Four hours before the start of April’s NFL draft, Eric DeCosta and his staff gathered in a circle inside the Ravens’ Owings Mills war room. Per tradition, team chaplain Johnny Shelton led a group prayer. DeCosta has contributed to the organization’s draft process since he arrived as a fresh-faced intern in Baltimore the same year the franchise did. Now, as he prepared for his fifth draft as the team’s general manager, he was more emotional than usual during this annual ritual.

“I basically said, ‘If you have faith, you keep working, you trust people, there is always going to be hope,’” he recalls.

Minutes later, a cacophony of ringtones and phone vibrations filled the room, and the reason for DeCosta’s sentiment became clear: Lamar Jackson was signing a five-year contract extension with the team.

For the public, the superstar quarterback’s contract status had been a season-long melodrama simmering with the kind of juicy ingredients that the sports zeitgeist feeds on: trade demands and franchise tags, sprained ligaments and bruised egos, cryptic Tweets and mysterious memes. But behind the scenes, DeCosta navigated the two-year saga with a measured, drama-free steadiness that one person in particular seemed to appreciate.

“I didn’t have to learn anything about Eric,” Jackson said at the press conference announcing his extension. “He’s a businessman…he was professional the whole process. I was cool with it.”

DeCosta’s level-headedness and dogged determination—along with a keen eye for talent—have fueled his ascent from a 25-year-old personnel intern with an “office” in the hallway, a card table for a desk, and a salary south of $20,000 to one of the most prestigious positions in the NFL. Those are among the qualities that caught owner Steve Bisciotti’s eye more than a decade ago, when he told the then-little-known DeCosta that he wanted him to succeed legendary GM Ozzie Newsome and they’re what kept DeCosta in Baltimore even as ambition gnawed away at him.

Eventually, his patience was rewarded. Now, the kid who dreamed of running a team has a corner office with the only franchise he’s known in his professional life, in the city where he met his wife, Lacie, and where they’re raising their three kids. After an off-season in which he drafted receiver Zay Flowers in the first round, signed coveted (if mercurial) free agent wideout Odell Beckham Jr., and secured his All-Pro quarterback to throw to them, he believes he’s positioned the team for both short-and long-term success.

You could say that he’s cool with all of it.

He keeps the rejection letters in a bottom drawer of his desk, not out of anger or spite, but as a reminder that in a sea of nos, all it takes is a single yes. They came from virtually every NFL team, a cascade of, Thanks but no thanks and Don’t call us, we won’t call you.

And really, who could blame them? NFL bigwigs don’t come from places like Taunton, Massachusetts, the blue-collar town south of Boston where DeCosta grew up. As a kid, he played baseball, basketball, and hockey, but he was also drawn to the wonkier side of sports. After watching Dallas win Super Bowl XII in 1978, he became a Cowboys fan. For six-year-old Eric, that meant more than just watching the games.

“I studied the roster, I studied the front office, I studied the coaches, I studied their drafts,” he says, a hint of his New England accent still poking through. “The Cowboys built their team differently. They had a guy named Gil Brandt who was their scouting director. He was known for unearthing great football players at every level. That resonated with me.”

DeCosta’s father, Joe, who made bolts that were used for Navy subs, and his late mother, Donna, a bank manager, stressed academics. DeCosta has always been a voracious reader. He would devour The Boston Globe sports section and The Sporting News, examining mock drafts and creating his own. He didn’t play organized football until ninth grade, and although he found success on the field, he was lightly recruited in large part due to his slight stature. At 5-foot-9, 180 pounds, he was no one’s idea of a menacing defensive end or a punishing fullback, his two high school positions. Still, Colby College coach Tom Austin found a roster spot for him at the Division III program in Maine.

“We’re interviewing him and this young sprout from high school asked me, ‘Knowing that you’re in the process of rebuilding the program, is the college committed to football?’” Austin says. “It really took me back, because you don’t get those kinds of questions from a prospective.”

At Colby, DeCosta became a team leader, showing up for practice early, watching tape in the coaches’ offices, and calling out teammates who gave less than maximum effort.

“He was respected because he lived it,” teammate Gregg Suffredini told Colby News. “The kid could barely bench his weight, yet he was in the locker room every day…trying to get better, faster, stronger.”

“I LIKE URGENCY…SOMEBODY THAT PLAYS LIKE IT’S THEIR LAST PLAY EVERY TIME. ”

DeCosta’s football class at Colby was the first to graduate with a winning record in 33 years, but he was too savvy to fool himself into thinking he could play pro ball. So he decided to pursue coaching and landed a graduate coaching fellowship at tiny Trinity College, where he earned a master’s degree in English.

He thought he might be a writer until one day he ran into a friend who had just finished an internship with Washington’s NFL team. That inspired DeCosta to send letters and his resumé to every team. It wasn’t long before the floodgates of rejection opened. The responses ranged from businesslike to bizarre.

“While we appreciate your motivation, we do not have any openings at the present time nor do we anticipate any in the near future,” wrote Green Bay Packers GM Ron Wolf.

“Presently there are no positions available, nor are there any future changes contemplated,” the New York Giants put it. “We will keep your resumé on file and notify you if things change.”

Then, lest DeCosta had missed the screamingly obvious: “The thrust of this letter is one of pessimism…”

Twenty-eight of the league’s then-30 teams blew him off—but one that didn’t changed the arc of his life. Washington hired DeCosta as a training camp intern, and instantly, he was hooked. Wheeling TVs into meeting rooms, setting up phone lines—whatever the task, he attacked it with vigor. When the gig ended, DeCosta headed back to Trinity. He thought his NFL dreams were dead. He applied to law school at the University of Connecticut and was awaiting a decision when he got a call from the new NFL team in Maryland. His bosses in Washington had recommended him. Was he interested in a position?

“The day they offered me the job I remember I got the acceptance from UConn,” he says. “My mom wanted me to go to law school. My dad and I were playing tennis, and my dad said, ‘Eric, if your heart tells you to do this, you gotta do it.’ And he hesitated and said, ‘But don’t tell your mother I told you that.’”

DeCosta was Baltimore bound.

As an area scout for the Ravens, DeCosta was responsible for evaluating college players in 17 Midwestern states. He’d hop into his Pontiac in August and return in November with 30,000 more miles on the odometer. Early in his tenure, he brought tape of cornerback Duane Starks to Newsome, who ended up drafting the future stalwart in the first round.

“He has a passion for scouting,” Newsome says. “He’s not afraid to voice his opinion, but he’s able to listen to others and change his mind.”

DeCosta, who was named the team’s director of college scouting in 2003, has a distinct philosophy when it comes to analyzing players.

“I like urgency. Twitchiness. Guys that get from point A to point B quick and with anger,” he says. “I like guys that are physical and productive players. I don’t want to bet on guys. Sometimes I don’t have time for development—I’m looking for instant gratification. I want somebody that plays like it’s their last play every time, is quick to the ball, sudden, and plays with an element of physicality that others don’t play with.”

In 2007, DeCosta attended a party for Ravens front office staff and coaches at Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills. Toward the end of the night, someone grabbed his arm. It was Bisciotti. The owner asked the scout to stick around for a drink. DeCosta didn’t know Bisciotti well and was “nervous as hell.”

DeCosta assumed other scouts would be there as well, but when he showed up to the bar, he found just Bisciotti and his wife, Renee. Over a bottle of wine, they discussed DeCosta’s future.

“He said, ‘You know, you remind me of me. I want you to be my general manager,’” DeCosta recalls, a hint of disbelief still registering in his voice even 16 years later. “He said he didn’t know when it will be but when Ozzie retires, you will be my next GM.” Then he pauses. “I didn’t expect to wait 12 years.”

By the time DeCosta became assistant general manager in 2012, the word was out in the NFL: He was a hot commodity. Seattle, Chicago, and Green Bay were among the teams that pursued him for a front office position, but DeCosta sat tight. He and his family were immersed in the community. Lacie is a Baltimore native, and he’s served on the board of the Maryland SPCA (where he’s still an ambassador) and the Irvine Nature Center.

Finally, in February 2018, Newsome made it official—he would be stepping down at the end of the season. Bisciotti announced that DeCosta would become the team’s new GM. The owner said “everything” about DeCosta made him confident that he was ready for the job.

“I think he has learned from Ozzie,” Bisciotti said at the time. “I think he’s a great leader of the scouts. It’s Ozzie’s department, but most of the interaction with all the scouts is with Eric. I’ve seen the way he goes about the business, I’ve seen the way he’s embraced technology and analytics and I like working with him. There are people that are running other franchises because Eric wouldn’t take it.”

But the mentor and his protégé still had work to do. Before Newsome’s departure, DeCosta advocated for a quarterback whom he described as a “magician.”

“Every year he would be ahead of me in evaluating college prospects,” Newsome says. “He was doing a corner from North Carolina. He came to the office and said, ‘I want you to take a look at this.’ I said, ‘Okay,’ so he pulled up the play. It was Lamar Jackson throwing this post pattern…it was Louisville versus UNC. He said, ‘Did you think Lamar could make that throw?’ And I said, ‘I do now.’”

The Ravens did their homework on Jackson, interviewing him, bringing him to Baltimore, and soliciting opinions about him from their own coaches and others outside the organization. When the 2018 draft arrived, he was on their board—meaning, among the players they coveted—but they felt they could get him with a pick lower than the 16th, which they held. After trading down several times, they drafted tight end Hayden Hurst with the 25th pick. At that point, a Ravens official came into the war room and asked Newsome and DeCosta to go downstairs for the traditional press conference.

What transpired next seems like a scene straight from the Kevin Costner movie Draft Day. DeCosta looked at Newsome and said that they should probably stay upstairs. Philadelphia had the final pick of the first round, and he wanted to ask Eagles’ GM Howie Roseman about trading for it. Newsome gave him the green light.

“So I called Howie and said, ‘If our guy is there, we might want to trade back into the first round,” DeCosta says. “I said, ‘What are you guys looking for?’ He said, ‘We’ll take your second round pick this year and we’ll take your second round pick next year.’”

“IT’S HARD TO NEGOTIATE WITH A FRIEND OR SOMEONE THAT YOU REALLY RESPECT. ”

The men waited nervously while the remaining six teams selected. Had any other team seen the same potential in Jackson that they did? Finally, Philadelphia’s pick—the last of the first round—came. DeCosta quickly called Roseman back and consummated the trade. Lamar Jackson was a Raven.

The Ravens have gone 53-29 since that day; Jackson’s record as a starter is 45-16. He’s thrown for 12,209 yards and 101 touchdowns. Still, another number looms large: zero. That’s the number of Super Bowls the Ravens have been to with Jackson at QB.

DeCosta is undeterred. Signing Jackson to an extension that works for the quarterback and the franchise had been a top priority for years. Most players want to communicate via text these days, DeCosta says, but he also negotiated with Jackson face-to-face, one-on-one many times. (In an unconventional move, Jackson served as his own agent.)

“It’s hard to negotiate with a friend or someone that you really respect,” DeCosta says. “Anybody that’s been married knows that. It’s hard to be honest and truthful sometimes with people that you love because you think it might hurt them. I tried to be humble and honest and as transparent as possible. I tried to look at it from Lamar’s point of view, too. If you can do that, sometimes it makes it a lot easier to meet halfway or find a common ground. We all get so wrapped up in our own positions that we think it’s about us and them and we make it a competitive, confrontational thing. A negotiation doesn’t have to be that. It took a long time and there were many hurdles, but we got there.”

DeCosta’s office is a bit fancier than his original workspace in the hall. There’s a sitting area, a bookshelf (Blink, The Extra 2%, and Finding the Winning Edge are among the titles), and a Peloton in the corner. The bike, along with a new pastime—pickleball—are two of his post-pandemic obsessions. Lacie says hobbies are not her husband’s thing.

“Eric works seven days a week most of the year,” Lacie says. “He’s extremely devoted to giving all of his time to the team and to our kids. He really doesn’t have any other pastimes except pickleball.”

On the wall hangs the typed rejection letter the 23-year-old DeCosta got from the Packers’ Ron Wolf. Also framed is a handwritten note Wolf sent to DeCosta a quarter-century later, congratulating him on becoming the Ravens’ general manager.

“You are a testament to pa- tience and perseverance,” he wrote.

After the draft room erupted that momentous day in April, DeCosta retreated to his office, where he was soon joined by Ravens coach John Harbaugh, who brought a bottle of whiskey. The two took small celebratory sips.

“Alright,” DeCosta said after briefly savoring the spirit, “it’s time to get to work.”

