The McShay Show - Who’s Rising in Todd’s Updated Top 100 Prospects? Plus: Talking Team Building and Scouting Lamar Jackson With Ravens GM Eric DeCosta.

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Welcome back to ‘The McShay Show’! The guys open by reflecting on the Senior Bowl and how their past few weeks of scouting and reporting have affected the ranking of Todd’s top 100 prospects. Then, they go through their favorite risers from the group, including Texas WR Matthew Golden, Miami tight end Elijah Arroyo, and more. To close the show, Todd and Steve interview Ravens GM Eric DeCosta in a wide-ranging conversation that covers the behind-the-scenes story of drafting Lamar Jackson and what DeCosta’s learned from Ozzie Newsome. (0:00) Welcome to The McShay Show! (0:45) Recapping the Senior Bowl  (4:52) Evaluating The Top 100 NFL Draft Prospects (9:57) Quinn Ewers has Fallen Out of the Top 100 Prospects (15:55) Evaluating the Top RB Prospects (17:38) Why TreVeyon Henderson's Draft Stock is Rising (RB #2) (24:58) Matthew Golden's Draft Stock (WR #3) (28:04) Evaluating the Top WR Prospects (30:05) Elijah Arroyo's Rising Draft Stock (TE #4) (34:30) Evaluating the Top TE Prospects (35:56) Shemar Stewart's Senior Bowl Reactions (Edge #3) (43:42) CHECK OUT THE DECISION MAKERS SERIES PLAYLIST (45:57) Darius Alexander's Rising Draft Stock (IDL #7) (50:22) Shemar Turner's Status (IDL #11) (51:45) Evaluating the Top CB Prospects (56:05) Coming Up on The McShay Show (1:00:26) Eric DeCosta: Baltimore Ravens, EVP & GM (1:00:39) What Did you See in Lamar Jackson During the Draft? (1:01:08) How to Build your Team Around Lamar Jackson (1:06:42) How do you Know that the Right Player is a Raven? (1:09:57) Which Players Stood Out the Most During the Draft Process? (1:11:19) How to Gain a Competitive Advantage in the AFC? (1:13:39) Draft Evaluations: Nerds vs. Meatheads (1:16:24) Synergy Between Coaching Staff and Front Office (1:19:33) The Toughest Lesson Learned from Ozzie Newsome (1:21:32) What Advice Would you Give to a Younger Eric Decosta? (1:24:35) What’s your Favorite Part of the Job? (1:28:48) Thanks for Watching! The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Host: Todd McShay Guest: Steve Muench Producers: Tucker Tashjian, Mark Panik, Conor Nevins, and Daniel Comer Social: Eduardo Ocampo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Senior Bowl Week is in the books, and it's time to unveil my updated top 100. We're going to deep dive into what makes some of the biggest movers such coveted prospects. And as usual, I can't wait to tell you where you're right and where you're wrong. By all means, Stevie Boy. It's Super Bowl Week in just 79 days, man, until the NFL draft. Ment should you good? I'm good, man. I wake up the club, DJ.

We just finished up the Senior Bowl, fresh off of Mobile Ler. Alabama, great week there. Just hats off to our entire support staff and group. Everyone that was, you know, boots on the ground, just from the camera folks to the production team, Dan being there, Marissa helping out, you know, everyone back home from T to Connor to Tucker, Eduardo with all of the clips. Like, I love our crew. I love our crew. Could have been better. Yeah, it really couldn't have been. So I think for the first time taking the show on the road, very enjoyable, but also very productive. So it was an important week for us and I feel really good about it. Part of what made it a lot of fun, our audience has yet to even see, right?

We sat down with a couple general managers of playoff teams, Eric Dacosta from the Baltimore Ravens, Nick Casario of the Houston Texans. And we started, honest to God, we started a GM series. And we kind of knew we wanted to talk to a lot of GMs. We wanted to just work on a couple of them while we were in Mobile. It went well, really well. Like the content that we got, I'm telling you, like, you don't have to be a fan of the Ravens. We're going to play Eric Acosta's interview. We sat down kind of a three-man roundtable, if you will. We're going to play that today on the back end of the, of this show. And if you're a Ravens fan, obviously it's fascinating. But if you're a football fan in general or even like a business person, just wanting to hear the behind the scenes and so many

people now with like fantasy football teams and playing general manager on Madden, my son thinks he's better with personnel now. He's 10 years old than I am. And that's fun too. He might be right. Yeah. Some days I think he might be. But if you're a fan of any of of, of, of this, football in general or just like the behind the scenes. We talked to Eric and Nick about how is, how is technology and, you know, analytics and how is that factoring into what you're doing, influential people, what, you know, you're one of 32 in the world. What's your process? And the answers were like the questions were fine. The answers were phenomenal. And I, we're going to use this, this platform, these opportunities, and we're going to use this structure.

to eventually, you know, interview and sit down with as many general managers. I don't know that it's going to be all 32 this year. That's lofty. But we'll kick it back up again at the Combine when we're there in a few weeks. And we'll bank as many as we can. We'll create a GM series. We'll play them during the shows. And we have some creative ideas about how we're going to make it into kind of a bigger package.

So that's to look forward to later in this show. Eric DeCosta today. And on our next show, we will play our Nick. Casario interview. A couple more things before we get into this. One, thank you, everyone. Like the viewership and the numbers, Munch from the same.

Like almost double, you know? So it's a good reminder to you and I and everyone in our group that, like, it's time now. Like the college football season was wonderful. We kind of got our feet wet. We were talking prospects and games and everything that was college football. But now this is what we did. This is our sweet spot and kicking it off.

You know, the draft starts in Mobile. It was a perfect example of why. And so we appreciate everyone who was, you know, tuning into those shows, a part of what we're doing. We're just building this thing, man. So any support you can give us, we truly do appreciate as we're trying to get this thing, you know, going to a level that we wanted to go. And we'll continue to get better and work at it. But any, any subscribers, likes, downloads, anything. you can do to help support the show. Just take a minute. Click a couple of buttons. We really do

appreciate it. We also need your help with this. We're unveiling my updated top 100 today, okay? We'll go throughout the show. We'll get into it. We're not going to sit here and go, okay, number nine is so-and-so, number 64. Like, it's just not, that's not good TV. It's not good radio. It's not good, you know, video. So, but we're going to go through some of the biggest movers. Senior Bowl absolutely plays a part of it. As far as I can tell when I jumped on this call, I think Metsch is frustrated. Maybe I overcorrected because of the senior ball. That's fine. I love it. But we'll get into some of the biggest movers and really take a deep dive into some players that we think that it's time to start featuring, right? And part of that, if you want to see the actual top 100,

and if you're only listening to this, or you don't have time to like screenshot and go through it, if you're interested in what I think the top 100 is at this point, and it will shift as we get through the combine and pro days and watch more tape. But for the updated top 100, I will post it all on X. It's at McShay 13 on Instagram, which is T-Mixay 13. And Mench will also have that up there. But that leads me to my point. We kind of mentioned it at the Senior Bowl.

