INDIANAPOLIS — Something has seemed just off with the Baltimore Ravens for some time, and now we have on-the-record proof of a locker room/front office rift.
A day after Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta said, “if I had an answer [explaining Baltimore’s struggles drafting wide receivers], that means I would probably have some better receivers, I guess,” one of those Ravens receivers took a swipe back at DeCosta on Twitter.
“How bout you play to your player’s strength and stop pointing the finger at us and [Lamar Jackson],” former Ravens first-round pick Rashod Bateman wrote, and then later deleted. “… blame the one you let do this. … we take heat 24/7. & keep us healthy. …Care about US & see what happen.”
“Ain’t no promises tho,” Bateman continued. “… tired of y’all lyin and capn on players for no reason.”
Rashod Bateman Makes Public Beef With Baltimore Ravens GM Eric DeCosta
After deleting the tweet, Bateman apologized. The toothpaste, however, was already out of the tube.
His comments went viral on social media and earned the support of former teammate Hollywood Brown, who quote-tweeted Bateman’s criticism with: “Let him cook.”
Bateman, a first-round pick in the 2021 NFL Draft, has not lived up to expectations. He’s caught 61 total passes for 800 yards and three touchdowns in his first two seasons, appearing in just 18 of a possible 34 regular-season games due to groin and foot injuries.
Bateman is one of six wide receivers the Ravens have drafted since 2019, a forgettable group aside from Brown — whom the Ravens traded to Arizona last offseason.
MORE: The Unspoken Truth About the Ravens and Lamar Jackson
Those struggles in player evaluation prompted a reporter to ask DeCosta to explain those many misses.
“It’s a challenging position to evaluate in different ways,” DeCosta responded. “If I had an answer, that means I would probably have some better receivers, I guess. We keep trying. I think there’s a lot of things that go along with that position.
“Sometimes, it is tied to the quarterback, and I think it’s tied to things like durability. It’s tied to a lot of things. We’re going to keep swinging. There have been some guys that have been successful players for us that were draft picks.
“We’ve never really hit on that All-Pro type of guy, which is disappointing, I would say. But it’s not for a lack of effort. We believe in what we do. We believe in our scouting, we believe in the system that we have, the scouting system that we have. It’s one of those anomalies that I really can’t explain other than to say we’re not gonna stop trying. We’re gonna keep trying.
“We’ve drafted probably at least five or six receivers in the last four years maybe. We’re going to just keep swinging and, and hopefully at one of these points, we’ll hit the ball out of the park. But that’s our goal. We understand the importance of the position. We’ll keep trying to do it.”
More Baltimore Ravens Drama
DeCosta’s comments on Baltimore’s wide receivers barely made a ripple immediately after his Wednesday news conference, and it wasn’t until Bateman called him out on Thursday that it became a national story.
Far more attention has been paid in recent weeks to another unhappy Ravens player: quarterback Lamar Jackson. The Ravens need to decide by next Tuesday whether to apply the exclusive or non-exclusive franchise tag — Jackson reportedly wants far more guaranteed money than the Ravens are willing to grant him.
So friction with your league MVP quarterback plus the public rift between DeCosta and Bateman hints at deeper divides inside a franchise that has made the playoffs four of the past five years but has not advanced past the Divisional Round since 2012.
Also this week, former Ravens players including defensive tackle Carl Davis seized on the release of the NFLPA report card, in which players gave the Ravens strength coaching an F-minus.
“I was def a victim of the strength coaches,” Davis wrote Wednesday. “Two Labrums and multiple pec strains.”