Beads of sweat still dripping from his coarse black beard, Mark Andrews emerges from the Ravens training facility munching on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. After a mid-June practice under the stifling sun, one of the best tight ends in the NFL needs to get some food into his system. Not just because he’s hungry

“I just got an IV,” he says. “Didn’t eat like I should have last night. I had a huge lunch and didn’t eat too much for dinner. Glycogen storage was little bit depleted. I felt some cramping, so I wanted to get some fluids in me. And a little bit of complex carbs.”

Professional football players have a lot to worry about. Learning the playbook. Contracts. Injuries. Their Madden rating. But only a tiny percentage must constantly monitor their glucose levels while also punishing and pushing their bodies on the field. There are seven active NFL players with Type 1 diabetes according to the nonprofit JDRF (previously the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation).

Mark Andrews is one of them.

Andrews’ disease does not define him: He’s a devoted son and brother, a hard worker, and a loyal teammate first. Last season, his 107 catches and 1,361 receiving yards led all NFL tight ends. Both were franchise records. He established himself as quarterback Lamar Jackson’s go-to receiver, was named first-team All-Pro, and caught two touchdown passes in the Pro Bowl. What might come next for the 6-foot-5-inch, 256-pound star keeps defensive coordinators up at night. At 26 years old, he’s just entering his prime.

But whatever the future holds, Andrews will navigate it while wearing an insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor (CGM) on his hip. Most fans don’t realize the extent to which the disease must be managed on a daily basis. The Dexcom CGM is connected to Bluetooth, which goes to his parents’, brothers’, and trainers’ phones, enabling them to see his glucose levels in real time. (They say he usually handles it on his own—eating sugar if it’s too low and taking insulin if it’s too high—but if not, they text him.) It also connects with his Tandem pump, which automatically administers insulin to him if he needs it. “Almost like your own pancreas,” he says.

Andrews switches out the Dexcom every 10 days. The pump must be reset and its insulin replaced every three days. Since being diagnosed 17 years ago, diabetes has been an inescapable part of his life. Just because he’s reached such lofty athletic heights, that hasn’t changed.

“Being a diabetic, there’s more to think about than just being a regular person,” he says. “It takes more effort to be hydrated, to eat the right things. It’s no easy thing. You just gotta do what you gotta do. I’ve taken that motto and I’ve applied it to almost everything in life. Whatever life throws you, just go on and handle it.”

As he’s proven throughout his career, if someone throws something at Mark Andrews, he almost always catches it.

Growing up in Arizona, Andrews was the most athletic kid in a family full of athletes. The youngest of four, he had boundless energy, be it on the playground, the baseball diamond, or the soccer field. His mother, Martha, recalls dropping him off at school one day when he was in kindergarten or first grade. From there she went to the grocery store, where her cell phone rang.

“It was a call from my home phone,” she says, which was odd because no one was home. “I answered and Mark goes, ‘Mom, will you come take me to school?’ I said, ‘I already took you to school.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, but I left my library book, so I ran home because I didn’t want to get in trouble.’” The school was 2-and-a-half miles from their house.

When Andrews started playing soccer, he was a star from day one. The game came naturally to him, and on the field, he had a seemingly endless motor. If there was an injury timeout, his mom says, he’d drop to the ground and start doing push-ups. Which is why when his grandmother noticed him becoming lethargic and taking frequent bathroom breaks during a baseball game one day, she got worried.

“Mark would never leave a game to go to the bathroom,” Martha says. “We picked him up from that game and took him to a soccer game and he had to run off the field to go to the bathroom that time too.”

A few days later, his father, Paul, a urologist, took him to the doctor. When the diagnosis came in, his parents were devastated.

“I remember sitting in the waiting room, and the nurse and doctor coming up to us and letting us know that I had Type 1 diabetes,” Mark says. “Being that young, you don’t understand, but seeing my mom and dad cry, I knew something was going to change.”

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the pancreas stops producing insulin—a hormone the body needs to get energy from food. People with the condition must artificially manipulate their blood sugar levels through insulin and food intake. It’s a never-ending dance that requires vigilant attention.

Andrews was just nine years old when his family began carefully monitoring everything that went into his body. “There are a lot of calculations that go on with diabetes. Figuring out what they’re eating, what they need to get through the day. I still don’t like to talk about what the long-term complications are,” Martha says, her voice wavering.

AS HE’S PROVEN THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, IF SOMEONE THROWS SOMETHING AT MARK ANDREWS, HE ALMOST ALWAYS CATCHES IT.

In the years after his diagnosis, Andrews began giving himself shots. Because he lacked body fat, he would bend over, squeeze his belly, and insert the needle there.

“He never really said, ‘Why me?’” Martha says. “He didn’t ask a whole lot of questions. Bottom line was he understood that if he didn’t do it, he was going to die.”

There were hiccups along the way. Once, after eating too much buttered popcorn at a movie, he collapsed in the kitchen. Martha, who always kept sugary foods in the fridge, rubbed frosting on his gums and forced Gatorade down his throat.

As life settled into a new normal, Andrews’ athletic career continued to thrive. He started traveling around the country playing club soccer. Other teams took notice of the tall forward who was a prolific goal scorer.

“It got to a point where I’d have two or three kids shadowing me the whole game,” he says. “They’d hack at my ankles, and I’d get frustrated. I started getting red cards. My parents thought I needed to play something that was a little more physical.”

Following in the footsteps of his older brothers, Andrews joined the high school football team.

“He was skinny, but he had talent,” says Kelly Cook, his high school offensive coordinator. “His tenacity and grit are what I noticed right away.”

In his first game, Andrews caught a pass for a touchdown and returned a kick for another. By his sophomore year, he was being recruited by colleges. By his junior year, he was a star receiver catching bullets from teammate and future NFL quarterback Kyle Allen. Every college program wanted him. But while most coaches saw his future as a tight end, Andrews was determined to play wide receiver. He signed with Oklahoma—which promptly redshirted him (which allowed him to practice, but not play in games) and switched him to tight end.

It worked. The quiet but determined Andrews accepted the move and dove into learning the intricacies of the new position. By his third season, he was one of the best players in the country. He won the John Mackey Award, named for the late, legendary Baltimore Colt and awarded annually to college football’s most outstanding tight end. Feeling he had nothing left to prove, Andrews decided to forego his final season with the Sooners and enter the NFL draft.

Surprisingly—at least to him—Andrews’ name wasn’t called until the third round. Even crazier, the team that took him, Baltimore, had selected another tight end, Hayden Hurst, with its first-round pick. Andrews was angry—not at the Ravens, but at everyone who overlooked him.

“I think he was extremely honored that Baltimore selected him, but I think it was a chip for him,” says his brother Charlie. “It was, ‘I’m going to go there and prove them wrong.’ He’s done that his whole life. He’s always been doubted, but he always achieves more than people think.”

“HE’S ALWAYS BEEN DOUBTED, BUT HE ALWAYS ACHIEVES MORE THAN PEOPLE THINK.”

Before this June practice begins, Andrews warms up by casually snatching footballs moving very fast out of midair with an almost second-nature ease. For one of the best pass catchers in the game, that’s not exactly big news. However, on this day, three months before the 2022 season opener, the person throwing those balls is. Jackson, the quarterback with whom he’s developed intense chemistry, is not here. Still mired in ongoing contract negotiations with the team, the former MVP has chosen to skip this organized team activity (OTA). (Jackson did, however, attend the Ravens’ mandatory camp later that month.)

Andrews isn’t worried about Jackson, whose work ethic he praises effusively. Both were taken by the team in the 2018 draft, and their on-field bond was instantaneous.

“I remember rookie minicamp, we hit it off perfectly,” Andrews says. “The way that he sees the game is very unique. It feels like every time I was able to look back at the ball and cut a route short, he would see me. He’s been like that from the start. That connection you don’t have with everybody. That’s my quarterback. There’s a special place in my heart for him.”

Results came early. With the Ravens trailing the Chargers in the third quarter of a game that first year, Andrews streaked down the middle of the field. Jackson hit him for a 68-yard touchdown.

“He hit me perfectly in stride,” Andrews recalls. “We hadn’t been throwing the ball a bunch that game but being able to hit at the right time and the right place, that’s what football is all about.”

The respect between the two extends beyond the field. In the summer, the NFL tweeted a list of top five tight ends according to the Las Vegas Raiders’ Darren Waller. Andrews was listed as number five. Jackson apparently saw the tweet and responded by posting, “Mark @No. 5???” He added a laughing emoji for good measure.

Andrews routinely defends his quarterback against the loads of criticism that he describes as “nonsense.”

“If you know Lamar, if you’re around him every day, you see the way that he works and cares for the city and his teammates, this organization, you know that he’s all in,” Andrews says. “He’s said it from the beginning: ‘You’re going to get a Super Bowl out of me.’ And he means that. He’s hungry, he’s ready. To all the haters out there: Go away. Leave the man alone.”

Before these OTAs, Andrews spent most of his offseason at home in Scottsdale, where he lives with his brother Charlie in a four-bedroom home he bought prior to signing a four-year, $56-million extension in September 2021. After the season ends, the brothers have old friends from high school over to what their mom calls the “bachelor pad,” to swim in the pool, play Call of Duty, or grill out back.

“His personality is so humble,” says Cook, with whom he’s still close. “He has this big body and he’s a superstar, but he doesn’t flaunt it. That’s one of the things that makes all the moms of the girls he dates love him. My wife loves him.”

As the off-season progresses, Andrews becomes all business. He usually works out at his outdoor home gym six days a week, then runs routes and catches balls at the local high school. His excellence is no accident.

“When the ball’s thrown, you’ve got to get open and you’ve got to catch it,” says Ravens tight ends coach George Godsey. “I know it’s very simple to say that, but there’s a ‘route tree’ that he has that’s very diverse. Mark can run every route. He loves it and he works hard at it.”

Maybe that’s because he appreciates it just a little more than a guy who hasn’t been through what he’s been through.

In May, Andrews and his mom again put together a team for the JDRF One Walk. Since he began participating in 2019, his team has raised nearly $76,000 in support of Type 1 diabetes research. Andrews spent much of the day talking with fans, signing autographs, and posing for photos.

“Even with all of Mark’s incredible success, he shows such compassion and genuine happiness to connect with kids,” says Michael Simoni, executive director of the JDRF Desert West Chapter. “As his mother, Martha, affectionately says, ‘The kids are his peeps, and he just loves being around them.’”

A business administration major in college, Andrews isn’t sure what he wants to do after football. As last season demonstrated, he has plenty left to achieve in the game. What he does know is that he’s blessed to be part of a tight-knit family, a top-notch football organization, and to be in a position to help others with the disease he’s proven doesn’t have to slow you down.

“I want to make an impact in Type 1 diabetics’ lives,” he says. “The ultimate goal is being able to have that belief that one day we’ll be able to find a cure for Type 1 diabetes. I wholeheartedly believe that we will.”

He pauses for a moment, then adds: “It’s going to be a team effort.”

“With the 28th overall selection, the Baltimore Ravens select Patrick Queen, linebacker, Louisiana State University,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said, live from his basement.

Around 11:45 p.m. Thursday, with the pick finally in, Ravens coach John Harbaugh air high-fived in the direction of the computer screen on his home office desk.

It was late. “A long, long day,” said Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta, who was on the receiving end of Harbaugh’s video congratulations. And the nearly five previous hours were different from all of the other communal draft nights the Ravens’ braintrust has known. “We were together, sort of,” DeCosta said.

The Ravens and all NFL teams, popular as they are, are not immune pandemic-generated social-distancing rules, either. And so for the first-time ever, the league’s college draft—normally an in-person primetime spectacle held at some place like Radio City Music Hall and attended by thousands of passionate fans—went entirely virtual.

In essence, the traditional conference-style War Room at Ravens’ headquarters in Owings Mills was replaced by a home-office-themed internet-based Zoom Room. We saw Harbaugh sitting at his desk amid bright book-lined shelves, and DeCosta celebrating with his three children in his pink-ish wall-colored workspace.

It felt and looked like a fantasy football draft—where John Doe’s around the country analyze and choose players from their couches for fake teams and a little money—except this remote draft was real and the lifeblood of a billion-dollar pro football business.

Young twenty-somethings hearing their names called, like Charm City’s new (Patrick) Queen, have the potential to become household names and new millionaires. All the while, front-office guys such as DeCosta wore collared shirts and jackets, and ate good food (Jimmy’s Seafood, in his case) rather than gorging on cheap pizza and beer, while trusting encrypted league-mandated Microsoft Teams channels and their own custom team IT setups.

