The Harbaughs are making a deal. The Ravens are trading edge rusher Odafe Oweh to the Chargers in a pick-swap exchange also involving Alohi Gilman, NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport and Mike Garafolo report.
Baltimore will trade Oweh and a 2026 fifth-rounder to Los Angeles for Gilman and a 2027 seventh, ESPN’s Adam Schefter adds. This will move a former first-round pick to a Chargers team missing Khalil Mack on the edge. Oweh is tied to a fifth-year option; no substantive extension talks are believed to have occurred between he and the Ravens.
This trade, 12 years after Jim and John Harbaugh agreed on an Anquan Boldin swap when Jim was with the 49ers, also reunites Oweh with Chargers GM Joe Hortiz. The Bolts hired Hortiz from the Ravens; he was Baltimore’s director of player personnel when the team drafted the outside linebacker in 2021.
Oweh is tied to a $13.25MM fifth-year option salary. It has not been reported the Ravens will pick up any of that tab, with Schefter adding the AFC North team will save around $8MM with this trade. Gilman is tied to a prorated $3.5MM base salary, giving the Ravens some flexibility as they attempt to recover from a disastrous defensive start. While it is a bit surprising to see the Ravens give up on a former first-round pick who played well in 2024, Oweh is unsigned beyond this season.
Baltimore did not re-sign Matt Judon after franchise-tagging him in 2020, leading to the Oweh draft choice, and the team did not bring back Jadeveon Clowney in 2024. The Ravens ahve searched for a long-term OLB piece post-Judon, using Oweh and veteran stopgaps — Kyle Van Noy the most notable — during this period. Baltimore picked up Oweh’s option in April 2024 and then saw him post a 10-sack season also including 23 QB hits. Both were runaway career-high marks for Oweh, but he does not have a sack yet in 2025 (Oweh does rank 33rd in 2025 pressure rate, per TruMedia). The Chargers will still bet on the sporadically productive pass rusher.
This trade comes as both the Harbaugh-led teams are trending downward. As our Ely Allen detailed Sunday night, the Ravens are mired in a historically bad defensive stretch. The injury-wrecked unit has fallen from ninth last season to 32nd through five games. John Harbaugh reaffirmed Zach Orr‘s DC status, but at 1-4 and with Lamar Jackson sidelined with a hamstring injury, the Ravens are well off course. The Chargers have lost back-to-back games, seeing O-line injuries pile up. They will say goodbye to Gilman, who played in three-safety sets alongside Derwin James and Elijah Molden under DC Jesse Minter.
The Ravens have played without Van Noy at points this season, and while the aging EDGE returned in Week 5, Baltimore still dropped a 44-10 game to Houston. The Ravens have six sacks as a team, with Tavius Robinson — a 2023 fourth-round pick who supplanted Oweh in the starting lineup — delivering two of those. The team will lean on Robinson moving forward. Robinson’s rookie deal runs through 2026; Van Noy (34) is signed through season’s end.
Oweh, who will turn 27 before season’s end, started 23 games from 2021-24. The Ravens showed modest extension interest, but no deal was believed to be close this offseason. That set up a pivotal contract year for the Penn State product. He will now finish that out in Los Angeles, as the Chargers will pair Oweh with Tuli Tuipulotu and Bud Dupree for the time being. Mack’s dislocated elbow is not viewed as a season-ending injury, so the 3-2 Bolts should be able to roll out a Mack-Tuipulotu-Dupree-Oweh quartet later this season.
How Oweh fares during his L.A. stint will crystalize his free agency value. If Oweh can bounce back under Minter, he could command a reasonably strong market. After all, he also played an auxiliary role for a No. 1-ranked Ravens defense in 2023. Though, Oweh never eclipsed five sacks in a season prior to 2024. The Chargers will attempt to coax better form as they compete for the AFC West title with the Chiefs and Broncos.
The Gilman move comes a year after the Bolts re-signed him. Early in the Hortiz-Jim Harbaugh partnership’s run, the team brought back the Tom Telesco-era find on a two-year, $10.13MM contract. A former sixth-round pick, Gilman has been a full-time starter over the past three seasons. Gilman’s presence has helped unleash James in a hybrid role at which the All-Pro excels, but Garafolo notes the Ravens wanted him for the same role — for Kyle Hamilton-unleashing purposes. Hamilton and Gilman also played together at Notre Dame in the late 2010s.
