Why the Ravens Are Having a Tougher Time Finding Draft Bargains

There are few, if any, teams that have drafted better than the Ravens over the years.

However, General Manager Eric DeCosta finds it harder for Baltimore to find draft bargains for one main reason. Other teams seem to have similar rankings to the Ravens'.

The "consensus big board," a creation from Arif Hasan of "Wide Left Football" that is based on more than 100 big boards from analysts, has become a hot talking point in the week following the 2026 NFL Draft.

While some teams seem to follow it closely, others do not. How much should general managers and their staff rely on it to find value? And how much should fans judge their team's draft picks based upon it?

Speaking on "The Lounge" podcast days following the draft, DeCosta called it a "phenomenon."

"The consensus board didn't exist years ago, right? It's a newer thing. And I think over the last three years or so, more teams seem to be drafting the same as the Ravens," DeCosta said.

"There seems to be an alignment in some ways of boards. And some of that might be based on modeling and analytics and more data being used, some of that data, which is industry data and various things. I'm not sure if that's good or not."

DeCosta recalls prospects the Ravens had ranked higher on their board than the consensus. That would indicate that Baltimore could, theoretically, wait longer to draft that player and get a bargain on a player it really liked.

However, DeCosta has found that such players have often been scooped up by other teams closer to where the Ravens had them ranked than the consensus board.

"That's problematic, I think," DeCosta said. "Because we do use percentages and we do the probability that players are going to be there, and I think it gets kind of wonky when we really like a guy that the consensus boards maybe don't like as much, and then the probabilities might be reflective of the consensus boards, but then the players get picked closer to where we had them ranked and we're angry or disappointed because then we thought, 'Man, we should have just taken the players where we had them and not where the probabilities or the consensus boards thought.'"

DeCosta called these "outlier" players – players the consensus boards are way off on. It can go either way. The consensus boards may have them too low because they haven't gotten attention for some reason. Or they may have them too high because there are injuries or off-the-field issues that the pundits aren't aware of.

What this has caused is for the Ravens not to wait as long for bargains on players they really covet, especially if they believe they may be outliers.

DeCosta said that was the case with third-round wide receiver Ja'Kobi Lane, who Baltimore took with pick No. 80 when the consensus board had him at No. 113, and fourth-round tight end Matt Hibner, who Baltimore traded up 21 spots to get at No. 133 when the consensus board had him ranked at No. 241.

Lane is a big-bodied wide receiver at 6-foot-4, 208 pounds with great athleticism. He's the kind of high-upside player another team may have taken a shot on to develop.

DeCosta also believes Lane could have been ranked lower on the consensus board because of what he calls the "stepchild phenomenon," which is when players are overlooked because there is another really good player at that position on their college team. That may have been the case for Lane, who played opposite Makai Lemon, the Biletnikoff Award winner who was selected in the first round by the Philadelphia Eagles.

"In terms of the qualities that we were looking for, I think Ja'Kobi had a lot of those qualities, and when we brought him in, we also felt really, really good about him," DeCosta said.

In Hibner's case, the Ravens again saw an elite athlete who had one of the fastest 40-yard dash times (4.57) and vertical jumps (37 inches) in this year's deep tight end class.

There was a run on tight ends on Day 2 of the draft, and the Ravens targeted Hibner. They also had a better feel for Hibner than other teams because the Northern Virginia native worked out for the Ravens at their local pro day. Thus, they moved up to get him, regardless of what the consensus board said.

"We don't often trade up for players, right?" DeCosta said. "There had been a run on tight ends. There weren't a lot of guys left that we really coveted, and he was one guy that we thought could really come in and help us this year."

The Ravens also got some huge bargains according to the consensus board rankings, notably with fourth-round wide receiver Elijah Sarratt (+46 spots), fifth-round cornerback Chandler Rivers (+76), and seventh-round defensive lineman Rayshaun Benny (+113).

Generally speaking, DeCosta isn't ready to toss out the consensus board. He's just taking it with a grain of salt.

"The consensus boards are very useful, and I do see in general probably more fixation on the consensus boards, meaning if you took our list and you compared it to a consensus board, it would probably be more connected to the consensus board than it might have been 10 or 15 years ago when consensus boards really didn't exist," DeCosta said.

"I do suspect there's an element of analytics playing into that. But there are still outlier players that, for whatever reason, aren't necessarily being reflected in the consensus."

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