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Baltimore Ravens tight end Ben Watson as we all know tore his Achilles on the first play of the game on offense during Saturday’s game against the Detroit Lions which unfortunately ends his 2016 season.
Watson’s injury leaves the Ravens thinner at the tight end position as the team will look to Maxx Williams, Crockett Gillmore and Dennis Pitta to help fill the void to begin the season. Second year tight end Nick Boyle will serve a 10 game suspension to start the regular season.
With Watson gone, the Ravens now have an opportunity to keep seven wide receivers on the roster which would have been pretty hard to do if Watson was still available to play. The top seven wide receivers on the Ravens roster are the following (in no order):
- Steve Smith Sr.
- Kamar Aiken
- Breshad Perriman
- Jeremy Butler
- Mike Wallace
- Michael Campanaro
- Chris Moore
- Keenan Reynolds
The list above on paper is as deep as the Ravens have ever been at the wide receiver position. It would be hard to even let one of those players go.
If any one of those players were to leave the roster, you could make the case that the Ravens could stash Reynolds on injured reserve with some phantom injury and save him for next year so that he doesn’t get snatched up by an NFL team if he were to somehow land on the practice squad. My guess would be that isn’t likely to happen, but you never know.
The Ravens have a nice balance of big and small wide receivers on its roster to go along with speed and quickness which allows the team to be more unpredictable within the playbook on offense.
My guess would be that the Ravens keep seven wide receivers on the roster this season which is would be a good idea considering the amount of injuries that position has seen in recent years.