Round 1:
QB Joe Flacco (Delaware)- I think that Joe Flacco is exactly what the Ravens need to build this solid franchise around. At 6'6", 230 lbs, Flacco has the size to see above any defense in the league. In his college career he put up very solid number after he transferred from Pitt to pursue a school where he could get more playing time. Delaware was the perfect school for Flacco to show what he really has in store for the NFL. When looking at his stats from the 2007 season, Flacco put up some very impressive numbers. He threw 331/521, which equals out to a 63.5 completion percentage. This is almost unheard of in college football. Along with this he threw 23 TD's with only 5 INT's. Some people might say that since he went to Division 1-A Delaware that he will not be able to accelerate at the pro level. At the senior bowl, Flacco proved that he has the strongest arm in this years draft. With all of this said, I think that he has what it takes to be a premier QB in the NFL! Overall Grade: A-

Round 2:
RB Ray Rice (Rutgers)- With the 55th overall pick in the draft, the Ravens selected Ray Rice, a running back out of Rutgers. At 5'8", 200lbs, Rice may not have the size to be a premier back in the NFL. With this said i would like to draw your attention to a former pro-bolwer of his size. Priest Holmes, a former RB for the Ravens, was only 5'9", 213 lbs, and he did great for his size. During the 2007 season, Rice rushed 380 times for 2,012 yds and 24 TD's. Coming out of the Big-East Conference, these are great numbers for a RB. Rice will be a good 3rd down back for the Ravens this year, as he is playing behind Willis McGahee. With all of this said I think that Ray will see ample playing time this year. Overall Grade: B

Round 3:
LB Tavares Gooden (Miami, FL)- With the first of their three 3rd round picks, the Ravens selected Tavares Gooden, a LB out of the University of Miami. Gooden has great size for a LB at 6'2", 238 lbs. During the 2007 season, Gooden collected 100 tackles as a senior for the Canes. He has average size and busts his ass until the whistle blows. With his exceptional speed, he will have no problem being a premier run stopper in the NFL. Overall Grade: B+

S Tom Zbikowski (Notre Dame)- The Ravens chose S Tom Zbikowski with their second pick in the 3rd round (86th Overall). Along with being a pro boxer, he is one hell of a pass defender. At 6'0", 200 lbs, Zbikowski has the ideal size for a defensive back in the NFL. With the age of the Ravens secondary getting up there in the years, this was in my opinion the best pick up for where he was drafted. With tremendous speed and agility, Tom Zbikowski will be a great member of the Ravens secondary for many years to come. Overall Grade: A

OT Oniel Cousins (UTEP)- With their third and final pick of the 3rd round, the Ravens selected Oniel Cousins, a big OT from UTEP. At 6'5", 300 lbs, Cousins will be a force on the Ravens Offensive Line. The age of their starting tackle right now, Jonathon Ogden, is going up quickly. With all of this said, Cousins was a great pick for the Ravens, and he will someday be the starting tackle for the Ravens! Overall Grade: B-

Trade:  The trade for Fabian Washington, in my opinion was a great move.  With Rolle and McAllister both being over the age of 30, we now have depth in the secondary for many years to come.  BTW, you cant dispute a Big-Ten defensive back!

Hey Baltimore Beatdown,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei, and I'm here to help you get adjusted to the new home we've built for you. If you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one of the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will try to point you in the right direction.

Before we begin, I want to let you know we still consider this a beta platform, so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs or if everything isn't exactly right yet. We hope you'll take the time to report any problems you encounter at bugreport@sbnation.com. We'll be continuing to make changes and improving things.