Thankfully, it all went off without a visible glitch—from the technology setup to the Ravens’ draft choice itself. DeCosta manned the Ravens’ battlestation from his cozy office, where a half dozen computer monitors displayed information, like the team’s draft board of names, arranged as if they were meetings on a Google calendar.

One by one, the blocks disappeared as the 27 other picks were made. But by the time it was the Ravens’ turn, they still nabbed one of their preferred targets. Queen, a 20-year-old, 6-foot, 230-pound quick and versatile linebacker—who’s a good tackler, blitzer, and pass coverage option—was defensive MVP of LSU’s national championship-winning team in January.

“He plays like a Raven,” DeCosta said. “When you watch the tape, you notice him. He’s a great fit for our defense and a great fit for Baltimore. He was a need, but also the very best player on the board for us. When that happens it’s a great win for the organization.”

Quarterback Lamar Jackson commented from his place on Instagram shortly after the selection and took the analysis further, saying simply, “Ray Lewis, Jr.” Harbaugh noted Queen’s potential after starting just one year at LSU: “His best football is in front of him.”

It was even later, close to 1 a.m., when Queen joined reporters live in a video chat from his family’s living room in the small town of Ventress, Louisiana, where his family was celebrating (his dad, Dwayne, is a former college football player) and a dog barked.

“It was a long, long, long, long night,” Queen said to start, one upping DeCosta’s claim by a few “longs.” And as a few people offered congratulations to the new Raven before asking a question, he responded with a sincere “Thank you,” before answering each query.

On the inevitable comparison to Ray Lewis, a linebacker who the Ravens also selected at the end of the first round back in the day, Queen smiled. “The bar is set high,” he said.

On critics who might say he’s undersized for the rough world of the NFL, he said, “I’m so tired of hearing that,” and added that he’s proven people wrong everywhere from his small Louisiana high school to the big-time world of college football at LSU. “The tape shows.”

On what fans can expect from him, he said, “Ya’ll going to get the most energetic player from this draft, the most passionate, the most dominant, the most studious person that you can get. I bring a lot to the table.”

Those are more than enough reasons for an air high-five.

For instance, Queen is the first player from LSU the Ravens have ever drafted, perhaps because longtime Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome—who was also part of the Zoom Room—played at the University of Alabama, one of LSU’s rivals.

“He kept saying something, but we muted him,” DeCosta said sarcastically of Newsome before the pick was made. “He kept waving his hands then his video went out. That’s the thing with technology sometimes, it can be manipulated. Maybe it was the Russians, I don’t really know.”

To that point, the GM indicated he would have preferred that ESPN didn’t have a camera in his office recording everything he did, one of more than 100 live video feeds coordinated for the broadcast. “It’s a bit unsettling,” DeCosta said.

But, for one night, the whole mere occurrence—from Queen’s authentic answers and apparent skills, to the awkward musings of Goodell from his basement as he announced picks, to the office backgrounds of Harbaugh and DeCosta, and light-hearted jokes—was a welcome respite for pandemic life.

Yet hopefully it’s not needed in the long run. “I don’t think I’ll ever experience another draft like this,” DeCosta said, noting he had tell his kids to be quiet at times. “But I’ll never forget it.”

As if we all don’t have enough to worry about, Lamar Jackson just announced that he’s going to be on the cover of EA Sports’ Madden NFL 2021.

That loud sound you just heard was Ravens fans around Baltimore collectively groaning, “Nooooooo!”

Some background: The concept of the so-called “Madden Curse” has been around for more than two decades. It started, innocuously enough, with San Francisco running back Garrison Hearst. Who? Exactly. A highly touted prospect, he played one spectacular season for the 49ers, appeared on the cover of Madden 1999, and suffered a hideous ankle break in the second round of the playoffs. He missed the next two seasons and, after returning from injury, had one more impressive season, but was never the same player again.

Still, that was a one-time thing. Hardly grounds for a curse, right? Until Barry Sanders appeared on the cover in 2000. How were Sanders’ stats that year? We’ll never know because he UNEXPECTEDLY RETIRED that season.

Okay, two is a coincidence, not a trend, which leads us to the Titans’ Eddie George. After an uncannily consistent career, he was honored with the Madden 2001 cover. His 2001 season was good, not great, and he uncharacteristically fumbled a pass in the fourth quarter against the Ravens (oh yeaaaaaah) in the playoffs, directly contributing to the Titans’ loss. He played four more seasons but once again, was never the same player again.

Yikes!
But here’s something to give Ravens fans hope. That one-two-three punch certainly started the Madden Curse off with a flourish—and it continued apace for several years, cursing the seasons of players like Mike Vick (Madden 2004—torn fibula), Donovan McNabb (Madden 2006—groin injury), Troy Polamalu (Madden 2010—torn MCL), and the Ravens own Ray Lewis (Madden 2005—not a single interception; Ravens didn’t make the playoffs).

All in all, more Madden cover boys have been cursed than not. But, luckily, we’re seeing a reverse of the trend. In 2018, Tom Brady reversed the curse, earning league MVP honors. (On the other hand, the Patriots lost in the Super Bowl that year. For any other team, a spectacular season. For the Pats, a bit of a bust.)

In 2016, Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. was on the cover, yet finished the season with 1,450 receiving yards and was voted to his second consecutive Pro-Bowl.

And then there’s QB Patrick Mahomes, last year’s cover model. When the Kansas City Chiefs’ prodigy got injured in the seventh game of the season, it seemed like the curse had struck again. But he came back only three games later and went on to lead the Chiefs to a Super Bowl win.

Here’s the thing about athletes: Many are superstitious. But the best ones are super cocky, too. If there is a curse, they’re convinced they’ll be the one to break it.

As Jackson himself told reporters: “I’m not worried about a curse. Patrick Mahomes was on the cover and he won MVP [of the Super Bowl], so I would want that curse. I hope that’s a curse!”

This was supposed to be a coronation of sorts. You could easily see it: Lamar Jackson gliding across the pristine green turf and throwing a few touchdown passes in front of a keyed up, sold-out crowd. Those fancy LED lights atop M&T Bank Stadium would flick on and off in celebration, Justin Tucker would do some new kind of dance after a field goal, and in general we’d see what we saw all year. “The Revolution,” as the hype video put it this week.

When all was said and done a few hours later, we’d see more video clips with talk of a Super Bowl run, more Big Truss references, more smiles.

Instead, what happened on Saturday, January 11, 2020—a day that anyone wearing purple will want to remove from their memory—was more like a bad dream.

It was said in many ways and analogies afterward, but linebacker Matthew Judon put it best, speaking to a group of reporters in an otherwise empty locker room a half hour past midnight. “You don’t expect to get into a car crash,” he said, “until you get into a car crash.”

Indeed, what had been a spectacular Ravens season jolted to a hard stop, ending with a shocking, deflating 28-12 loss to the visiting Tennessee Titans—the sixth seed in the AFC playoffs. In a performance unfortunately reminiscent of his first playoff appearance last year as a rookie (we incorrectly thought that loss was dead, buried, and gone), Jackson threw two interceptions and fumbled once—though he also totaled 365 passing and 143 rushing yards.

And the Ravens—this super-exciting, super-likable, super-good edition that brought us joy, Marie Kondo-style—fell behind early, a rare occurrence. They failed to convert on a pair of usually aggressive 4th-down-and-short tries. And despite running twice as many offensive plays at their opponent, the team watched the Titans play “winning football,” as Ravens coach John Harbaugh said—when odds-makers and everyone around town expected the opposite to happen.

In the locker room, you could hear an echoey noise coming from the showers where players clean up. A few in there were yelling afterward, one in particular about the sudden offseason and next season’s training camp that’s months away.

Meanwhile, others struggled to explain the performance with equal parts befuddlement and candor. “Is this really happening?” cornerback Marlon Humphrey recalled thinking as the game clock ticked to zero, while also saying, “I think this team’s identity right now is get in the playoffs and choke. That is just the hard truth.” (Asked about the comment a day later on Sunday, he said he stands by it.)

That might be a bit harsh. One smelly dud of a game where a team has big expectations to win does not make a full identity—and this is the first such playoff game for this era of Ravens. This wasn’t exactly like their pre-Revolution loss to the Los Angeles Chargers last playoffs when Jackson couldn’t hit water throwing a football from a boat. Nonetheless, losses like these—in which “we got our ass whipped,” as running back Mark Ingram said—do leave scars.

You hope this isn’t the start of a “best team to never win a [fill in a blank]” discussion or “best player never to win a [fill in the blank]” discussion when it comes to the super-likable Jackson in particular. But dubious narratives are downright impossible to shake until you, well, win whatever is missing. And the questions already started flowing in Jackson’s direction as soon as 15 minutes after the game ended Saturday night.

At age 23, he’s now 19-2 as a starting quarterback in two pro seasons, and 0-2 in the playoffs with a 63.2 postseason quarterback rating (out of a 158.3 maximum). To his credit, dear Lamar, still wearing his game pants, along with a pair of Nike flip-flops and a gray Baltimore dri-fit t-shirt, stood at the podium in a humid interview room and answered more than a dozen questions in front of 11 television cameras and about 50 reporters. He said he made too many mistakes, promised to work harder, and come back stronger next season.

If last season indicated to the quarterback that he needed to work on his passing mechanics, the jolting end to this year may suggest: “I need to improve on everything,” he said. “Whether it’s running, throwing the ball, pocket poise, everything.”

One reporter asked the question of the day for fans, whether it will be painful to hear people talking about him not winning a playoff game over the next year. “I don’t really care about what they say,” Jackson said. “This is my second year in the league. Many people [aren’t] able to bring it to the playoffs. We’re just going to keep going, like I said, [and] get ready for next year.”

The thing is, nobody wanted to be talking about next year so soon. Big Truss meant Big Goals. Not just the final image of a few players, like backup quarterback Robert Griffin III and tight end Hayden Hurst, tossing equipment into the crowd after a stunning playoff loss at home as the conference’s top seed.

Judon, as he did late Saturday, didn’t want to be talking in the locker room about if he would stay with the team or not. Neither did defensive tackle Michael Pierce. Both, whose contracts expire in May, said they want to return. Tackle Ronnie Stanley would rather have not been exchanging goodbyes with rookie center Patrick Mekari and suggesting they meet up in California in the offseason. (Related, Mekari said, “We could have won this game. We should have won this game.”)

And for sure, a few minutes earlier in a largely silent locker room, nobody wanted to hear Harbaugh tell everyone to be at the team’s facility in Owings Mills at around 10 a.m. Sunday for a meeting and to clean out their lockers—instead of maybe an announcement of a day off from practice as a playoff push continued. And I certainly didn’t want to see “Flacco” trending on Twitter after getting back to the press box from post-game interviews in the locker room.

Jackson, typically active on social media, was notably quiet until late Sunday morning, when he shared a message of support from a fan on Instagram. It was almost the same response as last year when he told us, “It’s all good,” in a look ahead to what was a better-than-good second season for him. We wrote then that he was clearly the Ravens’ future. That’s still the case.

But this time, this loss sounded harder to stomach. “I don’t know how difficult it’s going to be or how long it’s going to be in my mind,” Jackson said. “I hate losing. I really do. We’ve just got to move on.”

In other words, if Saturday night was a car crash, now comes the damage assessment.

On an April weekday morning near the end of his senior year of high school, Daniel Stern stood behind a podium in a crowded, wood-paneled Annapolis courtroom, wearing a gray suit and a purple shirt-and-tie combination as he emphatically pleaded his case. The skinny, super-articulate, high-achieving kid from suburban Baltimore wasn’t in trouble; far from it. Representing a fictional state prosecuting team from the private Park School in Pikesville, the then-18-year-old was delivering the closing argument in the championship of the 2012 Maryland state mock trial competition.

The case: State of Maryland vs. Drew Hunter, an imagined coach of a girls’ high school soccer team who, Stern argued to a panel of three adult judges, caused three players to suffer heat exhaustion during a hot, late morning practice in August. “One of them is still in the hospital!” he said, making the situation sound as real as possible. This coach, Stern said with the flair of a seasoned trial lawyer twice his age, should be found guilty of reckless endangerment and child abuse.

“This is a case about a coach who made bad decision, after bad decision, after bad decision,” Stern told the court, while laying out the facts of the case: Players were instructed to run in sprints in 104 degree heat, in a practice that lasted more than two hours, and the coach was slow to react when players collapsed. “We’ve proven it beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The performance was convincing, room-owning, and vintage Daniel. He’d been the closer since freshman year. “He’s a very intense guy and he’s very passionate about whatever it is he’s doing,” says Tony Asdourian, one of Stern’s former teachers at the Park School and an assistant coach on that mock trial team. “That was true very much that day.” (The 13-member team won its second straight state title.)

