The Ravens will resume on-field work when training camp opens this month and they could get some off-field business done before the start of the season as well.
Wide receiver Zay Flowers is eligible for a contract extension and General Manager Eric DeCosta was asked during an appearance on 105.7 The Fan whether he’d like to see that done before the start of the regular season. DeCosta said that he would and that there have been “good conversations” with Flowers’s representatives about a deal.
“Yeah, definitely,” DeCosta said. “I love Zay, Zay wants to be here, we want Zay here. . . . . Certainly a work in progress, optimistic about it. Feel like at some point it will get done.”
The Ravens have exercised their fifth-year option on Flowers’s rookie deal, so he is under contract through 2027 as the two sides try to work out a longer arrangement.
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There were positive reports about Ravens defensive tackle Nnamdi Madubuike’s prospects for playing in 2026 throughout the offseason and General Manager Eric DeCosta provided another one on Thursday.
Madubuike missed all but two games of the 2025 season with a neck injury that required a surgical repair. During an appearance on 105.7 The Fan that was shared by the team’s website, DeCosta said that there’s optimism about Madubuike’s condition a couple of weeks before the Ravens open up training camp.
“I think everything looks to be pointed in the right direction, but you’re talking about a different type of injury, a different type of circumstance,” DeCosta said. “I’m excited about where Nnamdi is, and I think we’ll have more information in the coming weeks. In the next two weeks, I think we’ll have a lot more information that we’ll be able to share with people.”
Madubuike had 19.5 sacks and 50 quarterback hits over the 2023 and 2024 seasons and he had a pair of sacks in his brief time on the field last year. New head coach Jesse Minter would welcome the return of that kind of production to the defensive line as he tries to get the Ravens back into the playoffs.
Whenever quarterback Joe Flacco finally retires, he’ll have a reward waiting for him in Baltimore.
Flacco will be joining the Ravens Ring of Honor.
The first episode of the latest season of Quarterback on Netflix focuses on Flacco’s Week 1 return to Baltimore in the 2025 season, where he faced the team that made him a first-round pick in 2008. During a pregame conversation, Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti makes it clear to Flacco that Bisciotti is ready to put the Super Bowl XLVII MVP in the Ring of Honor once Flacco finishes his playing career.
“I’m so happy you’re healthy and still pulling this off,” Bisciotti says. “I thought I’d have you up in my Ring of Honor about five years ago.”
“You called me five years ago,” Flacco responds.
“I did, didn’t I?”
“We can delay that a little bit,” Flacco says.
It’ll be delayed at least another year, as Flacco embarks on his 19th NFL season — and his eighth since leaving Baltimore after the 2018 campaign.
And he’ll be back in Baltimore again this year, as the backup to Joe Burrow with the Bengals.
The crowning achievement of Joe Flacco’s NFL career came at Super Bowl XLVII, when his Ravens won the championship and he was named Super Bowl Most Valuable Player. But while the accomplishment might matter to him, the ring and trophy that came with it does not.
Flacco revealed on the Netflix Quarterback documentary series that his MVP trophy has been scuffed over the years because keeping it pristine wasn’t a priority, as the trophy itself really never mattered to him. As for the ring, he said it means more to his children that they can put on their dad’s ring than it means to him.
“This is my Super Bowl MVP trophy,” Flacco said, showing the cameras how worn down it is. “It’s tarnished as heck. It’s been in my dad’s place, nobody’s touched this in 12 years, 13 years. These are things you think you’re going to care about a lot, and I guess the idea is, ‘That’d be cool, to have an office and put some things up.’ And then you ultimately don’t care about it. Like this ring. I think my kids like to look at it. I think that’s ultimately what it’s for.”
Ultimately, Flacco knows the Super Bowl itself means something to himself and his legacy, not the tangible objects that came along with it.
From time to time, players will claim that they are uniquely positioned to assess the skills of other players. And then they’ll completely undermine that position by making a horribly flawed assessment of a given player.
Case in point: In the NFL Network list of the NFL’s top 100 players, as determined exclusively by players, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson came in at No. 69. A full sixty-seven spots below where he was ranked in 2025.
Sure, the Ravens didn’t make the playoffs (barely). Yeah, Jackson missed four games due to injury. OK, his passing yards fell from 4,172 to 2,549. Right, his rushing yards dropped from 915 to 349.
Regardless, he’s Lamar Jackson. There aren’t 68 players better than him in the NFL. There aren’t 28. There aren’t 18. There arguably aren’t eight.
So how did it happen? As the voting process was explained at some point during the years NFLN has conducted the top-100 voting, an unspecified number of players are asked to list their top 20 NFL players. Points are assigned, 20 down to one, based on where a player lands. If a player, no matter how objectively good he is, is having an off year, he’ll slip farther than he should — because the players who are currently playing at a high level when a given ballot is constructed will end up in higher spots on more ballots.
Really, it’s not on the players. The process is flawed. As evidenced by the fact that Lamar Jackson fell 67 spots to No. 69.
The NFL is making a significant change to the offseason calendar for the 2027 season.
