Ravens will adjust late-round draft plans as the board takes shape

Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta discussed how Baltimore approaches its later-round draft strategy, noting that while the team often leans on a best-player-available model, there are situations where positional context and roster decisions can influence how selections are made.

DeCosta also pointed to the challenges of navigating the back end of the draft, where hit rates decrease, and options can become more limited.

"That's a great question. There's a lot of different ways to do that, and we've tried different ways. Some years you just basically, we've thought maybe just [to] target to quote 'premium positions' maybe. Other years we're just going strictly off the draft board, best [player] available, and then some years it's probably more nuanced. It's the positions that we haven't addressed. So, if we've drafted players at certain positions, then we get into the later rounds, and we're probably not going to double dip because we've already taken guys at those positions. So, there's a lot of ways to do it. I think there's been an increased reliance on analytics in some ways, and every team does it differently, and maybe every team does it differently every year. So, that's a hard part of scouting. There's been some years where we've been very excited to get a guy, like in the sixth round, seventh round, and you're literally one pick away, and he gets picked. Then you're kind of like looking up at the board going, 'Man, we don't like any of these guys that are left.' So, that's just, it is what it is, and someone's calling you and they see somebody they love, and they want to trade. Sometimes that's the best possible scenario, especially if you could trade a pick for a future pick in another draft class where you might get additional value, you might get a discount. So, it's a hard part, [and] it's a fun part of the draft. It's a challenge, certainly, percentage-wise to hit on those guys, especially when you get into the fifth, sixth and seventh round. The percentages really kind of plummet from the fourth round – fourth round, you're OK. [In the] fifth round, sixth round, seventh round, we see the percentages really kind of go down. So, when you can hit on a guy like that, it can really make your draft class."

For Baltimore, the late-round approach remains flexible, with DeCosta emphasizing both the difficulty of projecting success and the value of finding contributors in the final rounds.