On January 29, 2019, Baltimore Ravens GM Eric DeCosta uttered something in an interview with Garrett Downing that has stuck with me for almost a year and a half: “I will do whatever we can to build a bully…”
That word, bully. That’s it! That’s what the Ravens have been missing. Heading into 2019, before the NFL Draft, I looked at the Ravens roster on paper and thought, “I get what DeCosta means.” The Ravens had smooth and suave players, sure, but they were missing a lot of types of guys you would have seen on the 2000 Ravens defense, or even recent offensive guys like Steve Smith, Sr.