Like this is, we need urgency here, folks. We need your help. Truly. Mench's X handle is disgusting. It's too long. Disgusting strong. It hurts your thumbs. Outs, Inc.

Mench, M-U-E-N-C-H. So for now, you can figure you can get there and get his content, which he's started to ramp up finally after 25 years. Social media. He's finally starting to dig in, which I appreciate. Thanks, Marissa. And I, exactly. And I know everyone will appreciate.

too. But can we please change his handle folks? Like please, we need suggestions. We need you to offer up with his name is Steve Mensch. He's been working in scouting forever. He's a good looking guys. He's always got his bad hat on. It's beautiful beard. Let's give him something fun that doesn't take 15 minutes to type in. So any suggestions you have of available handles, send them to us. And we will, we'll pick the best of it. And we will give you a shout out and maybe mention get maybe we'll get some gear for this show and enhance some things out that's all to come anyway last announcement today and then we'll get in the show mancha i haven't done a mock draft in two years yeah i did my that's gonna be weird for you yeah i did my top 100 last year and when we

sat out the year um be honest you didn't you didn't do your own little mock last year where you didn't you know kind of map it out a little bit i went through scenarios i went through scenarios with some I talked to GMs like up to the night before walking through what I was hearing. I talked to guys like, you know, Albert Breer and a lot of people, okay, and just was kind of working through things. But I never once sat down and typed out a mock draft the entire year. Right. But right now, we've got my top 100.

Mench doesn't love it. I think he likes some of it. I like it. But there's some guys that we want to highlight as we go through this. And I've always talking too much here. you can see the top 25 as we start. It opens with Abdul Carter from Penn State, the edge rusher. Travis Hunter, wide receiver and cornerback from Colorado.

Those are the top two grades, 95 and 94 respectively. Then you see that next tier, Mason Graham, inside defensive lineman, Mikel Williams, Edge from Georgia, Will Johnson, cornerback from Michigan. I've got to dive in a little bit more on the tape this year, not as consistent as the year before. It's going to be a tough evaluation because of it. but we've seen some cornerbacks before. Derek Stingley being one of them that didn't have a great final year,

but you've got to go off the traits and what you've seen on tape in previous years. Ashton Jinty, top running back in a loaded running back class. Jalen Walker from the edge rusher from Georgia. Tyler Warren, absolute stud at tight end. I'm starting to, the more tape I watch, like, is he not Rob Grinkowski? That's crazy. And then Shemar Stewart, who's quickly becoming one of my favorite. favorite prospects in the entire class. So those are all the 92s, 93s, 94s, and 95 grades in

this year's class. But I'm going to kick it to you, Munch. We've got 10 guys that we wanted to go through. We'll see how many we get through today. Why don't you start with one? The premise being this, folks, we're not going to list all 100 players in the top 100, but guys that either had significant movement or kind of stand out where they place in this initial top 100 post senior senior bowl and guys that we want to start featuring to give a little bit more depth in terms of their scouting report. So I'll kick it to you, Munch. Who's the first guy that you want to highlight and why? He doesn't really start. He's not really in that category, but I wanted to start off with a bang and kind of needle you a little bit. Quinn yours, quarterback from Texas, not in your top

100. He's not a lot of people's top 100 when I'm looking around. It looks like the bottom is falling out for Quinn yours. We've been clear on the show with our disappointment with Quinn yours and how he's played this year. The expectations were a lot higher coming in. I feel like maybe the pendulum is swinging too far in the other direction. I look at a player who lost Xavier Worthy, A.D. Mitchell, Jatavion Sanders, Jordan Winnington from a year ago, who had the 71st best running rushing attack in the country this year. you know, we saw some disappointing games against Georgia where the offensive line didn't play up to expectations. The protections weren't what they were. And look, I get it. I'm not saying Quinn yours is in the quarterback one conversation.

I don't even think he's in the quarterback three anymore, but I do think he's in the quarterback four. And I think he's, I think he should go earlier than people are maybe forecasting right now. I don't think he's that far off from Jackson Dart. Okay. Good start. I will say this. I'm not sure that I completely just. disagree. Okay. And just for perspective, I don't know if we have the quarterbacks in the in the top 100 that we, that we have. But the three quarterbacks that I have currently in the top 100 are Cam Ward for Miami, Shador Sanders, Colorado, and Jackson Dart, Ole Miss. This is not a great quarterback class. Right. It was it was made further evident with the frustrations and the struggles that Jalen Milrow had at the senior bowl. We thought that that was an opportunity, especially in the game. utilizing the mobility to showcase what he had from a talent perspective and what his potential could be in the right system at the next level. The week did not go as planned for Jalen Milro. Does that eliminate him from the top 100? Absolutely not. Could he be a third round pick?

Absolutely. Do I have three other quarterbacks in the next 20 spots after the top 100 that's not being posted here? Yes, I do. I've got Will Howard, Jalen Milro and Quinn Ewer's all in there. And we got a lot more work to do on them tape-wise, talking to general managers who have, you know, interviewed them, coaches, scouts and all of that. So there will be movement. I don't disagree. And maybe this is a good jumping off point for Quinn. We're coming off the senior bowl, coming off the college football playoff.

He wasn't at the senior bowl with an opportunity to, you know, kind of show what he can do. We know he throws us a sweet ball. we know he can layer the ball. We know he's got the accuracy. I don't think he was completely himself this year. I'll be very interested to see him throw at the combine, at Pro Day. And even we've gone back to it a few times,

but talking to David Pollock, like the most beautiful swing on the driving range, right? And so I think he's going to shine in those moments. And I think he's going to shine in interviews. Like everyone loves him, grinder, hardworking, competitor. So I think he's going to shine. to rise. But where we are in the process right now, I think it's a little bit of a jumbled mess after those top three quarterbacks. And I think, and I know from talking to teams, it's like,

all right, if you're not in that first tier and I know from history too, if you really study it, quarterbacks that belong in the first round go in the top 10. Quarterbacks that belong in that 20 to 50 range go mid to late first. Okay. then quarterbacks that you typically think if you just give them a pure grade, it's like a third round grade, they typically go in the second. But there's not many of them. And they go early in the second. Like teams have that night off from the first night of the draft to the second. They reevaluate the board. Sometimes there's some movement around. And you'll see a couple, one, two, three, whatever it is, go early in the second round.

