For the entirety of their franchise’s existence, the Baltimore Ravens have lacked in the wide receiver department. It seems like every year, draft pundits link them to the top wide receiver prospects. With the 2023 NFL Draft in a couple of days, will predictions about the Ravens drafting a wide receiver come to fruition?
NFL Draft Predictions: Will the Baltimore Ravens Target the WR Position?
It’s no secret that the Ravens’ true “WR1” is tight end Mark Andrews. While they can certainly survive with Andrews as their primary pass catcher, the team still needs to add wide receivers.
One has to imagine the 2022 season served as a wake-up call for the Ravens’ front office. After trading away Marquise “Hollywood” Brown during last year’s draft, the Ravens literally didn’t do anything to replace him.
Rashod Bateman entered last season as the team’s WR1, which he will be again this year. But behind him, the team had Devin Duvernay, Sammy Watkins, and Demarcus Robinson. At best, Duvernay and Robinson are rotational WR3s. Watkins, meanwhile, doesn’t belong on an active roster.
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Unsurprisingly, the passing game struggled mightily after Bateman went down with a season-ending injury following Week 6.
Now, as the 2023 NFL Draft is upon us, many are predicting the Ravens to draft a wide receiver on Day 1 or Day 2. PFN Mock Draft Simulator users are assigning TCU’s Quentin Johnston or Boston College’s Zay Flowers to the Ravens in the first round more than any other players.
How Would a Rookie Wide Receiver Fit on the Ravens?
In their entire history, it’s not unfair to posit that no version of the Ravens needed to draft a wide receiver more than the 2022 team. Yet, they didn’t select a single one.
Baltimore spent either a Day 1 or Day 2 pick on a wide receiver in each of the previous three drafts. But prior to drafting Brown in 2019, the Ravens hadn’t spent a first-round pick on a wide receiver since the failed Breshad Perriman experiment in 2015. Before that, you have to go all the way back to Mark Clayton in 2005.
While Baltimore didn’t draft a wide receiver at all last season, them spending first-round picks in 2019 and 2021 on Brown and Bateman, respectively, does indicate a renewed interest in addressing the position.
Currently, the Ravens are poised to start Bateman and Odell Beckham Jr. in two-receiver sets, with Duvernay and Nelson Agholor sharing the WR3 role. Despite the team being in a far better position than it was last year, the Ravens still have work to do at wide receiver.
The 2023 wide receiver class is considered weaker than recent classes, but there are still a handful of players that would immediately slot in at the team’s WR3. Additionally, even though the Ravens gave Beckham $15 million guaranteed, at 30 years old and coming off a twice-torn ACL, his production is far from a certainty.
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I’m not the biggest fan of Johnston as a talent, but he would provide the Ravens with something they’ve never really had — a big-bodied outside receiver. Johnston could play the stretch Z in three-receiver sets, allowing Beckham to move into the slot.
If the Ravens draft Flowers, the 5’9″, 182-pound slot receiver would fit in perfectly well in the slot.
Beyond Johnston and Flowers, the Ravens could look to USC’s Jordan Addison or North Carolina’s Josh Downs. It’s also possible they wait until the second round and take Houston’s Tank Dell or Tennessee’s Jalin Hyatt.
One name conspicuously absent from the Ravens’ potential draftees is Ohio State’s Jaxon Smith-Njigba. That has nothing to do with Baltimore not wanting him but rather the near certainty he’ll be off the board by the time the Ravens pick. A trade-up to select JSN is the only plausible scenario in which he’d end up in Baltimore.
Any way you slice it, if the top NFL Draft predictions are to be believed, come Saturday, the Ravens will have another wide receiver on their roster.