Baltimore has been busy at safety today, adding both Gilman and C.J. Gardner-Johnson. The Ravens’ home run with Hamilton aside, they missed on safeties Marcus Williams and Eddie Jackson in recent years. Eric DeCosta was also at the controls for the team’s Earl Thomas misfire. In Gilman, the Ravens have a player who excelled under Jim Harbaugh. Gilman’s deal expires at season’s end.
As I discussed in a recent Trade Rumors Front Office piece, the Chargers had been getting by with a low-cost defense — everywhere but safety, that is. The Bolts had allocated by far the most money to safeties this season, having re-signed Molden on a three-year, $18.75MM deal early this offseason.
With James still on a top-market safety pact, the team will swap out the Gilman money for Oweh’s option price, taking on a few million more than it is sending out. Pro Football Focus slots Gilman 33rd among safeties this season. The Chargers should be expected to turn to ex-Raven (and ex-Ravens scout) Tony Jefferson in Gilman’s place, per ESPN.com’s Kris Rhim.
It is the Ravens who are now flooded in safety investments. Although Gardner-Johnson is starting out on the practice squad, it should be expected the veteran starter debuts for the team soon. Baltimore also used a first-round pick on Malaki Starks. It would stand to reason Gilman would play in three-safety looks in Maryland soon, though it is obviously unclear at this point if he will be in the Ravens’ post-2025 plans.
Wow. Watching Oweh fail to overwhelm that terrible Texans offensive line must have been a last straw moment.
That, and he was about to make some bank on spotty production. That’s been a pretty consistent story with Ravens young pass rushers. They show nothing for 3 years, and then all of a sudden when they are about to hit that option or free agent years, the motor finally turns on and they ball out. Then they get massive money either here or elsewhere.
I don’t know what this team was thinking about giving Broderick Washington all that money. What did he show that he deserved what he is making? Then they pay Justin the Mad lad a huge contract off of one big season, then he has a down year. And now he might never play football again. Now, nobody could foresee the injury he sustained, but they are paying him like he’s a lock to get double-digit sacks every season after only doing it once.
They spend tons of money on the secondary and it constantly looks horrible.
Throughout the whole ordeal one thing has remained constant. Harbaugh.
Blow this clown show up. Time to rebuild. Time to get fresh ideas on the field.
That seems like a pretty wild overreaction to a snakebitten season. They were third in the league in points scored when Lamar went down. The defense has been really bad, but also has had horrible injuries. They’re also still only a year removed from a huge brain drain on that side of the ball.
They were horrible for most of last season as well, without the injuries.
The mismanagement of this team has been apparent for years now. Harbaugh is a rah-rah player guy and I think he’s lost control of this team.
I don’t care how many points this team was scoring, they were playing LOSING FOOTBALL. I don’t care how many regular season games they win, they look like Pop Warner in the post season, and the huge reason for that is how Lamar plays in the post season.
This isn’t a kneejerk reaction to a poor season, this is a call to reality based on years of failure.
The Ravens obviously saw safety as a bigger problem spot on the defense, having also signed C.J. Gardner-Johnson to the practice squad.
They must have some news that Hamilton’s injury is going to keep him out for a while to make a move like this for another safety.
It is time to blow this underachieving unit up. Get rid of all the expiring contracts and then get rid of the coaching staff in the off season. This team is an embarrassment and has been for far too long. Winning the regular season awards and then looking like a team that doesn’t even belong in the NFL in the playoffs.
The Ravens go out and get him the best RB in the league, they get him top flight receiving weapons, they gear the offense solely around him, and Lamar still flops. Ever stop to think that the problem isn’t the entire team around Lamar, and could just maybe be Lamar himself?
Top flight receiving options? That’s not even a top ten group of pass catchers. They also got him a running back who was already on the wrong side of 30.
Henry was the best RB at the time that they got him. He was the second-best rusher in the game last season only because Barkley managed to stay healthy for a full season, and he had a breakout season.
Mark Andrews wasn’t one of the top 5 TE in the game before his car accident injury? Then they get him Isiah Likely. They have two first round draft picks on the roster at WR, and then they get him D-Hop who while is slowing down, still has plenty in the tank to make some tough catches.
Stop making excuses.
That’s still not a top flight pass catching group.
The best running back in the league? Jackson in Philly is wearing multiple rings.
Kind of interesting that Goodell and the owners are paranoid about Brady having possible conflicts of interest but don’t even consider that the Harbaugh boys might conspire to help each other.
What is the CHARGER angle on this? I think this is a front end move to get a tackle this clears cap
Chargers actually take a on a lot of money in this deal, but they need edge help more than safety help right now.