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Approximate Value Ranking Milestones for Current Ravens

Pro-Football-Reference.com has a comprehensive list of the value of Ravens players, all-time. You will be surprised to see where current Ravens rank.

By Chris "Braven" Brown
How do current Ravens compare to the best ones ever?
How do current Ravens compare to the best ones ever?
Nola McConnan

Pro Football Reference, the website chock full of stats for the lover of football minutiae, has a metric that they have developed called Approximate Value which assigns a number to every player in the league based on a formula they have nurtured.  AV is performance-based, and squad-based (offense/defense/special teams).  It rewards above-league average play (results), and penalizes below-average league play.  An interesting aside for any Ravens fan is to access this periodically, and see how current members stack up against the rest of the Ravens, throughout history.

Here are a few milestones that could be coming up in 2016.

TOP GUNS:

  • With any kind of productive season at all, Terrell Suggs will move up to the third all-time Raven.  With an excellent season, he will move up to second!
  • Joe Flacco returning to form--which this reporter thinks that he will due to a plethora of targets and a new deep threat in Perriman--should put him, also, in the top 5.
TOP 20:
  • Lardarius Webb, with the season of his life -- 8+ Interceptions, Pro Bowl, a TD or two--could make the Top 20.  He is currently 29th, which is exceptional. Remember that this is purely based on statistics and performance, pre-2015. That speaks loudly for him, who some think cannot make the switch to Safety.
TOP L:
  • L is the Roman numeral for 50, as I cited in another article, and C.J. Mosley is surprisingly and awesomely there. Keep in mind, though, that this does not include his 2015 season yet, so he could drop. With a return to pro-Bowl form, he could move up several spots, nearing the Top 30.
TOP OPPORTUNITY:
  • A Pro Bowl season from Courtney Upshaw (53), Elvis Dumervil (55), Jimmy Smith (63), Rick Wagner (!) (79), and definitely Steve Smith, Sr. (89) could get them into the Top Fifty Ravens of all time. Again, this does not include the 2015 season outcomes, so some of these, like Smith, could drop off of this list. Especially if Pro Football Focus (PFF) is correct about their performance.
Once the list is update, we will update these highlights in a new article.

View the composing factors of AV here.  View the list in its entirety -- 521 players -- here.

Here is the Top 100 Table.  Thanks to Pro Football Reference for being so easy and user friendly.  (Are you watching, PFF?!)

OK, I'll admit that I wanted to include S Matt Elam.  The world has given up on him but maybe Coach Leslie Frazier can revitalize him!

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