the pick we were trying to give up was one of those 4ths that let us get tavon, we also got judon in the 5th... over long periods, more draft picks = better drafts
look at 2018... we took 12 players in that draft and the law of averages broke our way and we ended up with a million contributors from those 12 picks... and we were only able to make all those picks because we traded down multiple times
in the past we have consistently found players on day 3... but you need volume to be successful - im not saying you should never trade up and in fact outside of R1, picks have more value and you can make bigger moves for less capital and have absolutely advocated in the past for using a late day 3 pick to help acquire an extra day 2 pick or other similar moves where the talent tiers drop off
i just struggle to justify, in this draft class, the value (or cost) of trading up in R1
