Did a Ravens’ Failed Draft Night Trade Result from the Maxx Crosby Debacle???

A draft-night trade the Baltimore Ravens thought they had at the fourteenth pick fell apart at the table, Rich and the show crew walked through on Monday, citing Mike Silver's reporting in The Athletic on Eric DeCosta. Whether the collapse traces back to John Spytek and the Raiders pulling out of the Maxx Crosby trade days earlier is the open question hanging over the segment.

Per Silver's piece, DeCosta had a deal lined up that would have moved the Ravens back inside the teens and netted fourth-round picks in each of the next two drafts. The team on the other end was not named. "We had something on the table, but inexplicably they told us they changed their mind," DeCosta told Silver. "They changed the deal and we passed." Rich read the quote out loud and lingered on the word inexplicably.

The context that makes the timing interesting, as Rich laid out, is the Raiders-Ravens fallout from earlier in the offseason. Rich had wondered out loud whether other general managers would freeze DeCosta out of the trade market for telling Spytek the Maxx Crosby framework was not working, or whether the industry would shrug and move on once the new league year began. Now, days into the draft, the Ravens had a teens-area trade collapse that DeCosta would not pin on a name. "It'll be next year and next year's new league year netherworld of stuff's not official until new league year begins," Rich said earlier in the discussion, framing why retaliation, if it came, would land in this exact window.

The show floated the natural suspects. Spytek came from Tampa. Tampa picked Reuben Bain at fifteen, one slot after Baltimore. The Bucs were sitting in the teens. Rich would not say it on the nose, only that there is a team in the teens.

What the Ravens did instead, Rich argued, may have done DeCosta a favor. They took the Penn State guard Rich had been pounding the table on since the combine, the one with the flowing red hair he kept asking Daniel Jeremiah about during commercial breaks. "Is this kid a top-ten pick?" Rich recalled asking. The answer, conventionally, was no. Teams do not draft guards in the top ten. "This kid is really really good," Rich said. "The Ravens might have done a favor for whoever changed the deal inexplicably. And they chose wisely."

The cluster DeCosta had been working from at fourteen included Spencer Fano, Francis Mauigoa, Cornell Tate, Jordan Tyson, Kanyon Ricks and Reuben Bain. By the time the Ravens were back on the clock, the names they liked most were gone, and the trade-back partner had walked.