I mean, the list of guys that went early in the second round from Drew Brie. to Derek Carr, you know, like there's a long list of those guys, okay? Jimmy Garoppolo, I think, right? Yep. Andy Dalton, I'm just going off the top of my head. Andy Dalton, there's a lot of guys that kind of you reset the board after the first night, you come back and it's like, all right, well, he's, we think he could be a starter, but we're not convinced of it.

At worst case, he's going to be a really good backup. We can use the second round pick on him now. But then usually there's this like, yeah. like a long period. And yes, like some guys go in the third, but like there's not many guys that go in the third round. Right. And then you start to see, you know,

another night, Friday night to Saturday. Then you'll see a couple guys going the fourth and then trickle in throughout the draft on day three. So right now I think Ewers is kind of in that third tier of not true first rounders, not that mid to late first round, not necessarily like a lock second round. I think he's more of a third, fourth round grade. Can he elevate throughout the process?

And it won't shock me if you will. But I think that's a good jumping off point. One of the reasons that it jumped out to me is I was watching Matthew Golden, the wide receiver of Texas. And I'm watching some of the throws. Kind of like him, don't you, by the way? I love him. I will talk about him in a minute.

I love Matthew Gold. Yeah, Ewers make some throws. And I'm watching this tape, and he's making some of the throws. And I'm not seeing other players make. And then we're down in Mobile, and Jalen Miller was strong. struggles and Jackson Dart was good, not great. And it starts getting into my head of, you know, maybe we've been looking through this at the wrong lens of, you know,

through the Texas lens and they had a disappointing end of the season. And, you know, he didn't play up as well as we had expected coming in. But if we look through it, you know, through a fresh lens and look at it at a different way, I think he's a little bit better prospect than maybe we're giving him credit. So that's why it's, you know, that's why he's in my mind right now. That's fair. This running back class is loaded. mention it was interesting being at the senior bowl with a lot of good running backs right here you see

if you're if you're watching on youtube or on spotify video you'll see the running back list come up we've got nine guys mensch in the top 100 and just for comparison purposes i did we always do a graph right like an excel document that we keep as as a graph that we utilize throughout the year and i was looking back and it's between between, it's like 5.7 is the last three years of running backs on average go in the first three rounds, okay? 5.7. We've got nine right here.

And there's a, like, from, from 10 to 20, they're like, they're all fourth round grades. Like, it's wild. So it could be more than nine, I guess is my point. But you see Ashton Genty, Trayvon Henderson, Caleb Johnson from Iowa, O'Mari Hampton, just a bulldozer from North Carolina. La Quint Allen, rising, Syracuse running back, catches the ball beautifully, route runner, Jordan James, highly productive at Oregon. Dylan Samson, just a beautiful runner of the football, low center of gravity was everything ran through him at Tennessee. Cam Scadaboo, like, we've got to miss the eighth running back. Best individual

performance of any back in college, or any player, I thought, in the college football playoff. against Texas in that game. And they almost upset Texas. And Quinn Sean Judkins, who really was more of the featured back than Trayvion Henderson at Ohio State this past year. But I want to get to Henderson because it was always my feeling in college that while he was disappointing for the vast majority of his career, if we're just being honest, because we knew he was like a five-star coming out.

He was going to be the next like Eddie George, like sensational Ohio State running back, right? And he never really was. Two years prior to this season, he played eight games, okay? He played eight games in 2022. We played 10 games in 2023. Ohio State recognized that. This guy, he's 208 pounds. He's tightly packed. He looks apart. But Trayvon Henderson is not at his best as a featured back. So let's bring in Quinn Sean Judkins. Let's make him the pounder. let's let him take the power carries and let's utilize Trayvion in a manner that he deserves to be utilized, right? And we saw this year, all of a sudden, remember eight games in 2022, 10 in 2023, he was healthy for 16 games this year. So a light bulb goes off in an evaluator's mind and say, okay, let's utilize him in the NFL in a Jemir Gibbs role.

I like it. I hear you. Can I back you up a little bit on this, on this number? Yeah. He's in the last, he's in the last two years, he's had 300 carries. He had 144 this year. Last two years, 300 carries. Comparing that to the other top backs on the list, Ashton Genti from Boise State, 374 carries this year. Amarian Hampton from North Carolina, 281 carries this year. Right. Caleb Johnson from Iowa, 240 carries. His workload has been significantly less. Now, I think that's a two-sided coin for me, really. One is, that's great for wear and tear. And if you're an NFL evaluator, you like backs that have a lot of tread. You want tread, yes. So you love that in terms of wear and tear, right?

And he's a well-built. He's not as big as these other backs that I've mentioned, right? Genti, I think he's probably the closest. The other two are much bigger backs. But he's a well-built back. I will say that. The flip side is, is he going to be a guy that you bring into the league and give? I mean, what's his workload going to look like?

And you're talking about using him in the Gibbs role. and I love that. I mean, he's, he's explosive like Gibbs. He can play that kind of role. Same thing. Again, another, and he's even smaller, A. Chan. So that's, yeah, you can use him in that way. I guess you could. And I like his tape. I did not love his tape from 2023. His tape this year, I think is way better in terms. The two things that jump out of me that are significantly different are his vision and his contact balance. I think he's run harder this year. He's been better at breaking tackles. And I think he's been more patient than he's seeing it better. this year. So I thought he took the next step this year. I'm impressed. I still, this is going to be a tough debate going to the, I mean, to the finish line, I think, with these backs where I still think that he's four behind Hampton and Johnson. So, but we're nitpicking. I think those are the top four right now. I think we're starting to separate the tiers a little bit. And I think that Henderson is in that top tier. But to me, he's at the bottom of it.