Stern couldn’t have known it then, as a high school whiz kid a few months from graduation and bound for Yale University, where he’d lead two national championship mock trial teams, but the words he spoke—bad decision, after bad decision—are almost comically fitting given what Stern is doing nearly eight years later. He’s not a lawyer, but he is paid to use his analytical and lawyerly abilities, in sports. And in his hometown no less—in a job ensuring that Ravens coach John Harbaugh has all the information necessary to make good decisions during football games.

At age 25, the Baltimore kid in his fourth year working for the team of his youth. He joined the Ravens immediately after he graduated from Yale in 2016 with a degree in cognitive science, a major that can essentially prepare you for many professions. Today, Stern’s official title is football analyst, and he’s part of a handful of staffers in the Ravens’ analytics department led by director of football research Scott Cohen. (The Orioles aren’t the only number-friendly pro sports team in town.)

Stern’s title leaves room for interpretation, but in the context of this spectacular Ravens season—after beating the Steelers yesterday, they’re now 14-2 and remain the odds-on favorite to win the Super Bowl as the playoffs begin—the scope of his largely unheralded contributions has emerged more visibly.

During every game, the boy wonder sits in a chair right next to Ravens offensive coordinator Greg Roman in the weather-proof coaches’ level of the stadium. And like a play caller, Stern wears team-issued apparel and one of those big black Bose headsets with a direct line of communication down to the field to Harbaugh. The head coach always makes the final decisions, but Stern notably has Harbaugh’s ear, quickly and clearly relaying “the numbers”— the so-called win probabilities and risk-reward ratios of certain situations.

For years, Harbaugh has had a staffer in the booth in this role. At first, it was Matt Weiss, who is now the team’s running backs’ coach. Stern took over the job this season, and what he does informs some of Harbaugh’s key game-management decisions—including whether to go for it on fourth down, which has become one of the calling cards of this Lamar Jackson-led, “Big Truss”-infused team.

A fourth-down try, for instance, if it fails, gives the opposing team great field position of their own, and NFL coaches have traditionally hesitated to take the risk or make it simply on gut feel. But with careful, deliberate planning done throughout the week, very specific data provided by Stern on-the-fly on game day, and players like Jackson making things easier and also giving their own input, (As in, “Hell yeah, coach! Let’s go for it,” before a fourth-and-2 earlier this year against the Seattle Seahawks), the Ravens have noticeably bucked the conservative nature of their competition.

They’ve converted 17 of 24 fourth-down chances this season, a league-high 70-percent rate. (This shouldn’t exactly come as a surprise. In the summer, the team hired a quantitative analyst, 2017 Skidmore College graduate Derrick Yam, after he wrote a paper of the benefits of going for it on fourth down.) That means more time on offense with a chance to score points, and more “truss” in the locker room.

Given the paranoid nature of pro football coaching staffs who don’t want to give away any trade secrets, Stern isn’t being made available for interviews now to talk more about his job, or how he’s ascended the Ravens coaches’ pecking order. But the kid who for 13 years attended the tiny kindergarten-through-12th grade Park School—just a short drive from the Ravens practice facility in Owings Mills—did speak enough about the nitty-gritty, calculus-style of his work responsibilities for an article earlier this year by Sheil Kapadia of the subscription sports website, The Athletic.

The story essentially blew Stern’s cover. Here’s an excerpt:

The Ravens, like other teams, have built their own analytical model for fourth-down decision-making that accounts for a number of factors—factors that they prefer not to share publicly. There are two numbers to weigh with every decision. One is win probability—a percentage that reflects the team’s chances of winning based on the various options at any given time in the game. The other number is a break-even success probability. The model comes up with an estimate of how likely the team is to convert the fourth down. Part of the decision then comes down to how high that number has to be to justify going for it.

“It might be that there’s a decision that because we’re up by 14 points already, the decision that we make doesn’t change our win probability very much because we’re really likely to win the game no matter what,” explains Stern. “But in that moment we know that we would only need like a 15-percent chance of getting it to justify going for it. It doesn’t change our win probability that much in the game. It’s just the risk/reward calculus. So there’s situations like that, too.

“Or maybe there’s one where the win probability is really big, but it’s only because it’s a tight decision in a critical moment in the game. Like late fourth quarter, we could have a really tight decision where on average we’re gonna get it 55-percent of the time, we think, and to justify going for it we need to get it at least 50-percent of the time. So that’s a really tight difference. We would need to be very confident in our estimate of how likely we are to get it in order for that decision to be the correct decision. So it’s a really tight decision compared to one where the break-even is 20 percent and the probability of getting it is 50 percent”

Like we said, whiz kid. Here’s a little more:

What makes it easier, according to Stern, is that Harbaugh is familiar with concepts like win probability and expected points added (EPA). He wants to know the actual numbers in his headset during the game as he’s making decisions.

“We talk about all the different scenarios, and he basically gives me a percentage,” says Harbaugh. “So what’s the added win percentage of going for it? He’ll give it to me like one, two, three, four, five, six, up to whatever. Then you just decide if you want to do it. It’s not strictly based (on the numbers). I listen to it. If he starts telling me 3 and 4 percent, I get really interested. If it’s 1 or 2 percent, I’m still interested—especially if it’s short, if I think we can get it.”

Says Stern, “I just remind him during the game that this is what we were planning to do. If something’s changed, then he’ll argue back. You’ve just gotta be ready for him to push back, like, ‘You really think we should?’ Or ‘I don’t want to do that.’ I don’t take offense to that during a game at all. He’s the head coach so he’s gonna make the decision that he thinks is best.”

None of this shocks those that have known Stern since he was a kid. According to one Baltimore magazine staffer whose child was friends with Stern, he used to send his own text messages to set up playdates—in second grade—and once administered an I.Q. test to the child during one of them.

Asdourian, who, more recently, taught Stern calculus and is Park School’s math department co-chair, says, “He’s really just an extraordinary person. It’s impressive to see his mind at work. In class, he could pick up the subtleties of the chain rule or the fundamental theorem of calculus very quickly. In mock trial, he had this amazing ability to summarize everything that has happened in the case and give us a five-minute summary that would end up often being highly persuasive to the judges. He was always incredibly verbally facile and intelligent, and had wonderful instincts.”

The kid in Harbaugh’s headset graduated magna cum laude (with distinction for us lay people) from Yale, where in addition to co-captaining the university’s mock trial team to the top spot in the country, he worked as a student assistant for the Yale football team, as a sports broadcaster and producer for the school’s athletics department, and wrote for the student newspaper.

“He’s one of those people who talks about something like it’s pie-in-the-sky, but at the same time, it isn’t,” Asdourian says. “He would say, ‘I think one day I’d really like to work for a football team, like the Ravens.’ Some kids would say that and you’d go, ‘Well, I hope that works out.’ And when he would say it, he was intense enough and smart enough that you sort of go, ‘Huh, I wonder if he’ll actually pull that off?’”

We now have the verdict.

Getting a straight answer out of constantly comical Ravens running back Mark Ingram can be a tough task. Just ask his teammates, or listen to him banter to anyone at practice or before a game, or talk in the locker room afterward. But there is so often truth in his now well-known brand of irreverent humor.

“I feel like people say that when you’re 30, I guess you’re like dead or something,” Ingram told reporters this week, alluding to his upcoming milestone birthday on Saturday‚ and the reputation for running backs of his age to break down physically due to the violent nature of pro football and his position. “But I think my best football is still ahead of me.”

The way this season is going, the Ravens don’t need a lot more. Maybe just a few more games of Ingram being himself. At 5-foot-9, 215-pounds, he is a proverbial battering-ram inside runner on the field. And he’s also perpetually positive—an internet meme-inspiring “heart of the team,” between the lines and everywhere else, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson says.

“When you guys see on TV is what you get throughout the days, behind the scenes,” Jackson says. “That’s Mark, and we love it.”

You could see the camaraderie building in snippets earlier this season, for instance when Jackson shared a video on his Instagram story of Ingram dancing wildly in the locker room at its practice facility in Owings Mills, with a caption suggesting that Jackson had no idea what was going on.

He and Ingram have a brotherly relationship, as in maybe older brother is the crazy-yet-wise one. It started in the preseason when they shared a flight up from Florida to Baltimore. Jackson, the 22-year-old coming back for his second season here and first as full-fledged starting QB, and Ingram arriving for his first in any capacity after signing a three-year, $15 million free-agent contract following nine seasons with the New Orleans Saints.

Like Jackson, Ingram is a former Heisman Trophy winner. He won college football’s top individual honor as sophomore in 2009 at the University of Alabama. (Here’s our obligatory mention that RGIII once won the award, too).

But unlike Jackson, who has emerged a bonafide nationwide sports star in his second pro season and can’t keep his own branded apparel stocked quick enough, Ingram has almost a full decade of relatively under-appreciated NFL experience in him. In his world that means a lot of tread on his running back tires, 1,515 carries for 6,970 yards and 60 touchdowns, and 252 receptions to be precise—as well as a lot of jokes, chatter, passion, and good vibes in the locker room.

Ingram’s former quarterback and future Hall-of-Famer, Drew Brees, in 2017 said he was the “heart and soul” of the Saints, too.

“I just try to be myself,” Ingram said Wednesday, in an unusually business-like interview session. “Love all my teammates, love all my coaches, be the best person I can be. Treat them with respect, treat them with love, and just work my butt off. That means the most to me, when my quarterback and my other teammates say that about me. That’s what I do it for.”

Most notably, Ingram is, of course, the main character in the origin story of “Big Truss,” the Ravens’ unofficial and totally appropriate child-like mantra for this breakout and now Super Bowl-dreaming season.

It goes like this: Jackson, since last year, has been saying “Truss,” as in trust (your teammates, coaches, whoever; like “I got you.”) It’s a purposely misspelled and misspoken variation of the powerful noun, cited with originating in Pompano Beach, Florida, where Jackson is from.

This season, Ingram added the “big” emphasis on the idea, seemingly off the top of his head. “Because everything Mark does is big,” says wide receiver Willie Snead, who also played with Ingram for three seasons in New Orleans. The saying most famously went public in Ingram’s Jackson-for-MVP “hype man” rant after the Ravens convincing win over the Houston Texans a month ago, and it’s now internet meme-worthy and essentially Bawlmerese.

So it goes with this eminently likable team, now with an 12-2 record, the title of “Kings of the AFC North” already locked up ahead of Sunday’s game against the divisional foe Cleveland Browns—the last team to beat the Ravens way back in Week 4. That seems like eons ago.

The Ravens have since captivated a sports-watching nation with 10 straight wins and a great blend of veterans like Ingram, kicker Justin Tucker (also 30, and not dead) and offensive lineman Marshal Yanda, 35, who’s happy he was cajoled out of retiring. Plus more than a half dozen first-or second-year starters who have rallied around their fast, friendly and now beloved quarterback Jackson.

This week, a league-high 12 Ravens, including Ingram, were named to the Pro Bowl, a best-in-class showcase for NFL players held the week before the Super Bowl.

For his part, Ingram arrived in Baltimore in March as a relatively unheralded free-agent after the Saints decided to hand the starting running back role to talented rookie Alvin Kamara. (That “turn 30 and they think you’re dead” comment does have truth to it.) But plenty of others still knew about Ingram’s effective ability on the field. Less about his character off it.

For all the bluster and funny-man schtick, there’s a serious, grounded side to Ingram. Back when he was a freshman in college in 2008, his father Mark Sr., who played 10 seasons in the NFL as a wide receiver and won a Super Bowl with the New York Giants, was sentenced to seven years in prison after being found guilty on money laundering and fraud charges. He decided not to turn himself in to officials on time because he wanted to watch his son play for Alabama in the 2009 Sugar Bowl, so he got two years added on to his jail sentence, and didn’t get out until 2015.

In a nod to that part of his story, this week Ingram and Snead led 25 elementary school kids with an incarcerated parent on a $125 holiday shopping spree at Dick’s Sporting Goods store in Glen Burnie, an event paid for through Ingram’s charitable foundation.

This sort of thing played into the glowing recommendation Snead, who arrived here two years ago, gave the Ravens’ front office this offseason—telling them that Ingram was the type of player with a strong makeup that could help make the team a legitimate championship contender.

“He’s everything we hoped for,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. “I didn’t know his personality as much. I didn’t really know how boisterous he was and how outgoing he was… It’s really been fun to be around. He really gets it. He knows how to treat people, knows how to practice. He plays with great passion and great energy, [and he’s] very physical. You’ve seen him. You know what I’m talking about there.”

