Reports last month indicated that the Ravens have increased optimism about defensive tackle Nnamdi Madubuike will be able to return from the neck injury that kept him out for the final 15 games last season, but the team has offered no concrete word about his outlook for the coming season.
That didn’t change at Ravens General Manager Eric DeCosta’s press conference on Wednesday. While DeCosta didn’t provide clarity about the veteran’s chances of playing this fall, he did say that any uncertainty will not be a major factor in how the team approaches the draft next week.
“I would say that Nnamdi’s status doesn’t really affect us that much in terms of like what we’re going to do in the draft at the defensive tackle position,” DeCosta said. “So, as you know, we just try to rank the board, and then whoever the best player is at that point in time. Certainly, we would love to get a young defensive lineman if we can. I think it’s important to try and do that every single year if we can. It’s an important position. We want to get better up front, certainly, on both sides, offense- and defensive-line-wise. It’s a priority for us, I think, and getting a younger player in there who’s a talented younger player would be ideal, and it just depends on how the board falls and who’s available at that time.”
Travis Jones, Broderick Washington, John Jenkins, Aeneas Peebles, C.J, Okoye, and David Olajiga are the other defensive linemen currently on the roster in Baltimore.
Ravens Clips
Ravens General Manager Eric DeCosta is heading into the 2026 NFL draft with his first pick coming at No. 14. Which is right around where DeCosta thinks the talent in this draft starts to drop off.
DeCosta said that when he evaluates the overall talent level available this year, he sees a strong first half of the first round, but a weaker second half.
“First round, there’s definitely a drop off probably midway through the round in terms of talent,” DeCosta said.
DeCosta said the overall talent level this year is “a little less than last year.”
“We have just under 200 players that we have ranked as draftable for us,” DeCosta said. “If the board came off exactly the same way as we have it, we’d have to go outside of that to finish our draft because there’s over 250 picks.”
DeCosta disputed the notion that his willingness to trade away his first-round pick for Maxx Crosby indicates he didn’t think the 14th pick in this year’s draft is particularly valuable.
“We’re excited to have the pick this year at 14,” DeCosta said. “We think we’re going to get a really good player.”
The Ravens traded cornerback Jaire Alexander to the Eagles on Nov. 1, and he stepped away from football on Nov. 12 without playing a game for his new team. The Eagles retain his rights, so if he ever decides to return, it will be with Philadelphia unless the team releases him or trades him.
Alexander, 29, posted about his mental health struggles on social media on Wednesday and made it sound as if his football career is over.
“As much as I loved Baltimore, I didn’t love the position I was in,” Alexander wrote. “I had a bunch of internal battles with myself. I didn’t have that confidence in my abilities I once did. At corner, you need ultimate confidence in your abilities, and I felt it slipping away. It was at this moment I contemplated if I was making the right decision for my career. What helped me get through these times was not only God & my family, but I had some really cool teammates who made it fun to be there. I felt as if I let the organization down. My family and friends would drive up to see me, and I wasn’t even playing in the games. I never questioned God, but why me? All this while having a smile on my face. Football is a true gladiator sport, and once the confidence has gone, it’s time to hang it up. Thank you Flock Nation for embracing me. Thank you EDC for believing in me & thank you for the unlimited therapy sessions I had to encounter to help me with my time there. I am so grateful for the experience.”
Alexander made two Pro Bowls in eight seasons. He played seven seasons in Green Bay before the Packers released him last summer, and he appeared in two games with the Ravens last season.
The Ravens could be a landing spot for multiple tight ends in next week’s draft.
Baltimore parted ways with Isaiah Likely and Charlie Kolar in free agency and the only addition they’ve made to the group is Durham Smythe. Mark Andrews is set to be the top tight end on the roster and General Manager Eric DeCosta said at a Wednesday press conference that it shouldn’t come as a surprise if they address the position multiple times over the seven-round draft.
“You got some guys that can go high,” DeCosta said, via the team’s website. “But then, as you get into the fourth, fifth, and sixth rounds, we see guys that do something well. When you get into those rounds, that’s what you’re looking for. They are going to have some type of hole, but what do they do well? I think there’s a strong chance we’ll add a couple more throughout, for sure.”
Ravens offensive coordinator Declan Doyle was with the Bears last season and Chicago’s offense made frequent use of Colston Loveland and Cole Kmet. That could be a good sign for the chances of any addition making an immediate impact for the Ravens in 2026.