I still got those other two backs ahead of them. What I love is, is you know as an evaluator you want to like show me what I can see to the next level what translates what I saw this past year is if we utilize him in a similar role like there's David Montgomery with your mere Gibbs right right and yeah and Montgomery got dinged up for a little while and and of course Gibbs could step in and play that role for a few games but I got to see Treveon Henderson this year 16 games in still making a huge impact his best football was in the college football playoff, right? He was dominant in the first two CFP games.

He racked up 174 rushing yards and four touchdowns against Tennessee and Oregon. Okay. Then he had that 75-yard screen in the following week. Okay? Yeah. So that's three, like he posted an absurd 9.7 yards per carry in the college football playoff.

And when I start to think about the NFL in 17 games, And then the playoffs. Like, what can he, what can he provide for us? Right. Right. And if you, if you tell me that we've got a back, if we can manage his touches throughout the season in a rotation, late in the year, when we need it the most,

when the games are most important, that he can be at his best. Now I've seen it, right? I'm not projecting it. I've literally watched it this year. The two things and part of this, so the process here, Always thought he's going to be a better NFL player than college player. Kind of in a jumbled mess of all these really, really good backs when we get past Ashton Jinty. But what's differentiating him?

Well, the college football playoff did that, okay? Then I have conversations on the sideline at the senior bowl with some really, like, high-ranking general managers and just talking it through literally like, not like, oh, yeah, he's my RB2. RB2, it's more like, man, like, can't you envision him in this role? And I threw up to a couple different guys. Like, I just, I've always thought he's going to be a better NFL player because of his speed, right? His speed, his ability to catch the football and his blocking.

And his blocking is never more on display. And it was just as much run blocking as past pro, but it was never more on display than it was in the, in the playoff. You know, when they, when they absolutely needed him in the college football playoff, He was dominant as a run blocker and dominant in pass protection. So I don't know. I just see, I saw that 75-yard screen against Texas. I saw those explosive runs against Tennessee and Oregon.

And it's start. And then I have these conversations and I sit back and I look. And then I get on the plane flying back from Mobile, okay, Atlanta to Boston. And I'm like, I'm going to throw on the tape. And I start to then put it in perspective. And I'm like, yeah, this translates, this works. Every down, not an every down grinder, but can be on the field any down. Right.

I don't know. That's why I moved him up significantly. Got him as the number two running back behind, behind Ashton Genty. And I don't know, what did he wind up being overall? 42 overall. And I made the comment when we were at the senior bowl and I stand by it. There's enough love in the league. It won't shock me if he goes late first, okay?

I was going to say, do you think a second running back sneaks in? I think if one does, it's going to be Travion. And I'd say it's about 50-50 right now, but it won't shock me after the combine, if he runs well and works out well, if that kind of catapults him into that range. It's going to be tough, man. I'm going to tell you, right to the finish line in terms of who. Good. If Fitz is going to decide which back goes, goes earlier, I think because there's one,

for every team. Whatever you're looking to do, you can find a guy in this class. All right. Who's up next for you? I'm going to go golden. I'm going back to Golden. And the reason is, again,

I know we're coming off the Senior Bowl. For me coming out of the Senior Bowl, I'm thinking to myself, I just watched this receiver group at the Senior Bowl, and I really wasn't blown away. So who's a guy that, you know, is maybe going to move up boards? And I think it's Golden.

He declared he had this great season. He was a little inconsistent with his production. But, man, I watched, I watched the SEC championship game. His route running in that game is insane. And when I, I think he's kind of, he's a bigger tank dealt. The foot quickness in and out of breaks. Like, and he's a Houston transfer.

I didn't even know that when I came up when I watched him and thought that. I had to go back and look and it reminded me he was a Houston transfer. Obviously the connection there with Tank Dell. But like his foot quickness for his size is remarkable. I, every year. year before, you know, in the preseason we're evaluating players. Sometimes I watch it this time of year, too. I watch a video of Devante Adams talking about his release package and talking about how he gets, how he leverages corners or defensive backs. And I'm watching this tape and I'm watching this Georgia game.

And he is getting, there's, you know, the corners got inside leverage on him. He does an outside release, but dips back in, gets, he's just, he knows how to create separation with the way he gets off the line and then at the top of his routes as well. So it doesn't matter where your leverage is to start to play. He will get you off balance. He will put you in a blender and get you where he wants you to be before he gets out of that break. And then you add on the ability to stretch the field. When I talk about the ability to stretch field too, not just speed.

I wonder how well he's going to run. I think he's going to run well. But I don't think he's a burner. But the acrobatic catches he makes downfield along the sideline, the way he runs his vertical routes inside enough to give the quarterback, the target, enough space to drop that ball in. I mean, the route running both underneath and downfield is amazing. The explosiveness after the catch.

I mean, I wish he was a little bigger. I mean, that's about all I could say about him when I watch his tape. Yeah, I've got him as the number two wide receiver. Well, let's preface this. Number two wide receiver, if Travis Hunter's not included, Hunter being a cornerback and wide receiver, I think he's a better wide receiver than cornerback at this point. I think ultimately he's going to be a cornerback by trade.

with, you know, with an offensive package included. Or maybe he'll do both and surprise us all, right? I was surprised you had Tedroa McMillan so high. I thought you were a little, I know you, I don't want to say you didn't like him, but I didn't think you were as high on him as you were in these rankings. Let's table that. I'm not done yet.

I'm not done that. Let's table that. I think it's a good discussion. But he, from everyone I've talked to in the league, I think it's an appropriate area. So a lot, there are more people that think he's like top five, top seven than there are people that think he's mid to late first, if I'm just being honest. But we'll get to that as I dive in deeper on him. But these wide receivers, I thought it was interesting, right?

15 wide receivers in the top 100, which is not a shocking number, right? When you go back and look over the years, the last three years, I'll just pull up this chart we have. the last three years, it's about 16 wide receivers that go in the in the first three rounds. So it's not off that number, but what is different is if you take Hunter out of that and consider them as a cornerback or just a unique bird, which is he is, there's only one receiver in the top 25. That's unusual. When you think back into like all these drafts, right? Like you think back about the, you know, from Chris Olavé, Garrett Wilson to George,

well, Justin Jefferson wasn't at the time, but Jamar Chase to to the, to the Alabama guys, you know, like Rugs and Judy and, and Devante Smith. Like so we've seen so many like top 10, top 15 receivers over the years, over the recent years. That's not this class. All right, yeah, I think Matthew Golden, I think we agree. I mean, he's special. And the part that's fascinating, it wasn't until Isaiah Bond had the injuries and kind of the meltdown late in the season that Matthew Golden was able to step up and show. Like, had Ron been the number one guy, I don't know that we would kind of be looking at Golden the way we look at him now.

