WR Room Still Needs a Repair Man

Things Haven’t Gone OBJ’s Way

There’s a growing concern amongst Baltimore fans, wondering aloud if OBJ and the rest of the Ravens wide receivers were able to catch their flight to London. This is a clear dig at the WR corps’ inability to catch anything in Pittsburgh.

Some digs are earned. This one was.

On paper, the Ravens wide receiver room looks like a very good one. In reality, through 5 games, they are mere paper tigers.

Rashod Bateman continues to walk (with a limp) the walk of a first round bust. He has a whopping 8 catches for 67 yards, just 21 more yards than seldom used RB Melvin Gordon. Nelson Agholor has floated around the league, Baltimore being his 4th team. He’s been respectable yet his career struggles were on full display in Pittsburgh when he dropped a touchdown. Fans in Philly, Vegas and New England can relate.

Devin Duvernay, limited by rigid hips, has 2 catches for 7 yards while Tylan Wallace, a player who showed promise in training camp, is on IR and has yet to make a single catch in 2023. Zay Flowers is as advertised and he has the look of a big playmaker, if and when Todd Monken’s offense finally gains some real traction. And that brings us to Odell Beckham, Jr.

OBJ to Baltimore seemed like another Ravens reach when rumors began to swirl that the two sides might come together. He seemed like another pass catcher in the November of his career who would arrive in Baltimore with hopes to restore a career while making decent coin along the way. We all wondered if OBJ could stay on the field. We pondered the number of times he might dress on Sundays or how many times he’d appear on the weekly injury reports.

But somewhere along the line, Eric DeCosta and Steve Bisciotti bought into what OBJ was selling. He seemed sincere, determined, even starving to get his career back on track. OBJ put in the work. He looked terrific during training camp. There was little to no hint of any degradation in his agility, explosiveness, and shiftiness in and out of his breaks. Plus he showed a level of maturity that isn’t part of his storied past.

Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that through 5 weeks, OBJ looks like the broken player we all feared he might be. That said, it’s not all on him as evidenced by the video below.

An Odell Beckham Jr. deep touchdown would be so electric

Hopefully it happens soon pic.twitter.com/m5fQ5xyogR

— Kevin Oestreicher (@koestreicher34) October 12, 2023

Beckham is guaranteed $15M. He was given a $13.835M signing bonus and a base salary of $1.165M. Through 5 weeks the Ravens have paid OBJ $14.18M for his 7 catches and 79 yards. Will it get better? Will the Ravens get a significantly improved return on their investment in Beckham? Maybe. Time will tell. But if they don’t, this will be a blemish on DeCosta’s record and a missed personnel decision by Bisciotti, a man who earned his fortunes making good personnel moves.

If OBJ can’t turn it around, if he and Lamar Jackson can’t get it together, these Ravens execs will be reminded of this failure each of the next four seasons when Beckham’s voidable option years appear on the salary cap ledger to the tune of $2.77M per annum. And regrettably, there is no lemon law that pertains to the National Football League.

If OBJ can turn things around, he can earn another $3M in incentives. For the sake of the Ravens, let’s hope he does.

Incentives in Odell Beckham Jr.'s contract with the #Ravens:

Catches:
– $250K for 30 catches
– $500K for 40 catches
– $750K for 50 catches
– $1M for 60 catches or if he leads the team in catches.

Yards:
– $250K for 250 yards
– $500K for 500 yards
– $750K for 750 yards
– $1M for…

— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) April 14, 2023

Trade Deadline

The NFL trade deadline is on October 31, 2023 and the topic has attracted the attention of ESPN’s Bill Barnwell who proposes a few trades across the league. One involves the Ravens.

Barnwell opines…

Let’s clean up one more mistaken offseason addition for general manager Joe Douglas & Co. Cook has been a total nonfactor for the Jets, averaging just 2.7 yards per carry this season. He has averaged a whopping minus-1.5 rush yards over expectation (RYOE), the second-worst mark in the NFL with backs who have had at least 30 carries, trailing only Cam Akers. The Jets turned their backfield over to Breece Hall last week and gave Cook just 17% of the offensive snaps in Sunday’s win over the Broncos, so with Cook’s role diminishing on a team playing out a lost season, there’s no real place for the veteran on New York’s roster.

With $262,000 in per-week roster bonuses due over the rest of the season, Cook has negative trade value. The Jets aren’t going to want to pay $3.4 million for a back buried on their depth chart — and neither will just about any other team. Here, New York would actually be giving up extra draft capital to get Cook out the door for a swap of selections in the 2025 draft. It’s better to give his carries to Hall and Israel Abanikanda and roll the $3.4 million over to 2024.

The Ravens would be buying some additional draft capital and adding a veteran back as a flier to help plug another hole caused by injuries. J.K. Dobbins is out for the year (Achilles), while Justice Hill has been battling a turf toe injury. General manager Eric DeCosta has turned to veterans Kenyan Drake and Melvin Gordon III with limited results, but Cook was a more productive back as recently as last season. Adding Cook into the mix would land Baltimore some upside and limited downside, given the guaranteed victory in terms of draft capital.

When roster bonuses are factored in plus the salary due Cook, this proposed trade would hit the Ravens 2023 cap to the tune of an estimated $3.9M if the trade is pulled off just before the deadline. Currently, the Ravens have a little over $2.1M in available cap space. So, they would have to make some salary cap modifications by restructuring. The best candidates for a restructure are Lamar Jackson, Mark Andrews and Roquan Smith who would generate $3.71M, $3.21M and $5.46M in cap savings, respectively.

DeCosta pulled off some in-season trade magic before when he landed Marcus Peters in 2019 and Roquan in 2022. Can he do it again? And is RB the right place to look as Barnwell suggests?