Did the Ravens improve their roster enough during 2021 draft?
As the Baltimore Ravens watched the 2021 NFL draft wind down, they came away confident that they had put together a great group of rookies who could come in and play quality football at the highest level. A big part of that was not only did they draft quality football players, but they also filled plenty of holes on their roster. However, did they improve their roster enough to be seen as true contenders for a Super Bowl?
In short, the answer is yes. No team is able to fill every single need with a high quality player unless they get extremely lucky with development, drafting, and free agency bargains. With Baltimore, they addressed many of their holes that were issues heading into the draft, and have already shown a willingness to round out their roster with free agents at the needs that they didn’t look at during the draft.
The Ravens took two wide receivers in Rashod Bateman and Tylan Wallace to add more talented weapons for Lamar Jackson. They drafted two edge defenders in Odafe Oweh and Daelin Hayes to try to offset the losses of Matthew Judon, Yannick Ngakoue, and Jihad Ward. They selected a guard to shore up the interior of their offensive line in Ben Cleveland, while also taking a do it all H-back in Ben Mason. The team also made sure to shore up their secondary by taking both Brandon Stephens and Shaun Wade.
That draft haul for Baltimore signifies an effort to put the best possible roster on the field in Week 1 of the 2021 season. However, the Ravens didn’t select an offensive tackle or a defensive lineman, sparking a bit of panic as to how they planned to fill out those positions. While the team hasn’t addressed the defensive line (and honestly doesn’t need to until the 2022 draft), Baltimore signed tackle Alejandro Villanueva, who should slot into the right tackle spot that so desperately needed a starter after the departure of Brown.
The draft is a way to fill holes while also leaving room to improve a roster in the remaining waves of free agency. The Ravens used that strategy to perfection, and still could use another veteran edge rusher to truly have minimal needs remaining to address. While Baltimore didn’t plug up every single hole on their roster during the 2021 draft, they improved their team and added enough talent to keep them in the Super Bowl contenders category.