Please take a few minutes to read about what's new below. But if you just can't wait to jump in, here are some quick things to check out:

1. Sign up for your SB Nation network account and claim your old blog accounts
2. Once you're logged in, press your  Z  key in any thread with new comments
3. Explore your dashboard and setup your profile
4. Read the guide to the new FanPost editor
5. Install the FanShot bookmarklet and post videos to Baltimore Beatdown from YouTube or images from Flickr
6. Click the "Rec" button on posts and comments to help other people find the good stuff.
7. Customize display options on your Edit Settings page

What Has Changed

SB Nation Network Accounts - the Big Change

Readers across all of our blogs told us they wanted one account to use on every SB Nation blog. To make this work, we're requiring that everyone create a new SB Nation network account. In most cases you should be able to keep your old username, but a few of you may have to choose something new, since every other community in SB Nation will be going through this same transition. We tried to be as fair as possible in deciding who gets to keep which name, using a formula that takes into account length of membership and frequency of activity.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to participate on all of our blogs, but we don't want to encourage everyone to start visiting rival team blogs and initiating flame wars. To maintain friendly communities we ask that you explicitly join each blog in order to participate. It's a two-click process, but it does means accepting each blog's community guidelines. Just as you join each blog individually, you can be banned on each blog individually.

You can claim old accounts from multiple SB Nation blogs, and your new username will be retroactively attached to all your old comments and diaries. So now you'll be able to access all your writings from your single profile page... like magic.

To get started, click here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.

FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.

FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - we include your avatar to give more credit for the time you spend writing great posts. The new post editor has a WYSIWYG view that provides easy formatting. It also auto-saves drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you compose a post within the web browser. And you can now associate teams, players and games with your posts: these tools promote your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.

The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, in HTML mode the new editor doesn't auto-create a new paragraph from two line breaks. But it does offer a whole array of new features. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, and take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.

IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember to wrap <p></p> tags around each paragraph so your text doesn't run together.

Visual Redesign

This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed-width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution used by the majority of Baltimore Beatdown and SB Nation network users. Use the switcher below the user menu if you prefer the wider layout designed for 1280 monitors. We've introduced a top navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there. More changes and adjustments to come.

Search

We've completely replaced the old search engine with a new one. We're excited to make it easier to find old posts and comments, but we've only taken our first pass on the tools we're offering. We're focused on making search even better than what you had before, so please know that we're aware search is missing key features and we're working on it.

What's New

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster

Baltimore Beatdown now has all the basic information about the Baltimore Ravens and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams.

Recommending FanPosts

Some writing deserves more attention and more conversation. If you want to bump a FanPost up to the top and keep it there for awhile, just click the 'Rec' link under the body of the post. When a FanPost receives enough recommendations it will make the recommended list.

Auto-refreshing Comments

You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the C key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the X key. And use the Z key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them.

As you use these shortcuts to cycle through comments, press the R key to reply to the current comment. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.

Recommending Comments

Now you can reward those folks who take the time to look up stats and make smart arguments in the comments. Next to each comment there is an 'actions' link that you can click to find the recommend and flag options.

Flagging Comments

To help the moderators on a site, we've built-in tools that let you flag comments that are spam, trolling or just plain inappropriate. Only moderators can see those flags.

FanShots

Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote, but don't need a full FanPost. We've got you covered: FanShots let you share YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.

For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of Baltimore Ravens material, install the bookmarklet onto the links bar of your browser and share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.

Archives

It's much easier to find that post about a certain deadline trade or prospect retro feature. You can browse by year and month.

Avatars

Upload an image so folks can see your custom avatar on your profile, your FanPosts, and all your comments.

Network Profiles

Now that we have unified SB Nation network accounts, your profile will be your central hub for all of your activity on any blogs where you are a member.

Network bar

The top bar stays with you on all SB Nation blogs. It's a quick way to login and logout. When you're logged in, you'll see your avatar and screen name which links to your profile. The icon to the right leads to your Dashboard area where you can edit your settings, profile, account details and any FanPosts or FanShots you've published. As we add more blogs to the new SB Nation network, the My Blogs menu will be a handy way to navigate between the blogs you've joined.

-------

There are plenty more small changes and additions we've made, so please take a careful look around and explore this new system. We appreciate your patience and hope you'll help us improve the new platform for this and all the other SB Nation blogs.

And in case you missed it, you'll want to start by claiming your old blog accounts and creating a new SB Nation network account.