And that was late in the season. I mean, I think about the end. Yeah, it's the SEC championship game, the Arizona. I don't want a state game. Those were the two games where you throw on that tape, and it's, it's wow. And you wonder why they didn't feature him earlier because Isaiah Bond. He just didn't have the kind of year that we thought he was going to have coming in. Maybe it was, you know, transferring and not fitting in right away.

But, yeah, Golden could have put up, he put up good numbers. He could put up much bigger numbers, I think, if they had featured him earlier. I'm going to switch over to another pass catcher. And I'm going to do it with Elijah Arroyo, the tight end from Miami. What a great week for these tight ends of the Senior Bowl. It really was. I think there's, you can see some of the video here if you're watching on. Live video.

Yeah, from the Senior Bowl. He was, I mean, he was sweet and smooth and soft-handed and reliable throughout the week. And I think, I think what was so impressive to me is he was, he had 19.23 miles per hour on the Zeber technology, which was awesome to track throughout the week. He was the second fastest tight end behind Bowling Green, Bowling Green's Harold Fanon. Bowling Green's Harold Fanon, 6'3, 238. 6'3, 238 pounds. Royo's 6.4.5.

251 pounds. That's an inch and a half taller and 14 pounds heavier. And he was just like that much behind him in terms of miles per hour. Okay. So the blend of size, speed, and soft hands. It's just it's tough to find. Okay. And then you add like the smooth route running, the ability to separate one-on-one with his agility,

not to mention utilizing his body size for for contested catches and late separation. He just uncovers. And that's that was kind of the theme throughout the week. And so and I you said it like I'm a dog. I'm a dog with a bone on this because I anytime I see talent like that, I've got to go back. And it's like, all right. So why wasn't the. production there. What's the story? And I'm not saying I have the story yet, but I'm,

you better be damn sure I'm going to get it and figure out. And I'm hoping it's just surface level stuff like system quarterback preferences, a lot of wide receivers, strong running game, all the things that Miami had. But you got to go back and look at just a brief history. Like, his career was kind of chopped up by injuries. And that will factor into where he winds up going. You know, the medical tests and does you have to do a recheck at the combine for the medical? What are the doctors saying? Is it the long-term stuff we're concerned about? Or is it in the past, right?

With modern medicine, like, just not going to be an issue, which we're hopeful will be the case. And by all accounts, I think will be the case at this point. But he really, like, didn't have a lot of production before 2024 because the injuries. Like, he had the injury in 2022 and then it had a setback in 23 and just could never get it going. But in 2024, the numbers are. great, but compared to the other numbers, 35 catches, 580 yards, seven touchdowns. Here's what's intriguing about his production because the targets, targets weren't very high, the catches weren't very high.

But when he did catch the football, ready for this? I looked this up. One of 35 tight ends in the country who caught at least 35 passes last season, Arroyo's 16.9 yards per catch led the entire group. So when he gets his opportunities, he's a difference maker. Also, his six catches that went for at least 30 yards tied for second nationally among all tight ends. So while the production numbers don't jump off the page, when you dig a little bit deeper, you see the difference maker he can be.

I'll just say this. Tyler Warren's an absolute dude. Like elite level. He's different. Gronk type level, you know, and Grunk had the injury, so he slipped in the draft. but he's going to be a top 15 pick. The fact that you're talking about Gronk with him, man, is it's appropriate,

but I think it's mind-blowing to me because I really didn't think that would happen. I mean, Grunk's such a generational player. And the fact that Warren's, I think it's a legitimate comp is something, man. It's crazy to me. Then Colston Loveland for Michigan, those two guys were not at the Senior Bowl.

Mason Taylor, listen, his numbers aren't ridiculous, but you'll see if you're watching on, YouTube or Spotify. We've got Tyler Warren, number one at tight end, eighth overall in the class for me. Colston Loveland, 21 overall in the class. Mason Taylor, 36 overall in the class. And then we get to our guy here, Arroyo, at 43 overall in the class.

I think the senior ball helped him as much as, you know, I don't want to say anyone. There were a couple other guys. Like we'll get to Greg Zabel and, you know, and some different players. but he was one of the top five, seven beneficiaries of his senior bowl week in the work that he put in there. Did you not move him ahead of Taylor because you knew you were going to get shit from me or was it just? No, no. I think Mason Taylor, like, you know what you're getting. I know what I'll get.

There isn't a two-year injury history. There isn't question marks about the production. There's consistency. There's family history. There's love of ball. Um, there's, there's intangibles that are just, I talk to two different guys on the, on the field, on Thursday about him, the last day of practice, you know what you're getting, man. Like, someone's, someone's going to get it.

And he's going to step up, step in right away. There's no developing. There's no projection. Mason Taylor's ready to go. And so when you take those four tight ends and then there are other guys behind them, like, you know, Ferguson, we talked a lot about from Oregon and so on and so forth, but those four tight ends. That's a damn good group. Four tight ends in the top 50 that you really, really like that are entering the league and are going to contribute. And then you got some depth

behind that too. It's a good group. Who do you got next? I am going to go with, we're going to get into the Texas A&M defensive line, and I'm going to go with Nick Scorton, who was not at at the senior bowl. Do you want to start with Shamar Stewart? Do you want to start with because I kind of feel like the Scorton argument builds off the Stewart argument. I'm surprised. I'm surprised the gap right now that you have between those two. Good. I'm glad you are. Yeah, you have Scorton at 39 overall, and you have Stewart at nine overall. Why don't you talk about Stewart and how much you like him? I love him too. But why do we start with that? Then I'm going to counter a Scorton. Well, on Monday at the Senior Bowl, you and I sat down,

we watched two more tapes of Shamar Stewart, the edge rusher. And I just, I was blown away by the effort. I was blown away by the power. I was blown away by the length. And remember Trayvon Walker, the, the fast rise that he had? Absolutely. And I'm not like, Trayvon has not lived up to the rating or the prestige of being the next one overall pick. Right.

But he's still a damn good football player. And the talent is obviously there. I could, I think there's, I don't want to say similar. I'm not going to be the number one overall pick. But I. power translates to the NFL, okay? We watched two tapes of him, and it was double teams. It was driving offensive linemen back.

