With Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco out for the rest of the 2015 season due to an ACL injury, veteran backup Matt Schaub will get an opportunity to add an extra $1MM to his season’s earnings. As Joel Corry of CBSSports.com explains (via Twitter), Schaub’s deal includes a $500K incentive for playing 5% of Baltimore’s offensive snaps, and another $500K if he reaches 10%. With six games still left on the schedule, Schaub should have no trouble hitting those benchmarks unless he suffers an injury of his own.
Here’s more on the Ravens and a couple of their AFC North rivals:
- In the view of Jamison Hensley of ESPN.com, losing Flacco makes the Ravens the favorite to land the first overall pick for the 2016 draft. Currently, Baltimore is 3-7, a game ahead of the Browns, Titans, and Chargers, who have two wins apiece, so I’m not sure I’d call the Ravens the frontrunner for that first overall pick. Still, it certainly looks like the team is on track for its highest selection since 2000, when Jamal Lewis went fifth overall. The Ravens have never had a top-three pick.
- The Bengals are fearing the worst for second-year cornerback Darqueze Dennard, who was injured in Sunday’s loss to the Cardinals, tweets Ian Rapoport of NFL.com. According to Rapoport, Dennard dislocated his shoulder, and will undergo an MRI today to see if he suffered a tear as well. There’s a chance he’ll land on the injured reserve list later this week.
- Steelers quarterback Michael Vick said today that he’d like to play for another season, and wouldn’t mind returning to Pittsburgh in 2016, even if Landry Jones is the No. 2 quarterback heading into the summer (Twitter link via Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). In previous offseason, Vick has prioritized an opportunity at a starting job, so this would be a much different approach to free agency for him.
The Ravens tailor their roster construction to their goal of simply making the playoffs; they are perfectly content to sneak in as a wildcard entrant each year and take their chances. That means they don’t make free agent splashes, they hoard compensatory picks, and they don’t make major moves to climb the draft board. Generally speakings, that’s a sound strategy that serves them and similarly-inclined teams like the Patriots and Steelers pretty well. But every once in a while, you simply need the opportunity to draft an elite talent, and the chances of finding such a talent are a lot better in the top 10 picks of the draft than they are in the 20-30 range. Although this has been a lost season for Baltimore, they still have a strong base of talent, and a high draft pick could be just the boost the team needs to return to the playoffs in 2016.
I agree.