Tom Pelissero of NFL Media reports that the free agent negotiating window will open on March 9 next year. That is the same date that the two-day window opened this year, but the change comes in how close it will be to the end of the Scouting Combine.
NFL teams will wrap up their examinations and interrogations of incoming prospects on March 8 in 2027, which moves the league away from having a week or so between the two events as they have in past years.
Under that setup, the Combine has always been rife with table-setting for free agency as agents and team executives are all in the same place with their minds on the same things. With that gap eliminated, there will likely be even more of that work being done in Indianapolis so that teams are ready to make moves right from the starting gun.
The Fourth of July is one of the slowest NFL news days of the year. Every year, I remember the shocking news that emerged in the early afternoon of July 4, 2009.
Former Titans and Ravens quarterback Steve McNair had been murdered.
The details were confusing. It was quickly ruled a murder-suicide; McNair was shot by his 20-year-old girlfriend, who then shot herself. The woman, Sahel Kazemi, had reportedly never owned a gun. But McNair was execution-style, with two shots to the chest and two to the head.
Questions lingered regarding whether someone else was involved, but the case was never re-opened. In 2018, SI.com released a podcast series on the McNair murder.
The third overall pick in the 1995 draft, McNair led the Titans to Super Bowl XXXIV, nearly throwing a late touchdown pass that would have set the stage for overtime (or the ultimate all-or-nothing two-point conversion) against the Rams. McNair shared the NFL MVP award with Peyton Manning in 2003, and he finished his career with two seasons in Baltimore.
McNair is a member of the Titans’ Ring of Honor. The team has retired number 9 in his honor.
McNair was only 36 when he died, 17 years ago today.
The brother of Ravens defensive end Calais Campbell has been charged with murdering their mother.
Ciarre Campbell, brother of Calais Campbell, was booked early Wednesday morning in Fulton County Jail on charges of murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm or knife, according to WSB TV.
Calais Campbell’s family released a statement confirming his mother’s death but not commenting on the charges against his brother.
“We are devastated to share that the Campbell Family has lost its matriarch, Mrs. Nateal Campbell,” the statement said. “While the details of her passing are still being investigated, we take comfort in knowing she is reunited with our father, her beloved Chuck, and in the arms of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We ask for privacy at this time so that we may honor her and share in our overwhelming grief privately and as a family.”
Atlanta Police confirmed that they received a call on Tuesday afternoon asking for a welfare check at Nateal Campbell’s home, and the officers who responded found her body. Lt. Christapher Butler, the head of the Atlanta Police Department’s Homicide Unit, said police had previously been called regarding issues at the home.
“A brief look into the history does show some calls back in April dealing with this location a possible arson incident,” Butler told WSB TV. “There have been some indications of possible some mental health issues with an individual.”
Calais Campbell is heading into his 19th NFL season and is one of the NFL’s most respected players. He was the NFL’s Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year in 2019 and is a six-time Pro Bowler. In addition to the Ravens, he has played for the Cardinals, Jaguars, Falcons and Dolphins.
Campbell and his family founded the Charles R. Campbell Foundation to honor his late father and support mentorship and education. The co-founders included both Nateal Campbell and Ciarre Campbell. The foundation’s literature says that Calais attributes much of his success to growing up in a “household bursting at the seams with love.”
Ravens wide receiver Zay Flowers has played three years in the NFL, which means he’s eligible for a second contract. Lamar Jackson says that second contract should be a big one.
Jackson, the quarterback who has been throwing to Flowers since the Ravens took Flowers in the first round of the 2023 NFL draft, said when asked how valuable Flowers is that his value is off the charts.
“We love Zay. We need Zay,” Jackson said. “He’s one of the best receivers in the league, and he’s shown that since he stepped on the NFL field back in 2023. I wasn’t even here yet — he was just doing his route-running and making crazy catches. He was just doing what he’s been doing. His value is out of this world. That’s what I’d say.”
The Ravens picked up the fifth-year option on Flowers’ rookie contract, which means he’s under contract through 2027 and is set to make $27.3 million guaranteed that year. Flowers surely wants more than that per year on a long-term deal. Jackson thinks he’s worth it.
When Ravens safety Malaki Starks reflected on his rookie season in May, he said it was not up to the standard he set for himself.
Starks’s opinion of his work didn’t change over the last few weeks. The 2025 first-round pick told Jeff Zrebiec of TheAthletic.com that he “probably would go C-plus, B-minus” on a report card and he also shared what he plans to do in order to raise that grade for his second season.
Starks said he is integrating pilates into his offseason workouts and has added weight after playing at 202 pounds last year. Starks said he also plans to consult a Super Bowl-winning coach.
“I’m going to get back with Jon Gruden,” Starks said. “I trained with him before the draft, so I’m going to get back with him and pick his brain a little bit. . . . It’s awesome. I trained with him for the draft. He prepped me for the draft and we’ve been really cool ever since. Just to learn from a guy like him and have him as a resource, I think it will be huge.”
The Ravens have a new head coach in Jesse Minter and Starks said that “everybody gets a new start” in that situation. A little time with Gruden is part of his plan to make the most of that fresh start.