It was effort went up 31 to 7 against Missouri. It was, see the pop, if you're watching on YouTube or Spotify, like the pop in his hands, knocking those bags just cold to the ground. And that, like, speed is cute and wonderful and agility is wonderful and all that. But what translates, look at the top like sack leaders every year. It's not just like the elite speed guy. It's guys that can win when engaged with offensive linemen that have counter moves and all of those things. 6-5, 281 pounds, 34 and a quarter inch arm length.

So you got elite size and length to go along with excellent power, first step explosiveness, not to mention the relentlessness that we talked about. 31 to 7 grinding like chasing effort hot sun on the field like does like I just I loved it about he worked over will Campbell several times got a got his ass on skates only in mobile smart Stewart was for two days and listen I got into a long rant about treating this game with respect and the game of football with respect and the way there's ways to handle it to notify the certain people to do it properly and I stand by everything I said. And I think there's a, I think if anyone took anything out of that,

whether you're an agent, you're in the media, or you're one of these players, life is about relationships and about how you carry yourself and the respect that you have for others. And that, that absolutely applies to playing the game of football because football is a business. And so for all three of those groups, there's a right way to do things and wrong way to do things. I'm not saying Shamar was the only one, but handle your business the right way. That aside, he was only there for two days. And as one personnel guy jokingly said, like, yeah, Shamar's not here. Yeah, well, he, I guess he graduated yesterday. You know, like, so you got the,

he got the first round flu. And as he, right. And as I said during that whole rant from the senior bowl, like, I'm keeping it in perspective. This isn't going to affect these players draft stocks. but it does affect the image of you. And maybe it comes down to two guys on the board at the same time. It picked 12, 13, or nine. And it's like, yeah, he blew off the interview. Didn't communicate. Not sure we got two players of the same exact grade.

Trust this one a little more. Whatever it is. And this isn't just Shamar. This is anyone. This is a broad sweeping conversation. But after two days in Mobile, he was clearly, in my opinion, the best football player there. And that's sound a lot because there are four to six first rounders in that group.

He's also only 21 years old. He's a dominant run defender. He's going to turn 22 in November of his rookie season, okay? He's just scratching the surface as a pass rusher. I see a guy who needs a better plan as a pass rusher at times. I think he can, he has a lot of good counter moves, but knowing which one to use in circumstances is where he can improve. but those are things that are coachable and game experience will provide him.

And he has that power that it translates to the NFL game as a pass rusher. So I'm going to buy his stock low right now because the production doesn't jump out. It's not insane. But I'm getting at. He can, but his pressures are great. Yeah. He can be a five technique.

He can be a three technique. He can be a seven technique. He can play multiple spots along the defensive front. I think Abdul Carter clearly is number one player in this draft. Michael Williams has a little bit more naturally God-given talent. Jalen Walker is in kind of a category of his own as an off-the-ball linebacker, hybrid edge rusher. But I think right behind those guys is Shemar Stewart,

and that's why I've got him rated as high as I do. I don't necessarily disagree. I guess my beef is more with Scorton, but I will say just to speak to the production a little bit, Shemar Stewart is as talented as he is. And again, I agree with almost everything you've said so far. He has 11 tackles for loss, four and a half sacks in three seasons. Yeah, I know.

That's a red flag for being. Now, I'm not saying, I'm not saying that it discounts everything else that we see. It's kind of the Trayvon Walker argument, right? Right. And we are watching, I wish I had the, I could reference the play in the game, but I think it was the Missouri game maybe. He's throwing two guys around. Like he is, this dude is powerful.

It was play 50, if anyone who. who has catapult or extra. Was it? Okay. Awesome. So now I look at Nick Scorton though, and this guy was at Purdue in 2023, led the Big Tenant Sacks. Comes into the SEC this year, third in tackles for loss,

tie for third and tackles for loss. Productive guy. I think they're both super talented. I have a beef with 39 Scorton more than anything else. I look at him, screams first round pick to me. He can get to the quarterback in a number of different ways. I think power is a part of his game. he's also a more versatile player in that

I know you talked about how Stuart can move up and down the line Scorton can do that too as a pass rusher he's not playing inside and run downs I don't think but he can do that as a pass rusher and then he can drop into coverage he has a lot of experience dropping into coverage I also like his motor

I look at Scorton a more productive player good frame good length I just wish he was in Mobile would have been nice if he was in Mobile showed out and did his thing because then maybe we're having a different conversation now but 39 for me is way too low for me That guy screamed for a topic.

I'm glad it's February 4th when we're taping us. And we have more time to debate and I've got more tape to watch. And more numbers to put in and conversations to have about what they're seeing in the background and all these guys. But if you love Shamar Stewart and you're intrigued by him, watch that Missouri game. It goes from 23 to 7 to 31 to 7, okay? game's over. Plays 40 through 51, that run that he went on against double teams, powering guys, driving them back to the quarterback,

chasing like an absolute rabid coyote. Okay. Plays 40 through 51 is where I was like, uh-huh. Oh, that was my guy. I was wondering why I was in the game. I was like, get him out of the game. Like you know what that got to get hurt. And then he's running around like his hair's on fire.

Good luck telling him he's coming out. All right. Next guy, let's rip through these. We've gone like 45 minutes already. We've got to get to Eric Dacosta. Excited to share that with our audience. It's an awesome interview. Honestly, like Eric and I have had our ups and downs.

Like Eric years ago thought Joe Douglas and I were trading too much information. It was upset. Like we've gone through. He's always been Kuyper's guy. Mel loves the Raven. So I kind of stayed away. But Eric and I have always also had. had a very respectful relationship over the years.

And I want to tell you no matter what you think of Eric, no matter what you think of general managers, no matter what you think of the whole, like his process and his willingness to share his process and the depth in which he explained everything was like jaw dropping. I just thought it was awesome. And I hope I hope everyone to agree. I don't want to oversell it and I just did.