Because while the pro football locker room is unique in some ways, it’s very familiar in others. Like any workplace, there’s a variety of personalities. The quiet, the outgoing, the serious, the person you know nothing about, the person who you know too much about. Ingram is a proverbial “glue guy”—someone who is good at their job and has a fun time doing it. That’s some people seem to get more than others.

In other words, get yourself or your organization a hype man, agent, general life supporter, and a positive influence like Jackson and the Ravens have in Ingram, and your chances of success go up. There’s an example of why every week.

Perhaps you missed it late last Thursday night, after the end of the Ravens’ blowout win against the New York Jets (we know people had to work the next morning), when Ingram literally stole the post-game show from NFL on Fox sideline reporter and Dancing With the Stars co-host, Erin Andrews.

Ingram was standing next to Jackson on the field. They were both just interviewed, and Ingram had just reminded Jackson about when exactly he broke Michael Vick’s single-season rushing record for an NFL quarterback. “Someone suggested I should give you the mic, and ask a question. Do you want to go ahead?” Andrews told Ingram.

Ingram again showed what he’s all about—about what being the heart of a team really means—with a Saturday Night Live-ish skit on national television. He asked Jackson a mock interview questions about winning the division, while using a variety of nicknames. “Freaky L, aka Action Jackson, aka Era8Apparel… How it feel, tell me how it feel L Freaky?” he said. Jackson, of course, played the straight-man and went along with it, saying there’s more to accomplish. “So you’re saying the story is unwritten? Book unfinished?” Ingram said.

“That was awesome,” Fox play-by-play announcer Joe Buck said.

“Give me the mic and let me interview some people,” Ingram said from behind the podium this week, talking to reporters. “I like it. It’s pretty cool. Y’all be careful. I’m coming.”

There’s some truth in that too.

“Lamar Jackson Be Like…” is a thing now.

Yeah, everything in that funny video is accurate.

Simply by being himself—fast, elusive, earnest, humble, just the right amount self-critical, and, oh yes, he can throw, too—the Ravens’ second-year quarterback has organically spread his influence, boyish charm, and one-of-a-kind brand of football to the masses. “I play Lamar Jackson ball,” he said a few weeks ago. And nothing more needed to be said.

Jackson’s 22-year-old personality is infectious. His quick, authentic, and direct one-or-two-line responses in press conferences are tailor made for social media. His play is awe-inspiring.

And he’s much more than fast. He and his head coach’s burgeoning bromance is everything we want. Here’s John Harbaugh wearing a Jackson-branded sweatshirt at practice this week. And his teammates’ support for him is rare. See running back Mark Ingram as Lamar-for-MVP hype man.

Every time we look for something new to say about the Ravens quarterback, we see that so many others have discovered what we already know. There’s so many reasons to love Lamar Jackson. Right now, he’s in full star turn mode, across America and beyond—way beyond.

Just this week, Pope Francis—yes that Pope Francis—hopped aboard the Jackson bandwagon. During a visit to Rome on Tuesday, representatives from the Archdiocese of Baltimore gave the worldwide leader of the Catholic Church a purple No. 8 jersey—autographed by Jackson and his head coach. And the Pope appeared pleased.

A day earlier, on Cyber Monday, the biggest shopping day of the year, Jackson’s merchandise outsold that of every other athlete, in any sport, on the industry-leading website Fanatics—an official vendor of licensed sports apparel from the major pro leagues and college ranks.

And Jackson has broken several rushing records for a QB already. He has completed 66.5 percent of his passes (just a few tenths more than, coincidentally, his old friend Joe Flacco, now with the Denver Broncos). He has thrown 25 touchdowns and only five interceptions—currently leading all NFL players in votes for the Pro Bowl. That’s the annual “Best Of” event the league holds every year in Hawaii.

If all goes as planned, Jackson won’t be there. The Pro Bowl is held the week before the Super Bowl, and the Las Vegas oddsmakers—following the Ravens’ eighth straight win on Sunday that improved their record to 10-2—have made our hometown team the betting favorite to win it all. (In other words, prepare for a potential trip to Miami in February.)

To top off Jackson’s skyrocketing popularity, he is the favorite to win the league’s Most Valuable Player award, something no Raven—not even Ray Lewis or Ed Reed—has ever done.

In some ways, this breakout season shouldn’t be surprising. Anyone who paid close attention last year knew who Jackson was already. “He’s very comfortable with who he is,” Harbaugh said. “You like being around people like that.”

And Jackson didn’t exactly come out of nowhere, though every other NFL team passed on him in the draft before Ozzie Newsome made Jackson the 32nd overall pick with the final draft-day phone call of his tenure as general manager.

It’s easy to forget that Jackson won the Heisman Trophy—awarded to college football’s best player—while at the University of Louisville. It’s easy to forget that he’s always been this fast. Watch his high school highlights from his days growing up in Florida, and know that he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.34 seconds at the end of his final year of college.

And my, how quickly have a lot of people discarded the memory of former Super Bowl-winning quarterback Flacco, whom Jackson unseated as the starter with the first opportunity he got about midway through last season. Jackson is 16-3 as a starting quarterback since.

This is special stuff. These ascension stories come around about as infrequently as a meteor shower. (Come to think of it, who’s faster: Jackson or a shooting star?) And we should all soak up the charm of it for a few reasons: Winning is always fun, but the Ravens are making it look easy (it’s not) with a unique brand of Jackson-led offense. What”s more, there’s a deeper meaning in play.

As we noted almost a year ago, Baltimore’s population is 64-percent black, at last U.S. census count. Football is America’s most-watched sport. To have a promising, young black player at quarterback, the team’s most prominent position, is a big deal here—and in the NFL.

For so long, black quarterbacks were unfairly typecast as unable to manage the complexities of a deep playbook or a passing offense. The needle is moving ever so slightly on that, but we still have a long way to go. Here’s a drinking game: Take a shot every time you hear a national broadcaster call Jackson a “running quarterback.” They should drop the qualifier. And he’s not a running back who can throw, either.

There’s a big reason Jackson jabbed critics and said, “Not bad for a running back,” after he threw for more than 300 yards and five touchdowns in the Ravens first game of the year. Put it to bed: Jackson is a quarterback—period. Maybe one that the league is not used to seeing, but one that the Ravens coaching staff put its faith in and built a unique run-option, efficient passing offense around.

Harbaugh pointed that out—on the sideline of a recent game, no less. This authentic sideline moment that you’ve probably seen by now was caught by the Ravens’ video staff, and it should go into the NFL’s social media Hall-of-Fame.

Thankfully, someone who works for the Ravens posted this clip without clearance from Harbaugh or the team’s public relations head, “because they know we would’ve both said no,” Harbaugh told ESPN, not wanting to attract attention to what are typically private conversations. But the scene, now seen by millions, brings to life the power of a likeable leader, or two.

The truth is that the same reason that you or I—or kids in this city or neighborhoods around the country we’ve never heard of—love Lamar is the same his reason his teammates and coaches do. It’s why an actual running back, Ingram, can step to a podium before reporters after a game, with Jackson standing off to the side, and shower the quarterback with compliments that go viral: “The MVP front-runner. If anyone got something to say about that, then come see me…Lamar Jackson, in the flesh.”

As always, we’re happy to see him.

Football season is here, and—potential injuries aside—we’re excited for everyone involved. The home opener against the Cardinals this Sunday marks the official start of a new era, of sorts, for the team.

Most notably, there’s a fresh face of the franchise. You’ve likely seen him on the purple-and-black Ravens-branded “Never Less” billboards, wearing jersey number 8. We’ll start this “What to Watch For” season preview with him.

Lamar Jackson and the Debut of the Ravens’ Revamped Offense

We don’t know exactly what it will look like, but we know it will be different. For the first time in a decade, someone other than Joe Flacco begins the season as the Ravens starting quarterback. The team has put its full faith in the 22-year-old Jackson, who went 7-2 as a starter on the fly as a rookie. The Ravens have reimagined their offense around the talents of the 2018 first-round draft pick and former Heisman Trophy winner, employing a healthy mix of running and passing from the freakishly fast QB. But will the plan work?

We saw glimpses last season and this preseason of what the new era could possibly look like—a few can-you-believe-that plays per game, both good and bad—but those games don’t really count. We’ll start to see the full potential, more of the playbook, and if the offseason work Jackson put in to improve his throwing makes a difference, starting Sunday.

“I just can’t wait to put on a show,” Jackson, the affable 22-year-old, said this week. He tends to do that.

This highlight reminds us of the big point you need to know about Jackson’s approach to playing quarterback: “If I am not passing, if I do decide to run, I am trying to score a touchdown or get a first down,” he said this preseason. “I am not trying to get two yards and get tackled. That’s not how I play. That’s not why I’m here.”

Enjoy the Fancy New Things at M&T Bank Stadium

There are now escalators–16 of them!–to the upper deck, as well as a field-level party suite and a self-serve and self-checkout beer market. And more high-definition video boards and fresh LED stadium lighting that the gameday staff can turn on and off as if they were parents waking up their sleepy kid for school. And new food options featuring a healthy amount of crab dip, like a Chesapeake Hot Dog. (Mmmm, repeat: All hot dogs should be Chesapeake Hot Dogs).

The amenities represent the completion of a three-year, $120 million renovation to M&T Bank Stadium aimed at attracting fans to watch games at the Ravens’ home venue in lieu of sitting on their couches or casually paying attention on their smartphones. To which we say, right on. Humans are meant to enjoy the outdoors and be around other people. Go have some fun.

Six Players To Talk About With the Big Football Fan at Your Tailgate

A lot of unfamiliar names fill the Ravens’ 53-man roster, the most notable being running back Mark Ingram and safety Earl Thomas (who signed a $55 million contract to come play here). When it comes to new additions, that’s the bare minimum you should know. Here are few more players to talk about if you find yourself in a football conversation with a well-versed fan:

Marquise Brown, wide receiver

Anyone who embraces the nickname “Hollywood” and wears a diamond chain of his own likeness will receive attention. The rookie from Oklahoma, a first-round pick, grew up in Hollywood, Florida, and he’s also got, forgive the pun, leading man skills. A 5-foot-9, 170-pounder who can run with the ball or go a long way to catch it in a small amount of time. “He’s electric,” sums up Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta.

Marlon Humphrey, cornerback

The trendy thing for media members to say right now is that, “Marlon Humphrey could be one of the top five cornerbacks in the league this year.” If true, that would be a big bonus for an also rebuilt Ravens defense. But even Humphrey, the third-year pro out of the University of Alabama who has arms for days to swat away opposing QB’s passes, doesn’t know if he’s worthy of great expectations. “It’s just hype,” he said. “There’s not really substance behind it.” Okay then.

Cyrus Jones, cornerback and punt returner

Gilman, represent! Jones, who attended and played at the Baltimore private school from 2008-2011, is now the Ravens’ top punt returner, special teams coach Chris Horton confirmed this week. He might return kickoffs, too. It’s comforting to have a homegrown guy on the team. Off the field, he enjoys rapping in his spare time.

Trace McSorley, backup quarterback

The rookie put together a series of quality performances this preseason (16-for-24 for 203 yards and two touchdowns against the Eagles, 15-for-27 for 171 yards against the Redskins). I watched McSorley play in many games at my alma mater Penn State, and he was critical to the team’s success the last four years. “The kid is a winner,” has been said many times by many commentators, and it’s true.

McSorley led Briar Woods (Va.) High to three state championships and a 55-5 record in four years. And he won a program-best 31 games as QB at Penn State. It didn’t surprise me that he proved his wares this preseason when given the chance after Robert Griffin III was injured. If McSorley is called on to fill in for say, Jackson after he refuses to slide to protect himself and gets injured, the Ravens will lose some speed at the position, but they’ll be in good hands. McSorley is also a run-pass option.

Patrick Ricard, fullback and defensive tackle

The big guy (300 pounds) plays both offense and defense. It’s one thing to do that in high school, or even college, but it’s almost unheard of in professional football. That’s why people call him “Project Pat,” which doubles as a title for one of his off-the-field passions: Reviewing local restaurants.

Justice Hill, running back (and a fantasy football sleeper!)

For those looking to have a Raven or two on their fantasy football roster, we suggest rookie running back Justice Hill. Aside from having a perfect name for a television drama (for its title or a character, really), the 5-foot-10, 200-pound jitterbug, who played in college at Oklahoma State, impressed coaches and teammates immediately this preseason with his speed and power. Expect him play a good amount off the bench. “I think he’s the complete package,” says Ingram, the guy who will start at running back, “and I think he’s going to have a great career.”

