Ravens, Brandon Williams “working diligently” on a new deal

The Baltimore Ravens have lost a few of their own over the past few days, with quality players such as Kyle Juszczyk and Ricky Wagner walking out the door to ink massive deals elsewhere. However, if a recent report from NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport is to be believed, defensive tackle Brandon Williams may be a key player who they are able to retain:

At face value this is great news, but a few things need to be considered. “Working diligently” is great to hear, but it could mean almost anything, and most importantly, nothing is imminent yet.

Another thing to consider is this could in fact be a smokescreen to drive up the price on the reported teams that would like to bring him in. While that would a heart-breaker, it shouldn't be expected; just considered as a possibility during what has been a pretty quiet and drawn out free agency process for Williams.

One thing that could bolster this notion is some reasoning from the Baltimore Sun’s Jeff Zrebiec, who after initially tweeting that the team had all but lost Williams, revised his statement to say that they were still in the race to sign him:

A final point of optimism on this new development is that Williams didn't sign anywhere else immediately. Juszczyk and Wagner were out the proverbial door before the knob had even fully turned, so the fact that Williams has played it out slowly could indicate he would prefer to remain with the team.

While this is in fact a good sign, all possibilities need to be considered, even the negative ones. Still, this is a nice development in the Ravens pursuit of retaining arguably their best free agent to hit the market in years.

For more thoughts updates on this developing situation, be sure to stay with Baltimore Beatdown.