But take it for what it's worth. You don't have to be a Ravens. fan to appreciate what he's saying. You just have to be a fan of football, process, business, you know, there was so many different things to take from it. Yeah, his love for the game and his excitement about the process and all of the things that surround it is evident. I mean, it jumps out when you hear him talking. But I think with only 32 general managers out there and so much emphasis on the players and the coaches, and this is why I wanted to do this, I don't feel like the football fan and audience has a true grasp and understanding of what goes on in,

and not in the draft room, but throughout the year and what it takes to run these, dealing with the salary, like talking about salary cap, talking about advancements in technology, talking about the scouting process, talking about it. Like he even talked about Dwan Jones and another scout. We know Dwan, we played with him at Richmond, great friend, 7-Eleven, always open. He was a wide receiver, got drafted in the late round. out of Richmond. But he was even going so in detail about Duan and another scout. And they were the first ones to watch Lamar and came back to the building with kind of different, I don't know,

check it out because I thought it was fascinating. And honestly, even if I wasn't a huge football fan, just to hear the process was fascinating. But we got a few more guys. Let's rip through them here. I'm going to go Darius Alexander from Toledo. There's a name folks like you need to get to know. This defensive line class is outstanding in my top 100. We've got 17 edges, 13 inside defensive linemen. That's 30 defensive linemen in a league that is starved for defensive linemen that it could go in the first three rounds. And maybe it's more, but 30 currently that I have.

And Alexander was one of the biggest movers up from what I saw at the senior bowl. Six, three and a half, three hundred and four pounds. And I looked at you and I said, I would guess he's like 285. the way he carries that weight. Body beautiful, right? 34-inch arms. Like, these dudes are long. They've got big 10-and-a-quarter-inch hands. They're straight out of central casting. And he's playing some seven technique out wide. And he's bullrushing offensive tackles. And the one-on-ones, he's unbelievably, you know, successful inside and outside. So that versatility, it's like alarms are going off. In scouts' minds, but especially defensive linemen's mind.

And alarms are going off and fear offensive line coaches down there too. Like shit. Like 304 moves like that and has that length. So I went and looked back in his career. 26 games, final two seasons. 13 tackles for loss, seven and a half sacks. Okay production at that level, not elite, but a ton of, a ton of pressures. 1,700 of his 2050 snaps came in the B gap.

So for those of you, the A gap is between the center and the guard. The B gap is between the guard and the tackle. And so a lot of it was as a three technique, but some was as a two eyes. Some was as a two. So he kind of moved around in that small little area and played several different spots in that area. But that's where he's at his best. But we saw at the Senior Bowl. And again, there were 350 snaps that he played outside or over the nose.

So he can play different spots around the field. The other thing is you see the physical tools on the field. field but he also like Bruce Feldman's freak list from the athletic like yeah it's every year we're in this three month span and we're talking about well he was on Feldman's list and it comes to fruition with these guys well he was on Felman's freak list credited with 400 pound bench press 30 inch vertical dude with those arms at 300 yeah with those arms like it's like a field trip getting that bench press down 34 inch arm like 30 inch vertical at 6.3 and a half and 304 pounds.

And also now the zebra only had him at like close to 16 miles an hour during the week of practice. And I don't know how many times these guys got to get to full, you know, top speed. But he's been tracked on the GPS going back to Toledo at 20 miles an hour, man. He's like tools for days. Inconsistent on tape. And he's another guy. Trayvion Henderson. and I watched Upton Stout, the cornerback from Western Kentucky.

There were a handful of guys I watched on the flight back and sitting around the last couple of days because I just had to get, I had to get into their game. Like what was I missing? Why do I see such a jump in terms of my ratings? Where were they kind of put in the neighborhood? Bit inconsistent with leverage. Struggles at times to disengage can improve his hand, you know, hand-to-hand combat. Also can develop a better rush plan, which I think you'll see with a lot of defense

of linemen in college going in the NFL, they just win with their tools. But the length, the first step suddenness, the power and the versatility jumped off the tape in every way, shape, or form you can imagine. I think he's an impact starter. Maybe it takes him a year, kind of rotating all that. But I would draft him in the second round, truly. He had a pick six against Pittsburgh, 50-yard picks, 58-yard pick six. He drops on a simulated pressure, plucks the ball out of the air, and is going the other way at 300 pounds.

someone called it a fix six online and i i thought that was awesome you just shows how well he moves yes and and i and i promise you there is a general manager who mentioned that exact play when standing on the field on thursday talking about like that exact play um all right give me give me one more guy uh the texas i'm an agi's guy today texas a n defense to tackle shimar turner in the state of texas quin yuers matthew yeah yeah i love him uh he had to pull out of the senior bowl because because he was playing on, they found out he was playing on a stress fracture all year that didn't heal properly. Yeah, so that'll be something. They'll have to figure out in indie medical checks.

Teams will do that. He's not going to work out at the combine, just to update people. He's not going to work out of the combine. He will be there there to do the medical checks and all the interviews. His hope as the plan as of right now, last reported, was to be ready and back to work out at his pro day, which will likely be late March early April. In my mind, I'm watching his tape and I'm thinking to myself, this guy's not 100%. I mean, this is crazy that he's not 100%.

You look back at his 2020-3 production, 10-5 tackles for loss, six and a half sacks for an interior defensive alignment, that's pretty good production. The thing that jumps out to me over and over and over again is his hands, whether he's defending the run or rushing the passer. This dude wins with his hands. They are violent. He has a plan.

He knows what he's doing. I think he's NFL ready. I think he's more in the fourth interior defensive line conversation than he is right now. I would move him up if I were you. All right. We got like 30 seconds on each of these guys. I think you have one more guy, right? Yeah, I had a question.

I have a question about your guy. Go ahead. Okay. I'm going to give you a 30 second blip. Get the cornerback list ready if we can, Tucker. The cornerback class is a little bit better than I thought. Will Johnson and Michigan, Jada, Barron, a lot of talk to people when I was talking to general managers and scouts on the sideline.

A lot of talk about him. Thomas, the cornerback from Florida State, fell in love with him in Mobile. Maxwell Harrison, Harrison, the cornerback from Kentucky, had a great week as well. But on that list, two guys that I loved, I mentioned Upton Stout. He's only five, eight and a half, but I'm telling you, he was the best pure cover corner I saw all week long. The other guy that I really want to bring recognition to reminds me of going back just a couple of years, Tariq Wollin, coming out of the small school. I think he went in like the fifth round.

That's not going to happen for Darry and Porter from Iowa State. He was a receiver for three years at Iowa State, okay? Then he transitioned to cornerback, played a good amount, but this past year finally was like full go, okay? He's at his best as like a cover three, cover two guy in zone. He's a former wide receiver, as I mentioned. Special teams maven throughout his career at Iowa State. He's six, two, and three-eighths of an inch.