I wanted to try to do my own shadow draft with the Ravens. Just for fun to see how my picks would match up with the Ravens in the same spots. I thought I'd post it here so I'd have a copy I hopefully wouldn't lose. That way I could look back on it in a couple years. I used all of the Ravens picks after trades, except for the Joe Flacco trade. Personally I didn't like it. It seemed like a reach much like when we traded up for Kyle Boller. I hope I'm wrong, but I really didn't like Flacco coming in to this draft. Anyway, here's what I came up with:

Continue reading this post »

Hello everyone!  I'm an active member over at the Mile High Report (Denver Broncos) blog in the SBNation community.  Recently we decided to cobble together a roster for a mock draft in order to pass the time and get informed about the process and other teams around the league.  As of the time of this Diary post, the Baltimore Ravens remain unrepresented.  It would be great if a member of your community would step up and join us in our efforts.

Continue reading this post »

The Baltimore Ravens cut ties with one of their longest-tenured veterans Thursday, releasing center Mike Flynn after a 10-year stint with the team.

"There are sad, tough days in this business, and this is one of those," said Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome. "Mike Flynn represents everything good about the Ravens."

Flynn was originally signed to the Ravens practice squad on December 3, 1997 and eventually worked his way into the starting lineup by the 2000 campaign. He rotated between the starting guard and center spots during Baltimore's Super Bowl XXXV championship run, and remained a first-teamer through the next eight seasons.

The Springfield, Mass., native started all 16 games during each of those eight seasons, and 115 contests overall. His 134 games played rank fourth in franchise history, behind mainstays Ray Lewis, Jonathan Ogden and Matt Stover.

"He was a long-time leader on our team," Newsome said of Flynn. "He fought his way into the NFL, fought his way into our starting lineup, and he fought to help us win."

Continue reading this post »

I don't know about anyone else, but the hiring of John Harbaugh could be a great thing.  I remember a coach in 1992 who was mainly just a special teams coach with endless energy and enthusiasm who was a leader of men and got his team to play hard, disciplined, and together for 60 minutes of football 16 weeks a year.  His name was Bill Cowher.  From what I hear of Harbaugh, he seems to have the same enthusiasm and burning desire to win and win the right way as Cowher did.  Only time will tell, but I feel like this hiring could be a good thing in the long run of this Ravens franchise.

Wow, I bet Barry Bonds is the happiest guy on the planet right now, just a wee bit above Jose Conseco! No more asterisk on Barry, just a real big one on the entire era. I wonder how many of Bonds record breaking home runs were against a pitcher who was juicing? I guess that sort of levels the playing field now, eh? Ponder this: How many players who were or weren't juiced, hit home runs off of pitchers who either were or weren't juiced? How about the players who didn't make the All-Star teams due to others who did make it on steroids, costing those thousands of dollars in incentives from their contracts? The dominos are falling everywhere and the roots run deep and have infected all of baseball, not just those implicated. While we will never know the full extent of the damage done to baseball, it will never change unless the MLB Player's Association, the greatest union in all the world, agrees to blood testing, which will indicate any steroid, hGH and/or testoserone use that urine testing just can't detect.

My take? Start the blood testing now and grant amnesty to all prior to this implementation of a firm, clear testing program. Get rid of the joke of a Commissioner and replace him with one previously unrelated to baseball to oversee its future. Feel free to put an asterisk on the records during an agreed upon period of years, noting it as the "Possible Steroid Era," just like the "Dead Ball Era," etc.

Forget about the McCarthy-like witch hunts on all those listed in the report, put Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa, Palmiero (and while we're at it, Pete Rose) in the Hall when their time comes up, and move on. Focus on the future of the game that you can have a positive effect on, while giving up punishing those in the past based on heresay and limited evidence (Don't our politicians have anything better to do!?).

That's my plan, and yes, I'd consider accepting the job as Commissioner of MLB (I'd get great seats at all the stadiums - sweet!).

...is just to take Steve McNair's head and heart and combine it with Kyle Boller's arms and legs. Then, wala! There it is, the perfect combination. Look out Super Bowl, here we come!

....to post any other opinions, comments, questions, etc. Here, you don't have to wait for me to bring up a topic. Whatever is on your mind regarding the Baltimore Ravens is fair game to post. When you do that, you open the door for anyone else who wants to respond to post as well.

As the Ravens defense has said all these years, bring it on!