Save the Date for These Must-Watch Games

About one big game every few weeks. That’s convenient.

Week 3: Ravens at Kansas City Chiefs, Sunday, Sept. 22, 1 p.m.
A date a Super Bowl favorite and the only team to beat the Jackson-led Ravens in the regular season last year.

Week 5: Ravens at Pittsburgh Steelers, Sunday, Oct. 6, 1 p.m.
The Rivalry: Part 51. The Steelers have won four of the last six meetings. Boo.

Week 9: New England Patriots at Ravens, Sunday, Nov. 3, 8:20 p.m.
Tom Brady. Bill Belichick. Fun. This is the scheduled Sunday night nationally-televised game of the week.

Week 12: Ravens at Los Angeles Rams, Monday, Nov. 25, 8:15 p.m.
A trip to play the defending NFC champions on Monday Night Football.

Week 17: Steelers at Ravens, Sunday, Dec. 29, 1 p.m.
A regular season-ending home game against the Steelers. What else could you ask for? Maybe temperatures at least above freezing, and a shot at the playoffs.

Harbs Says…

There are few head coaches in the NFL with more longevity than our dear John Harbaugh, now entering his 12th season on the job. Only the Patriots’ Belichick, the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin, and the New Orleans Saints’ Sean Payton have longer tenures with their teams.

We’re fortunate to have Harbaugh under contract in Baltimore through 2022, and to be treated to congenial and worthwhile NFL-required media availabilities all season long. The guy appreciates storytelling perhaps as much as he does a proper tackle.

Harbaugh, who often draws inspiration from the military, quoted a former Secretary of Defense in response to one question this week. “[It’s like the] Donald Rumsfeld quote from a few years back: You have to know what the unknowables are, and you can’t worry about them too much,” Harbaugh said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen on Sunday. We don’t know how certain things are going to look or how guys are going to respond. We might have confidence. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it. But that’s the beauty of it. That’s what’s exciting. That’s the drama.”

The Realistic Expectations for This Season

Let’s end with the nitty-gritty. How will the 2019 season turn out? Here’s one fan’s opinion: The defense will be above average, and the offense will be good, but probably experience growing pains and might even look overmatched against stronger opponents like the Patriots or Rams. But it should be clear by midseason what potential a Lamar Jackson-led offense has long term. Meanwhile, of course Justin Tucker will be great.

With a difficult schedule and so many new players on both sides of the ball (linebacker Matt Judon will now be the face of the defense), a 9-win, 7-loss season with a chance at a playoff appearance feels reasonable. But no one should start calling for owner Steve Bisciotti to fire Harbaugh or DeCosta even if the team finishes 8-8 or a little worse. It’ll still happen, though.

The gesture was small in the grand scheme of things, and a ceremonial and promotional stunt all wrapped into one: Lamar Jackson throwing out the first pitch at an Orioles game, on the eve of the start of Ravens’ training camp. But the mash-up did what it was supposed to do, and caused us to wonder about Baltimore’s 22-year-old quarterback of the present and future.

Maybe it was because of the charm of Jackson’s boyish mannerisms as he bounced around Camden Yards on his first trip to the stadium, wearing an Orioles jersey with his—and Cal’s, of course—number eight (“Legendary,” Jackson said in respect), while doing stuff like eating a Boog’s turkey sandwich and meeting guys like Trey Mancini and Chris Davis in the Orioles clubhouse.

Or maybe it was how Jackson, like a good student, appeared to quickly pick up the whole pitching concept. He took instructions from outfielder Dwight Smith, Jr. (lower your shoulder, this isn’t football; but use the threads on a baseball for grip like laces on a pigskin), and practiced a few throws in the batting cage beneath the stands while waiting out a 90-minute pregame rain delay on Wednesday night.

Finally, after the skies cleared around 8:30 p.m., Jackson, now the guy, trotted out toward the pitcher’s mound, and waved his arms to excite those of the announced 20,786 paying fans still in attendance. When it was time to throw, he pretended to shake off a few signs from Smith, his stand-in catcher, then cocked his right arm, and tossed a hard, fast strike. It was just what everyone, we presume, wanted to see.

Jackson flexed and smiled as he walked from the field. “I loved it,” he said. “I had to show up and show out.” The outcome was exactly what he wanted, too, which was to not embarrass himself throwing a baseball—like rapper 50 Cent once did. (Just a bit outside!)

Cue the jokes about the Orioles needing a pitcher. . .

But O’s manager Brandon Hyde said he’d first try out Jackson somewhere else, like centerfield, shortstop, or second base given his speed and baseball teams’ premium on strength at those “up the middle” positions.

Jackson agreed. “Probably,” he said about playing centerfield, when he met with the media before the O’s played the Nationals, “but I’m a Ravens quarterback right now, so I’m good.”

Yes, he is. That might be the biggest takeaway of this week’s football-baseball crossover act. In just his second pro season, Jackson begins the year as the undisputed starting quarterback of his Ravens—the first time in a decade that anybody besides Joe Flacco can say that.

That’s why this Ravens QB—one who’s endearing, yet still maturing (aren’t we all?) and is as relatively unproven as a pro quarterback (yes, despite his 6-2 record as a rookie starter) as his skills are unconventional—was asked to come to Camden Yards in the first place thanks to our two pro sports teams getting along. And it’s why he stood in front of reporters and answered questions, covering a variety of topics and touching on his development as a billboard-status face of the franchise.

He addressed his disappointment with his Madden video game rating, 24th-best among NFL quarterbacks, and low on passing ability. But his speed and agility? No. 1. “I don’t make Madden,” he said. “It’s them.” He talked about how he’s spent the offseason (he worked out some, throwing footballs with Ravens backup quarterback Robert Griffin III and wide receivers like Willie Snead, which should be a positive signal to fans who want to see improvement there). On the Baltimore summer heat, he said being a Florida native is no solace. “I’m one of those people complaining I was sweating a lot,” he said. And he even discussed how he prefers to top his hot dog.

Because in addition to Jackson’s pregame appearance reminding us that Ravens training camp starts next week, National Hot Dog Day was observed at Orioles Park on this night, too. In a season of many fantastic fan giveaways, the O’s had one of their best, offering ketchup, mustard, and relish t-shirts—a creative nod to the famous and kid-friendly between-innings hot dog scoreboard race.

“I don’t really eat mustard,” Jackson said about his preference, “so ketchup and relish. I go from there. Pretty standard.” Like we said, charming.

Excuse us for feeling like the Ravens and Orioles are colluding on some master plan to make us learn as many new names and storylines as possible before they begin their 2019 seasons. It’s hard to keep up with all the changes.

This week alone: Terrell Suggs gone, to Arizona (here he is in Cardinal red—weird); Eric Weddle signed with a team in Los Angeles; C.J. Mosley, he of the cathartic playoff-berth sealing interception and a four-time Pro Bowler, is now the richest inside linebacker in the NFL, with the New York Jets; Joe Flacco was officially traded to Denver; and outside linebacker Za’Darius Smith said he’s headed to Green Bay. There’s no telling how many hours the Ravens’ social media staff spent posting nostalgic thank you tributes to the departed.

Meanwhile, former Orioles captain Adam Jones signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks (are there good crabs in the southwest or something?)—he got a video tribute, too—and first-year O’s manager Brandon Hyde named Alex Cobb the team’s Opening Day starter.

And we haven’t even talked about the big additions to town: safety Earl Thomas and running back Mark Ingram, whom the Ravens signed at the start of the NFL’s free agency period and whom the team will introduce at a press conference in Owings Mills on Friday morning.

It’s always difficult to say goodbye to familiar and respected sports heroes—which we’ve done a lot of the last few months (see Buck Showalter, Flacco, and Jones). But change also creates opportunities, and fresh starts. Two-plus months into this year, that’s the story of Baltimore’s biggest teams. The question now is what comes of the all the new?

Well, for starters, the Ravens’ addition of Thomas, who has been widely regarded as one of the league’s best safeties but missed most of last season with a broken leg, seems fitting for a franchise that will see Ed Reed inducted to the Hall of Fame this August at that position. Thomas was the leader of the Seattle Seahawks’ legendary “Legion of Boom” a few years ago.

A pairing with fellow safety Tony Jefferson has already led a few observers to create equal parts patriotic and funny “Thomas Jefferson” references to the twosome.

The continued changing-of-the-quarterback guard will get the most attention, though. The Ravens thanked Flacco for the memories after the trade was made official, and he in turn thanked them.

At around the same time, second-year quarterback Lamar Jackson, who has been handed the keys to the offense, posted to his Instagram account a self-recorded video of him driving 105 miles per hour on a highway, apparently without wearing a seatbelt.

The video ended up on TMZ, and Jackson apologized for the “bad decision,” and said he “will set a better example going forward.” Jackson is 22 years old, and we’ve praised him before for his authenticity, but clearly has some growing up to do.

He deleted the troublesome video from his account, but left public his thoughts on all the free agency moves, which also don’t seem to sit right.

The only thing that would have made this week more interesting is if former Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell chose to sign with the Ravens instead of the Jets, which he was reportedly close to doing.

We’re also close to the O’s first game of the year, now less than two weeks away against the Yankees in New York. Cobb, who was 5-15 with a 4.90 earned run average in 28 starts for the Orioles last season, is now apparently the O’s best pitcher.

That might not sound promising, but we’ll take our chances with something new.

There was a little less than 10 minutes left in the third quarter, and the Los Angeles Chargers were already leading by 17 points and looking like they were about to score again, when Ravens coach John Harbaugh finally approached quarterbacks Lamar Jackson and Joe Flacco on the sideline and broached the touchy subject that many others—like the pockets of 70,000-plus fans at a frenzied M&T Bank Stadium who had started to boo and hiss; and the television and radio announcers; and the social-media commenters—had already been discussing.

Who should be in at quarterback?

The polarizing question of the last month served as the central conflict in Sunday afternoon’s oftentimes frustrating and bizarre (how about those replay reviews?) wild-card game, the Ravens’ first playoff appearance in four years. For the first time since the electrifying and—as one Chargers player said Sunday, “ridiculously fast,”—21-year-old Jackson took over as starting quarterback from an injured Flacco in November, the Ravens looked downright bad. They struggled to create any offense, and they fell behind 23-3 in the second half before somehow rallying to have chance to tie the score with under a minute to go. By then, a lot of fans had left.

In a moment you might see this week on one of the NFL’s behind-the-scenes mic’d up segments (since five different cameramen were capturing the images and audio), the Ravens trailed 20-3 when Harbaugh crouched down in front of the Ravens’ QB duo as they sat beside each other on the bench. There they were, the former Super Bowl-winning hero who had been there, done that in the playoffs, wearing a winter hat; and Jackson, in a body-length black hooded coat, the youngest quarterback to ever start an NFL postseason game, who had -1 passing yards and was sailing the ball over and under receivers while dodging a flurry of defenders.

“I wanted to know what they thought,” Harbaugh told Baltimore. “We could have gone with Joe then.” Indeed, fans behind the Ravens bench and elsewhere in the stadium were calling for the switch. Twitter and text chats were abuzz with the topic. CBS Sports analyst Tony Romo, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback, mentioned the possibility of pulling Jackson at halftime, saying it’s hard to leave a former Super Bowl winner like Flacco on the bench in a game like this.

It was like a Greek drama and a Roman circus rolled into one three-hour, 17-minute story. The protagonist: Jackson. The dispatched, lightning-rod former starter: Flacco. The stage: a long-awaited home playoff game. But in reality, there wasn’t as much debate on the sideline as there was everywhere else.

Flacco, perhaps having already accepted his fate a long time ago or not wanting to get beat up by a ferocious defense, got out of the way, and told Harbaugh he should leave Jackson in. “Stay with what we’re doing,” he said.

“We made the decision with what was going to happen here weeks ago,” Flacco said in the locker room later. “I really wanted to see the guys turn it up a little bit and make a play.”

With that, the deed was done, and in some ways, the Ravens’ quarterback situation was made clearer than it’s ever been since the Ravens drafted Jackson out of Louisville last April. “Lamar is our quarterback going forward, no question about that,” Harbaugh said afterward.

Flacco essentially and gracefully closed the door on his own career in Baltimore. And, in what was probably the worst game of his young NFL career, Jackson’s position in the Ravens’ quarterback hierarchy was somehow solidified. “He’s the future,” Ravens safety Eric Weddle said of Jackson, who went 6-2 as a starter this year. “He’s going to be a great one.”

