For Ozzie Newsome & Co. the first round of the 2013 draft couldn’t have gone any better. Not only did they select the top rated player on their board – Florida safety Matt Elam – with the 32nd and final pick in the first round, they still have 11 picks remaining.
Just as it is every year, the draft was unpredictable. It left plenty of first round-graded talent on the board for teams to take advantage of early in the second round on Friday.
One of those teams should be your Baltimore Ravens.
While it’s not impossible, I have a better chance of Joe Flacco giving me half of his new contract, than the Ravens do of bringing 12 draft picks into training camp AND all of them making the 53-man active roster. Knowing my assumption is 99.9% accurate and essentially common thought, the Ravens will be positioned as buyers, not sellers, as they prepare to make some of their first trades in the draft.
The talent that slipped into the second round consists of players such as wide receiver Keenan Allen, and middle linebackers Arthur Brown, Kevin Minter, and Manti Te’o. Choosing them may cause somewhat of an uproar depending on the pick, but they’re all solid players and they’re all in positions of need. The price tag for trading into the early part of the second round is something the Ravens can stomach given their arsenal of picks, some of which could be expendable.
Seven of the Ravens’ 11 remaining picks are eligible to be traded. The only four that are untouchable are 130th (4th round), 168th (fifth round), 203 (sixth round) and 247 (seventh round), which the team received as compensatory selections for losses of players like Ben Grubbs, Jarret Johnson and Cory Redding via free agency.
The Ravens won’t be picking until the 62nd overall pick – 30 picks after they chose Florida safety Matt Elam. Now would be the time to trade up in the second round, given that the Ravens could take advantage of the lack of parity between some of the late first and late second round picks. Â The Ravens would be best served by packaging some picks together and bringing in a player who can make an immediate impact on their team versus staying put at 62 and getting lesser talent.
With two picks in the 4th round, two in the 5th, three in the 6th and two in the 7th, the Ravens have plenty of bargaining chips in their pocket.
This is why I believe Ravens fans won’t have to wait nearly as long to see their team jump back onto the clock in the second round – and that’s not just because each team has three fewer minutes in the second round to make their selection.