One of the draft’s top tight ends is continuing a busy stretch this week.
Per Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, Georgia’s Oscar Delp is visiting with the Buccaneers and Chargers this week.
Delp previously had top-30 visits with the Patriots, Ravens, and Vikings last week.
Delp did not work out at the scouting combine after a hairline fracture was revealed in his foot during a routine X-ray. But Delp was able to work out at Georgia’s Pro Day last month.
An experienced player at Georgia, Delp was on the field for 55 games with 34 starts. He totaled 70 receptions for 854 yards with nine touchdowns. That includes 21 receptions for 248 yards and four TDs in 2025.
Cornerback Mansoor Delane has a handful of pre-draft visits planned for the coming days.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that Delane is slated to meet with the Bengals, Ravens and Commanders before the window to visit teams closes this week. Delane also spent time with the Dolphins and Giants recently.
Delane is bidding to be the top cornerback selected this year. He spent the 2025 season at LSU after playing at Virginia Tech and was an All-American during his lone season in Baton Rouge. He had 45 tackles and two interceptions for the Tigers.
Avieon Terrell and Jermod McCoy are also at the top of the list of cornerback prospects this year.
The Giants hosted veteran defensive tackle D.J. Reader for a free agent visit on Monday, according to Jordan Schultz of The Schultz Report.
Reader, 31, recently visited the Ravens and is expected to sign with a new team post-draft.
He ranks 40th on PFT’s list of this year’s top free agents.
Giants defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence has requested a trade, but the team wanted to add at the position anyway after ranking 31st against the run in 2025.
Reader started every game for the Lions last season and finished the year with 28 tackles. He also played 15 games for the Lions in 2024 and previously appeared in 105 games for the Bengals and Texans.
He has 328 tackles, 12.5 sacks, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery in his career.
In two different rulings issued less than 15 months apart, the internal grievance system created by the NFL and the NFL Players Association found that, essentially, the NFL invited its teams to collude on the issue of fully-guaranteed contracts but the teams did not accept.
The first part is stunning, and in many ways unprecedented as it relates to the NFL. In response to the Deshaun Watson contract (five years, $230 million, fully guaranteed), the league sounded the alarm at the 2022 annual meeting.
From the notes of the presentation made to the teams in March 2022: "[I]f guarantees continue to grow in both amount and number of players, then there’s a risk that they become the norm in contracts regardless of player quality . . . That not only has the potential to hinder roster management but set a market standard that will be difficult to walk back. Of course, all Clubs must make their own decisions. But continuing these trends can handcuff a Club long into the future.”
The teams, per both the arbitrator and the three-person appeal panel, ignored this invitation/advice.
The appeals panel recognized that the teams will never admit to collusion, and that circumstantial evidence is “the coin of the[] realm” when it comes to proving it. The panel, however, found insufficient circumstantial evidence to prove that collusion occurred.
The panel dismissed expert testimony regarding the decrease in signing bonuses and guaranteed salary after the league invited the teams to collude. The panel rejected the basic, commonsensical idea that, if the league invited them to restrict guaranteed contracts and if guaranteed contracts were thereafter restricted, the teams must have followed the league’s advice.
It’s a myopic assessment of the real world that borders on the obtuse. The 32 teams operate as a league. They enjoy an antitrust exemption as to the player workforce through a multi-employer bargaining unit. The Collective Bargaining Agreement allows the teams to give players guaranteed contracts. The mere fact that the league would even broach the subject of the teams choosing to not do something the CBA allows them to do is, as the panel found, “improper.”
What other proof is needed to show that the league and the teams colluded?
Beyond that, the appeals panel acknowledged that the text-message exchange between Chargers owner Dean Spanos and Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill after the Cardinals managed to avoid giving quarterback Kyler Murray a fully-guaranteed contract was “inappropriate.” The panel somehow found that Spanos thanking Bidwill for “staying strong” when it comes to not giving Murray a fully-guaranteed contract was not proof of collusion but of an “isolated incident.”
Some would call that “isolated incident” a “smoking gun.”
The appeals ruling ignores the evidence of internal communications within the Broncos organization regarding their negotiations with quarterback Russell Wilson. From the original arbitration ruling, owner Greg Penner told other members of the team’s ownership group that “there’s not[h]ing in here that other owners will consider off market (e.g. like the Watson guarantees).” Later, Penner told his partners that G.M. George Paton “feels very good about it for us as a franchise and the benchmark it sets (versus Watson) for the rest of the league.”