Maybe a weight lifted from Jackson’s shoulder pads after the sideline chat, because he threw his first touchdown pass of the day to Michael Crabtree on the Ravens’ next drive, then threw another to him to pull the Ravens’ within 23-17 with two minutes left. They got possession back with 28 seconds left. But, on the first play of a possible game-tying drive, Chargers linebacker Uchenna Nwosu slapped the ball from Jackson’s right hand and his teammate Melvin Ingram III recovered the fumble. It was a fitting ending to what was, at many times, an ugly game, lowlighted by Jackson’s three lost fumbles and even a Justin Tucker missed field goal (what?!).

“There were a lot of things we could have done, I could have done, to put us in a better situation,” Jackson said. “We have to move on now, get ready for next year.”

Ah, yes, next year. No sense in stalling the discussion about it. Now we await news regarding a possible contract extension for Harbaugh, whose job Jackson might have saved. Will Terrell Suggs be back? “I would like to be a Raven for life,” he said. There’s also the matter of the eventual whereabouts of Flacco, who is owed $25 million next year. (The bet here is Washington.)

Harbaugh spoke wistfully of his now former starting QB, with whom he arrived with in Baltimore 11 years ago, and he also talked as if Flacco was headed elsewhere. That would either be by trade, or if the Ravens simply cut the 33-year-old father of five in the offseason. “Joe can still play,” Harbaugh said. “A lot of teams are going to want Joe. . . . I’ll be in Joe’s corner, wherever he’s at, unless we play him.”

Speaking to reporters in what was very likely his last media appearance in the M&T’s home locker room, Flacco said about his future plans, “It’s not really up to me. We’ll see what happens,” and he also reflected on his time here.

“I love the people of Baltimore,” Flacco said. “I can’t imagine a better 11 years. Just how many different life changes I went through and how much we won here. I’m not from too far up the road. People around here are a lot like the people I grew up with. It’s definitely a group of fans and a community that I loved to be around.”

After fielding a final question, he closed with “See you guys.” We sure will, somewhere.

About 10 minutes later, Jackson stood near the same spot in the corner of the locker room where Flacco held court, and spoke with a pair of team staffers for a few minutes. Then, in a quiet moment soon after, when someone asked about the tough day on the field, he acknowledged that truth, but then offered a few simple words that bode well for the future that everyone is so interested in: “It’s all good.”

The first impression was just about the same as the current impression. Back in August 2018, when we watched Lamar Jackson’s post-game interview following his stellar preseason debut at M&T Bank Stadium, there was this 21-year-old kid wearing a backpack, looking like he just got out of school, while also appearing completely comfortable delivering forthright answers to reporters’ questions.

“I was kind of lost,” Jackson said, very much a rookie, while describing his feelings about leading the Ravens out of the tunnel and onto the field, as he did in his first game in Baltimore that night, even with incumbent quarterback Joe Flacco starting the game.

More than one year and a playoff run later, having unseated Flacco amid a meteoric rise to stardom as quick as one of Jackson’s sprints downfield, Jackson’s personality, honesty, and sometimes unintentionally funny one- and two-liners to the media are even more endearing.

Like, when someone asked if he felt any different about showing up to work after last year’s cathartic regular-season finale that advanced the Ravens to the playoffs, after C.J. Mosley’s late-game interception? “I changed my clothes,” Jackson said, eliciting laughter. “That’s about it. Everything else in the same.”

He’s likeable. By being himself on and off the field—fast and dynamic, fun and authentic—Jackson had won over a postseason-starved fanbase, teammates, and coaches, all before he turned 22. “That’s what you appreciate about him,” coach John Harbaugh said this last season. “He’s not trying to prove to anybody that he’s this or that or the other. He’s very comfortable with who he is. You like being around people like that.”

We’ll take it one step further. Here’s seven reasons why it’s so easy to love Jackson right now:

He’s led the Ravens to the playoffs.

Let’s just start with the obvious. We wouldn’t be having this discussion if the Ravens missed the playoffs for a fourth straight year. Jackson is the single most important factor in why fortunes turned.

Yes, you’ll hear a lot about the Ravens’ great defense, and their ball-control scheme, or other players, but all of that would not have been highlighted or given a chance to thrive had Jackson not excelled when given the chance after Flacco’s hip injury last November.

There is no more critical position in the NFL than quarterback, and Jackson’s has emerged as a bonafide game-changer—with speed, poise, improvisation and, yes, tell the world—LAMAR JACKSON CAN THROW!

He shares.

He’s quiet and private in some ways—for instance, you probably haven’t heard Jackson talk about how his father died in a car accident when Jackson was just 8 years old, and how that happened on the same day his great-grandmother died from cancer—but he’s very outgoing and public in other respects.

If you want a good look at who Jackson really is, just follow his social media accounts. He’s an open book, as authentic as they come, just like your little brother or cousin that Instagrams their daily activities. Except almost 1 million people follow new_era8.

And his social media performance of late has rivaled his play on the field. As in…

He’ll take a picture with you, take one for himself, then post them both.

I still can’t figure out the logistics of this picture. He might have asked whoever took it to send it to him, which is great. But the point is Jackson seems to have embraced his newfound celebrity in Baltimore just fine.

“I just love it here,” Jackson said. “Anywhere I go, people notice it’s me, stuff like that. Even when I first came out of college, when I first got drafted, whenever I go out, people always came up to me, this and that, ‘Lamar!’ They want to take pictures and stuff, so it’s pretty cool to have that going on. People don’t hate me here, so I love it.”

He’s a creative writer, and an appreciative neighbor.

Jackson went all “this is your captain speaking,” with beautiful and inspiring metaphors in a New Year’s social media post that made us want to start tailgating.

That came after he thanked his neighbors for the appreciation:

His mom was his agent heading into the NFL draft.

This confused and concerned some NFL teams, but didn’t put off the Ravens.

Jackson’s bond with his mom, Felicia Jones, is as strong as they come. She is his immediate family and most prominent champion. At the start of Jackson’s freshman season at the University of Louisville, the team had plenty of quarterback options on the roster, but needed a punt returner. Jackson’s athleticism made him an attractive option, and someone on the staff asked him to go return a punt one day at practice. When Jackson’s mom found out, she called the head coach, Bobby Petrino.

According to Sports Illustrated, she said, “Punt returner doesn’t look like quarterback,” and “reminded them all of the promise Petrino had made to her and her son while sitting on a couch in their South Florida home. Jackson never went back for a punt return in practice again.”

Similarly, when teams wanted her son to play wide receiver, which happened often, Jackson always said no. Be it when he was playing in high school, or being recruited to play in college, or the pros, many coaches or observers have suggested Jackson go play another position like wide receiver. His throwing accuracy was the culprit. At every step, NFL included, the coaches ultimately adjusted to him. He won the Heisman Trophy at Louisville as college football’s top player in 2016, the Ravens drafted him at the end of the first round, and he’s already about to make NFL history.

He’ll be the youngest quarterback to ever start an NFL playoff game.

At age 21 Jackson set a league record, and have the chance to for another: as the youngest starting QB to ever start in a playoff game.

Not that he’d admit that stat is a big deal. “I was 21 all year, so this is another game for me,” he said.

He’s reflective of the city.

This might be the elephant in the room. We’re not one to insert discussion about race where it might not belong, but you can’t deny a few things here. Baltimore’s population is 64-percent black, at last U.S. census count. Football is America’s most-watched sport. To have a promising, young black player at quarterback, the team’s most prominent position, is a big deal here.

Jackson’s presence as a headliner—it’s been 11 years since the Ravens last had a black starting quarterback—has to be a welcome sign for the majority of the city, especially its youth. Once asked about seeing kids wear his No. 8 jersey, Jackson said, “I love it. I might buy my own jersey and wear it. I might join them.”

You can’t make this stuff up, and it’s why we’ve quickly learned to love Lamar.

Well, it all comes down to this.

As wild a regular season as they come—complete with a changing of the guard at quarterback, a frisky head coach on the hot seat, and a turnaround from a three-game losing streak to a playoff run—comes to an end on Sunday, when the Ravens host the Cleveland Browns.

It’s the biggest game at M&T Bank Stadium since, um, this time last year when the Ravens also had a chance to make the playoffs. And while pockets of empty seats were visible that day and on many days this season, players are hoping for a packed stadium Sunday, with so much riding on the game’s result.

The idea, of course, is for the Ravens to keep playing in the playoffs, something they haven’t done in three years. With a win, they will. With a loss, things can get crazy and the Ravens could miss the playoffs altogether. With that, here are five things to know before you watch Sunday’s game.

Win and in. Lose and who knows.
There are 96 different possible playoff scenarios (yes, 96!) in play for the Ravens, including being ranked as a high as No. 2 in the AFC, getting a bye and hosting a playoff game, to sitting at home and watching the playoffs next week like you and me.

The simple one is if the Ravens win they play again, but there’s also one where the Steelers win the division instead, and keep the Ravens out of the postseason. This video about it all would make John Urschel proud.

This could be Joe Flacco’s last home game as a Raven.
With a loss, or even a win in a less-than-ideal scenario, this might be the last time to see Joe Flacco in a purple No. 5 jersey, even if it’s merely on the sideline or for a ceremonial goodbye towards the end of the game. Unless of course the Ravens think he’s worth $23 million per year to be a backup QB, or they renegotiate his contract this offseason. Otherwise, odds are Flacco plays elsewhere next season, like . . . the Redskins.

What’s the deal with Hot Seat Harbaugh?
In the middle of the season, head coach John Harbaugh was reportedly on his way out of town. (And we wrote about enjoying the testy public tone of Hot Seat Harbaugh around this time.) But then Lamar Jackson took over at quarterback, and the Ravens’ fortunes turned around. That brought us to last Friday, when the Ravens released a one-sentence statement at 7 p.m., the night before their game against the Chargers, saying that the team will work with Harbaugh to negotiate a new contract, which expires after 2019. It’s the type of end-of-week media release usually sent when someone is getting fired, not supported.

“I think it’s a non-story,” Harbaugh said this week. “We’re just trying to win football games. We’ve kept it simple, kept it about football. Everybody is on a one-year deal. You’re on a one-week deal, as far as I’m concerned, in this league, players and coaches.”

Reading between the lines, this all looks like negotiating tactics. The Ravens either want Harbaugh back, or least want it to look like they do, and want to work out a new contract with the coach before he heads into a lame-duck year next year. The question is, does Harbaugh want to do the same thing? Not many NFL head coaches survive big-time quarterback changes but to his credit, Harbaugh has fully embraced the change from Flacco to Jackson, so he’s in a great position to do whatever he wants to do.

Moral of the story: Oftentimes everyone is always looking for the “next thing,” the next coach, or the next QB, without enjoying the present. This is a week to enjoy the present.

With a win, Eric Weddle is buying us all “Victory Breakfast.”
Speaking of contracts, Eric Weddle’s is pretty great. With a playoff appearance, combined with a Pro Bowl selection, which the veteran safety has already earned, Weddle will get an extra $1 million sent to his bank account.

That’s more than enough to buy a few “Victory Breakfasts,” as he’s enjoyed the last few weeks. Extra Reese’s, please.

Anything is better than last year.
In case you forgot what happened last New Year’s Eve . . .

If you ever lose a coveted job you’ve held for 11 years to somebody just out of college, in part because of an illness or injury, then have to explain how it feels to the world, make sure to remember what Joe Flacco said on Wednesday, December 12, 2018, surrounded by reporters at the Ravens practice facility.

It was a few minutes after coach John Harbaugh announced that rookie Lamar Jackson would continue as the team’s starting quarterback, even as the franchise’s former Super Bowl-winning QB is now back healthy after dealing with a right hip injury for more than a month.

“It’s out of my hands,” Flacco said of the decision, in his first public comments since he was injured November 3 against the Steelers. “I got hurt. They drafted Lamar in the first round. At some point, something was going to happen between the two of us.

“I’ve obviously had five weeks to think about it and prepare myself for this situation and the possibility of it. Yes, I’m disappointed that I can’t be in that locker room in the same capacity that I’ve always been. But this is my situation right now, and I’m going to do my best to handle it the right way.”

That’s never an easy thing to do, to accept: “It’s part of the game, man.” To support: “[Lamar is] playing well, so we just need to keep getting some wins and see what happens.” To keep your dignity while being honest: “It’s different. I want to play football. It’s going to take some getting used to, but you have to be professional.”

The writing had been on the wall for a few weeks—indeed we recently wrote “Is the Joe Cool Era Over?”—but when Harbaugh texted Flacco on Tuesday morning to come into his office and made the change official, it had to be difficult news for Flacco to stomach, though you won’t hear him say it.

