Eric DeCosta details the NFL Combine medical evaluation process

Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta said medical evaluations have become one of the most challenging parts of the draft process, citing a growing number of injury concerns among prospects and increased difficulty projecting long-term durability.

DeCosta also described the emotional weight of receiving daily medical updates at the NFL Scouting Combine.

"In a perfect world, you wouldn't be drafting players that have injuries. I think, in Emery [Jones Jr.'s] case, we certainly knew he had the injury, [and] we knew he was going to have the surgery. We understood that where we were picking in the third round, he was clearly the best player for us. And [we] loved his game. I had a chance to see him at the Senior Bowl, but generally, if you had the chance [with] all things being equal, you'd just draft guys that were totally healthy. As I said, it's getting tougher and tougher to do that because players are getting older, and more and more guys are having surgery, and more and more guys have medical concerns. And that's a challenge. And there's a lot of those guys in the draft every single year, and it's gotten worse. So, we have to find [information] through talking to our doctors and trainers and other people, we have to have a comfort [level] with certain types of injuries that guys are going to have. You're not going to draft 11 draft picks that don't have any injuries at all or haven't had any injuries. It's just not going to happen. In a physical game, when you're playing football for as many years as these guys have played at very high levels of football, guys are going to have some wear and tear on their bodies. And so, I think when you think about that, then you're looking at personality and you're looking at all these other qualities that might help a guy kind of navigate injuries and pain and different things like that – surgeries and all these other things. So yes, it's a hard part of the business, especially with draft prep, is sorting through [that information]. At the combine, every morning when I wake up, I have an envelope that's been slid under my door, and it's all the medical grades from the past day. And I freaking hate that day. I hate opening up that envelope because I'm going to see players that we really like that have received bad medical grades. And I always want to wait to open up that envelope until after I have my coffee so that I can just be relaxed a little bit more and just not stress out so much. But I see that envelope, and I'm like, 'Here we go again.' And inevitably, there's going to be between five to 10 players that have pretty serious medical injuries or conditions or various things that we have to sort through, and we usually take a few guys off the board. And it's just a part of the business that we're in."