Baltimore Beatdown
The Ravens top front office executive talked about the starters and role players slated to hit the open market.
At the end of every NFL season whether a team comes up short in the playoffs, misses the postseason entirely or is fortunate to be the last one left standing, they will have tough decisions to make in the ensuing offseason.
Thankfully, the Baltimore Ravens don’t have nearly as many hard choices to make this year as they might in 2026 with so many key players entering the final years of their respective contracts this fall. Nevertheless, they still have pending unrestricted free agents who were vital to their success in 2024 that they’d like to have and could be back in 2025.
During an end-of-the-season press conference on Wednesday, Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta was asked about various players whose contracts are expiring this offseason and here is what he had to say about each and what he might actually mean:
LT Ronnie Stanley and LG Patrick Mekari
“I think our goal is to always have the best offensive line that we can have,” DeCosta said. “We made a tough call last year to go younger and have some younger guys play, and we knew we’d have a few growing pains. I think we had a few, but looking back on it, I think it was absolutely the right thing to do, and we saw our guys improve and get better and really mesh as a unit and gel. We are aware that we have some guys whose contracts are up, and we’ll look at that and certainly have some discussions with players.
“We’ll look at potentially bringing back our guys; we’ll look at the draft; we’ll look at free agency; we’ll overturn every rock to find as many good offensive linemen as we can, and I think we have some good young players on the team – they’ve shown that. And one thing we’ve seen over the years with that position, is guys get better as they get older and more established. They get in the weight room, they get stronger and play better, so that’s going to be the case with the guys we have. We’re blessed to have really good coaches and some good young players, but also, we realize we’re going to have – conservatively – 10 or 11 draft picks this year, free agency, and still a chance to get some deals signed with some of those guys.”
Stanley is coming off a resurgent season where he was healthy for the first time since suffering his first major injury in 2020 and played every game for the first time in his career. He was recently named to his second career Pro Bowl as a replacement for Houston Texan’s Laremy Tunsil who one could argue he deserved to be named over initially. The nine-year veteran is slated to be a free agent for the first time in his career and will be one...