Why would or should the Broncos care what other owners think? The mere fact that the concern was on the radar screen shows that the Broncos were worried about running afoul of the wink-nod understanding that teams would hold the rope on the issue of fully-guaranteed contracts after the Watson deal.
Although the panel did indeed find that the league invited teams to collude, what choice did it have? The NFL didn’t just say the quiet part out loud. It put it in writing! Anyone who understands how the NFL works knows what the message was, and how it was received. The Spanos-Bidwill texts confirm it, as do the internal Broncos communications.
And while the Ravens, per the panel, did indeed offer quarterback Lamar Jackson a pair of three-year fully-guaranteed contracts, he didn’t accept them. He wanted a five-year, fully-guaranteed deal, like the one Watson had gotten. The Ravens, to paraphrase Spanos, “stayed strong.”
Did the NFL invite the teams to collude? Yes. Did the teams thereafter accept the invitation? Hell yes.
The NFL suggesting that the teams refrain from doing something that the CBA allows them to do should have been enough. The Spanos-Bidwill texts should have been enough. The Broncos’ internal communications should have been enough.
Now that the league has dodged the collusion bullet, the NFL and its teams will learn from the experience. They’ll never put anything in writing that ever could be characterized as proof of collusion. And it will become even harder — if not impossible — for the NFLPA to prove collusion when it happens.
Even if it will happen. Because the facts of the failed grievance show, in our view, that it absolutely did.
The initial ruling in the collusion grievance filed by the NFL Players Association on behalf of Lamar Jackson, Russell Wilson, and Kyler Murray shed new light on the negotiations between Jackson and the Ravens that preceded his five-year deal in 2023. The appeal ruling adds a key fresh detail, too.
In two different portions of page 14 of the decision, the three-person panel writes that the Ravens twice offered three-year, fully-guaranteed contracts to Jackson.
Jackson declined both of them.
The ruling mentions none of the other key terms, like annual compensation. It’s also not mentioned whether the three-year contracts included a no-tag clause, which would have set the stage for unrestricted free agency in March 2026.
Although the Deshaun Watson contract that apparently sparked Jackson’s desire to have a fully-guaranteed contract of his own covered five years, a three-year fully-guaranteed deal gets the player all of his money along with a shorter path to another deal or free agency.
Jackson eventually signed a five-year deal with two years and part of a third fully guaranteed at signing. The rest of the third year became fully guaranteed early in the second year, and a large chunk of the fourth year ($29 million of $52 million) became fully guaranteed early in the fourth year. The fifth year has no guarantees.
But fully guaranteed is fully guaranteed. The fact that the Ravens offered Jackson a pair of three-year fully-guaranteed contracts (which is what Kirk Cousins got from the Vikings in 2018) defied the NFL’s effort as of March 2022 to persuade the teams to collude in not providing fully-guaranteed deals.
This year, plenty of the contracts signed in unrestricted free agency cover only three years. That’s better for players than having non-guaranteed back-end years, because once the full guarantees end the contracts become one-way arrangements — if the player is underperforming, the contract gets ripped up by the team; if the player is overperforming, the player is at the mercy of the team in an effort to get a raise.
It’s unknown why Jackson didn’t accept either of the fully-guaranteed deals offered by the Ravens. If they were in the neighborhood of the prevailing market value at the time ($51.5 million, set by Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts) and if they included a no-tag clause, Jackson arguably should have taken the deals.
Regardless, and based on the new appeal ruling, the Ravens offered Jackson a three-year, fully-guaranteed contract, not once but twice.
Wide receiver Denzel Boston has made a lot of visits around the league ahead of the draft and he is adding Baltimore to the list on Friday.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that Boston is meeting with the Ravens. He spent time with the Panthers earlier this week and has also met with the Raiders, Steelers, Browns, Dolphins and a number of other teams while looking for his NFL landing spot.
Boston is entering the league off of back-to-back strong seasons at Washington and will be trying to join recent Huskie products Rome Odunze, Ja’Lynn Polk and Jalen McMillan as an early pick in the draft.
With the draft getting underway in less than two weeks, the pre-draft visit window will come to an end next week and Boston will turn to waiting to find out where he’ll land after a busy few weeks getting to know his potential landing spots.
