Eric DeCosta sheds some light on the Ravens’ draft plans

The Baltimore Ravens are approaching a pretty crucial draft next month, as they’ll need a good infusion of young talent to help them get back to the playoffs. No one knows that more than current assistant general manager and soon to be full time GM Eric DeCosta.

DeCosta joined the Baltimore Ravens “The Lounge” podcast to discuss a myriad of topics, including his thoughts on the fact that he’ll soon be fully running the show, and even gave some of his thoughts on the upcoming draft in Dallas next month:

“I think it’s an interesting draft because I would say that most people would think in looking at it that in the first 25 picks, there’ll likely be more defensive players selected than offensive players,” DeCosta said to hosts Ryan Mink and Garrett Downing. “You’re gonna have the quarterbacks obviously drafted pretty high, you might have a couple offensive lineman, maybe a receiver or two, maybe a running back or two, but there’s a lot of good defensive players now as you start to work toward the back half of the first round. Into the second round, into the third round, and into the fourth round I think you’re gonna see more offensive players, and it wouldn’t surprise me if you had maybe sixty percent of all the players drafted this year be on offense, and forty percent on defense. There seems to be more offensive players in the draft, but at the top of the draft I think you’ll have probably more consensus top defensive players than you do offensive players.”

His thoughts on this draft seem to line up pretty well with what a lot of the mainstream media has been saying; that we’ll be seeing a lot of defensive talent go on day one, but that there is a ton of offensive depth to be picked up in the latter rounds. He was then asked about how that will factor into Baltimore’s plans come their time to finally choose:

“Well I think, in the first round, are we gonna take a wideout? It just depends, you know. Is it fair to say that in the first three rounds are we gonna be taking some offensive players? Definitely. It will not be four straight defensive players. If it is, you’ll probably be looking for a new GM next year. But I think that there’s a really good chance that we’ll continue to work on the offense in the first four rounds of the draft. Now, we may take a defensive player in the first round, or maybe the second round, but the notion that we’re gonna go defense, defense, defense, defense? That’s just not gonna happen this year.”

DeCosta’s joke about getting a new GM if they do again go all defense in the draft this year is definite hyperbole, but some Ravens fans can’t be blamed for thinking differently. Regardless, it’s definitely interesting to hear some perspective from the Ravens future top decision maker.