“I don’t know if it was the hardest conversation because, I think in both of our minds, we probably knew that the talk was coming at some point,” Flacco said.

Since Flacco went out with an injury, with the Ravens then on a three-game losing streak, Jackson has injected new energy into the team. The Ravens are 3-1 with him as the starter, beginning with three wins before an overtime loss to one of the league’s best teams in Kansas City last Sunday. Baltimore could make the playoffs for the first time in three years, and that’s, really, what the point of the season is.

The way Jackson plays—running, running, and running some more—is exciting and different. But it also makes him particularly susceptible to injury. Jackson hurt his ankle just last week. Plus, scenarios could present themselves when Flacco’s arm could be useful, like late in last Sunday’s game when the Ravens needed to score quickly. Instead, Flacco stood on the frigid sideline in a winter hat and jacket, consoling Jackson after his end-of-game fumble and predicting that the Chiefs kicker was going to miss a field goal. (He did.)

So, this might not be a no-going-back, changing-of-the-starting-QB guard, anyway. Flacco could very well see the field sometime soon, maybe even on Sunday against Tampa Bay. We’ll save the potential goodbye for the final regular season home game of the season at the end of this month.

Beyond that? The sticking point really is, the $25 million that Flacco is owed next year is an exorbitant amount for a team to pay for a backup quarterback—even a Super Bowl winning one that’s handling things professionally.

If Jackson continues to prove his mettle the last three games of the season and helps the Ravens to the postseason, and it’s clear that Flacco would not start next season, in a perfect world, he and the Ravens would negotiate a new lower-paying contract and the team would continue to have one of the better quarterback situations in the league. A promising young QB and a seasoned elder statesman closing out his career as a backup is a valuable combination in the injury-riddled world of professional football.

If that doesn’t happen, though, the Ravens could simply cut Joe Cool, or try to trade him. Does he end up in Washington? Or New York? Those are teams who could use a quarterback, even for a year or two. Or maybe Flacco, at age 33 with a wife and five kids, and having endured debilitating injuries the last two years, will just retire.

It’s hard to imagine Flacco in different-colored uniform, or that he’d want to stray very far from Baltimore. He’s lived in relative close proximity his entire life, from growing up in southern New Jersey, heading to college in Pittsburgh, transferring to Delaware, then being drafted by the Ravens and marrying and raising a family here. Heck, his brother is now the quarterback at Towson.

Uprooting from all of that isn’t easy, even for someone with a multi-million dollar net worth. Which, let’s not fool ourselves, cushions the blow of a job loss, too. But that still doesn’t mean it’s easy to step aside with grace.

“The season goes on,” he said. “Just because I’m not playing doesn’t mean the season comes to a halt and ends. There are times that I may feel like that, but everything keeps going. It may move on in a little bit of a different way, but it moves on without you. At some point, you realize that.”

It doesn’t seem like Ravens coach John Harbaugh is a fan of the old sports adage that a player shouldn’t lose his or her job because of injury. “We’re going to go back to junior high clichés, now?” Harbaugh said this week, when asked if he subscribes to that theory. “We’ll do what gives us the best chance to win, period, end of conversation.”

Ah, but when we’re talking about Joe Flacco—and the Ravens coach was, as the question was asked about the quarterback—it’s really just the start of the conversation.

Is the Joe Cool Era over?

Even when he’s been healthy (which Flacco is not right now, missing the last two games with a hip injury and likely to miss another this weekend), even when he was piloting the offense of an eventual Super Bowl championship team in 2012 (which he’s not—the Ravens haven’t made the playoffs the last three seasons), and pretty much every week during the fall and early winter the last 11 years, Flacco’s play, his contract, his sideline demeanor, his commercials, press conferences, everything, has been analyzed, scrutinized, and debated. Each nuance led to this main thought: Is Flacco the right quarterback for the Ravens? It comes with the territory of having the job in the first place.

Now that the former Super Bowl MVP hasn’t played since Nov. 4 against the Steelers, which was then the Ravens’ third straight loss, the volume has been raised on the hottest of hot-button sports-talk topics around these parts the last decade.

Flacco is 33 years old, relatively young in life standards, but getting up there in the pro sports world, and we know what he brings to the table. Meanwhile, 21-year-old rookie Lamar Jackson is something new. His running ability is exciting. His 190 rushing yards are the most for a rookie QB in his first two games. He makes plays we haven’t seen in a while, earning high praise.

“It’s the Lamar show,” said veteran wide receiver Michael Crabtree. “You just have to sit back and watch, because he’s electrifying.”

Jackson’s passing skill has been questioned. But, about that . . .

While Jackson has only started two games against suspect opponents, he’s won them both. That’s still nothing compared to Flacco’s body of work, but it suddenly looks like Jackson, the former Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Louisville, might be part of a core of young players that new general manager Eric DeCosta could build around once he fully takes over from the retiring Ozzie Newsome after this season. Teams don’t draft quarterbacks in the first round of the NFL draft, as the Ravens did with Jackson, to not play them.

There’s also the unavoidable awkwardness of the Ravens coaches wanting to get the fast and elusive Jackson on the field, even when Flacco’s on it, pushing the incumbent starting quarterback off to the side as a decoy wide receiver, or vice versa. And there’s also the fact that Harbaugh said in a post-game press conference a few weeks ago that he’d like to get Jackson on the field more.

And then there’s the money. The Ravens could cut Flacco after this season (he’s due $25 million next year) without taking as big a salary-cap hit as they would in years past.

Of course, the idea of this quarterback transition happening so soon could all be a moot point and a huge overreaction.

Maybe the Ravens lose on Sunday with Jackson making his first road start in Atlanta, drop back to a 6-6 record and never fully recover. Maybe Jackson gets hurt while running like a madman around the field, or not going out of bounds to protect himself. Maybe Flacco is healthy next week and starts anyway. Or maybe Jackson plays so well this week that you can’t bench him with the Ravens riding a three-game winning streak and in line for a playoff spot.

There’s a lot of maybes. Ultimately, Harbaugh, who has worked in unison with Flacco since Harbaugh took the job as Ravens coach in 2008, when Flacco was a rookie, says he’ll decide who to play if Flacco’s health allows him to return.

“I don’t think there’s anybody in a better position than the head coach,” he said. “I feel very, very confident that I have a good handle on it, understand the team and what we need to do when the time comes—which is not here yet. I don’t think you start making these decisions until you get to the bridge. I’m not crossing the bridge until we get to it. I think that’s a pretty good cliché, pretty apt.”

Here’s one certainty, though: If it does become clear that this is Flacco’s last year wearing the purple and black—if he does lose his job because of injury—he deserves a proper send off, like Adam Jones received with the Orioles this year. Joe’s been Cool for more than a decade. He won a Super Bowl championship with a streak of playoff performances that will go down in Baltimore history so long as we’re talking about sports. That shouldn’t be forgotten just because of what might be next.

This highlight is the primary takeaway from the Ravens’ second preseason game last night:

That’s rookie quarterback Lamar Jackson, dipping and dodging his way into the end zone in the first quarter of his M&T Bank Stadium debut.

“I thought he was tackled twice—and he wasn’t,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said of the shifty Jackson, who won the 2016 Heisman Trophy winner as college football’s top player. “You always appreciate that when he’s on your team.”

Even Joe Flacco was impressed, laughing when asked about the play in his post-game press conference: “He obviously got a lot of reactions for it, and he should.”

But before we get too far ahead and anoint the 21-year-old Jackson as Baltimore’s next great sports icon, let’s mention this plainly: Flacco, as oft-maligned as a Super Bowl-winner can be, is still the Ravens’ starting quarterback.

If evidence were needed, the one series Flacco played to start the game, before he took the night off, was a touchdown pass to fullback and converted defensive lineman Patrick Ricard.

“That’s really all we needed from Joe,” Harbaugh said. “That was enough.”

And so, as is customary in the NFL’s preseason, the spotlight shined on unseasoned players and potential future stars, such as a backup quarterback like Jackson, for much of the rest of the Ravens’ 33-7 win over the visiting Los Angeles Rams, who didn’t even play their starters, so don’t make too much of the score.

That’s not to say Jackson’s ankle-breaking nine-yard touchdown run, or his 119 passing yards and 21 rushing yards over much of the first half and including the first drive of the third quarter, were not important. They were. They showed exactly why the Ravens drafted him at the end of the first round of April’s rookie draft, even after the team signed free-agent quarterback Robert Griffin III to a contract in the offseason.

“He does seem poised for a rookie,” Harbaugh said of Jackson, who decided to leave the University of Louisville after his junior year. “Even on the sideline, he may not know everything [and make a mistake], but he comes off the field and knows exactly what he did. He’s going to continue to blossom.”

Jackson might be the Ravens’ future quarterback, but, somehow, he’s already leading the team out of the tunnel when they run on the field. He did it during last week’s Hall of Fame game against the Chicago Bears, in which he threw his first touchdown pass. “I’m trying to score every drive,” Jackson said last night, by the way—and he was the first one out on the field again Thursday night in his Baltimore debut, though he needed some directions to the sideline.

“I was kind of lost,” Jackson told a small group of reporters in the locker room after the game as Flacco left to hold his larger press-conference in the team’s media room. “I don’t want to go out there and mess up everything with our routine. I was asking the vets, ‘Where do I go when we go out of this tunnel?’ It was pretty cool, though.”

So long as he finds his way to the end zone, like he did last night, Jackson can keep asking questions. We’ll see how it goes from here.

Draft day in the NFL is just as big an event as the Super Bowl. It’s where college athletes’ dreams come true and fans of all 32 teams wait anxiously—and oftentimes impatiently—to see how the team’s roster will shift for the upcoming season.

Last night, the Baltimore Ravens made two grade-A picks in the first round—according to sports analysts—after trading down twice for the first time in the first round since 2012. With the 25th overall pick, Baltimore selected South Carolina tight end Hayden Hurst and Louisville quarterback Lamar Jackson with the 32nd overall pick.

Like many die-hard Ravens fans, we immediately started our Google searches to find out about our newest recruits and we’ve compiled some facts for you here.

Lamar Jackson is the anti-Joe Flacco.
The 2016 Heisman Trophy-winner is known for his athleticism and ability to move in the pocket unlike Flacco, who is a traditional pocket passer with an insanely strong arm. Jackson has been compared to QB Michael Vick in his prime, but even the man himself thinks Jackson is “five times better” than he was in college.

John Harbaugh says that Flacco isn’t going anywhere.
Speculations have begun that this may be Flacco’s last year in Baltimore due to the recent signing of RGIII and now Lamar Jackson. The Ravens head coach wants to make it very clear that Joe isn’t going anywhere just yet.

“[Jackson’s] a great quarterback. But Joe Flacco is our quarterback,” he said in an interview. “That’s the thing we got to remember. Lamar is going to have a great chance to develop. When you get to this stage in a quarterback’s career, you’ve seen done in New England and you’ve seen done in a lot of places. This doesn’t really change things in a sense that we’re going to go with Joe and he’s going to roll.”

Hayden Hurst was the top tight end in the 2018 draft class.
At 6-foot-5, 250 pounds he has the athleticism to put up big stats in the NFL, Hurst is just the tight end the Ravens need. He’s a force on the field with his blocking and catching. In his last two seasons at South Carolina, he caught 92 passes for 1,175 yards and three touchdowns. Hurst will be able to fill the void the Ravens have with Nick Boyle and Maxx Williams, who are both better at blocking.

Hurst has a history in major league drafts.
He was selected in the 2012 MLB draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates and spent two years as a pitcher and one year as a first baseman in the Gulf Coast League. Hurst went back to football in the summer of 2015 and was an immediate starter. He credits his background in baseball for his exceptional hand-eye coordination and maturity playing professional sports.

“I feel like tracking a baseball is a little bit harder than tracking a football,” Hurst said. “I think that’s the biggest thing that I carry over from baseball is just the maturity. I’ve experienced some things that some guys haven’t with failure.”

Ozzie Newsome was able to work magic with those two trades.
First the Ravens traded out of the No. 16 pick, giving the Buffalo Bills its first- and fifth-round picks (No. 154). In return, the Ravens are getting the Bills’ first-rounder (No. 22) and third-rounder (No. 65).

Then, Baltimore traded back for the second time with Tennessee getting the Titans’ first-round (No. 25) and fourth-round picks (No. 125). Ravens gave Tennessee the No. 22 spot they just got from Buffalo and a sixth-rounder (No. 215).

Newsome called is “masterful” how he was able to trade down twice and still manage to get two great picks in the first round.