So it's almost six, two and a half, 197 pounds, 33 and a quarter inches, and the fastest freaking player at the entire senior bowl on the Zebra technology, 22.17 miles per hour match. So now I got a tall, long, well-built corner who used to play wide receiver, who can provide stuff on special teams while he's still developing at corner because he's only had three years in one like full true year where it started come together who's running 22.2 miles per hour who's projected to run for three right that doesn't get out of the second that doesn't get out of the second round bro it doesn't from what i've from what i've

seen he doesn't play the run like a former wide receiver either comes up i come up in i i have not had concerns about it maybe you've seen i think inconsistent with aggressiveness but when he does he's he's he's he's a better tackler than i expected what i saw negatives he's going to be a 25 year old rookie has some tightness in space is a taller or longer corner, but inconsistent with aggressiveness in support is what I put in my notes. Positives, length, speed, ball skills, and playmaking instincts and zone. So in a cornerback class that like defensive line and like tight end is getting a little bit better as we get closer because more exposure, I think this cornerback class is getting

a little bit better as well. And Porter is going to be one of those guys that you hear come off the board in the first couple rounds. Give me one last thing you got mentioned. Then we're going to throw to Eric Dacosta in our end. interview. If you had called me at the beginning of the season and said that Ben Morrison was going to be 49th, the Notre Dame corner was going to be 49th on your board at any point in the process, I would have hung up on you. And I don't know if I would have talked to you for a couple of days.

I'm just being honest. I don't know. So I'm assuming this is all injury related, that this is why he's at where he's at, because to me, the tape, he's corner maybe two, maybe three. That's where I think he is in terms of his talent. I'm not saying I have been any information. information, I don't, like, I am so damn cautious of all this stuff. Right. There is concern and it's concern that, like, not reported information and all that. It's just like, let's wait and see. Let's wait and see, like the combine.

Let's wait and see until the doctors. That's all it is. It's just waiting to see. And like everybody else who cares about this game and cares about these players and what's the best for everyone. I certainly hope everything goes great. I didn't, I just got there are other guys who were performing. playing at the senior bowl, all that stuff.

They kind of moved up a little bit. It was just kind of in the shuffle. Absolutely no news to report, nothing about it. If there's a concern with him, it's hopefully the medical reports come back. We're cleared to go. Let's bump them back up. And here we are.

Right now it's almost just like a wait and see. That's all it is. Promise. Yeah, it's a damn good class. We didn't even talk about Thomas from Florida State. I mean, it's a good group. Yeah. But I'm high on Morris.

And the beauty is we've got, what I say, 97 days or no, 79. Still 79. When we get into it's like 62, I start to get nervous. I mean, it's two months. Right. All right. I already, I built it up.

I don't want to oversell it, but we're going to do a lot more of this. I hope everyone enjoys it. Eric DeCost it coming up. Thank you for the support, as we mentioned before. Senior Bowl was an important week for us as we get this show running. First time off on the road with this entire group. I love that. I text you all.

this is a foxhole group man like i love you i've always loved you you've been my boy since we're 18 years old um but like developing the relationships and the in the family that we have here at the ringer like i i'm seeing where this show can go and i'm fired up about it and i hope everyone in the audience is here to stay uh and we'll and we'll click the buttons you got to click i hate even saying it but we do need your help with the with the views with the uh the likes to subscribe and all those other things. But here it is. We touched on it a couple times.

Eric Acosta, general manager of the Baltimore Ravens, gave us 30 or so minutes. We could have asked 50 questions for three hours, and he was willing, he was excited to do it. GMs don't get this opportunity to come over and sit down with a couple football guys. And there's a level of respect and appreciation that was built over 25 years of knowing Eric

and several different guys that we played with in college, that we've known in the league who have come through his building, and he's helped propel to greater jobs, including and especially Joe Douglas, our great friend who was the GM for six years of the New York Jets, his willingness to talk to us about his process and everything that goes into being a general manager in the NFL, I thought was awesome.

It is appreciated. So, Eric, if you're watching, like, thank you for being yourself and opening up and being able to talk about things that you're never able to talk about, Because usually it's like, why'd you draft him? Are you excited about your draft class? Why'd you cut him? I think GMs want this format to be able to tell about all the hard work that they put in

and what goes into actually building an NFL roster. And here's Eric DeCosta with the first GM interview that we're going to do a whole bunch of them explaining everything that has gone into building one of the best organizations in the National Football League in the Baltimore Ravens. Super Bowl 59 is your chance to hit the jackpot on Fandul, America's number one sportsbook. Because with Fandual's $5 million touchdown jackpot, you can win a share of $5 million in bonus bets. Are you kidding me? All you have to do is place in any time touchdown score or bet before the game kicks off. And if your player scores the first or the last touchdown, you'll win your bet plus a share of the bonus bets.

So as far as any time touchdown scores go, here's where I'm going to go with this thing. Sequin Barclay is minus 190. I just can't envision a Super Bowl with Sequin Barclay in the year he's had without him reaching pay dirt at one point. But in addition to just taking him at 190, let's combine these two. Sequin Barclay and 190, Travis Kelsey plus 125. If we put him in a same game parlay, an SGP, it's plus 226. Can't you envision it?

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See terms at sportsbook. Fanduel.com. Gambling problem, call 1-800 gambler or visit RG-hapel.com. We're here with Eric DeCosta, general manager of the Baltimore Ravens, and we appreciate your time, man. Excite to be here. Welcome back. So, yeah, it's good to be back. I want to go back. Let's just start here. Lamar Jackson, the hardest thing to do in your job, right, is to find the quarterback, and you've got the quarterback. I want to go back, though, to that process. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I remember it as that was kind of like hand the baton year with Ozzy, right? Yeah, in a lot of ways. Yeah. And so you're making the decision, but Ozzy's kind of, that's his last year, like official capacity, I believe. And you wind up drafting Lamar as the fifth quarterback in that class. What did you guys see in Lamar and what is memorable still to this day as part of that process and how you landed on him and decided, you know what, he's still there, end of the

first round, let's trade up, let's go get him. He can be our guy. Well, I first think it goes back to just the fall evaluation, and we had a couple scouts, Milton Hendrickson being one, Duane Jones being the other guy. They went into Louisville that year, came back and basically, this guy's a special athlete, and this guy can do a lot of things that are unique at our level of football. Now, there's some things to work on, of course, like all players, but he's a unique player. And so, you know, I watched him. Joe Hortiz, our college director at the time, watched him. At some point, we brought him to Ozzy.

Ozzy looked at him. I would typically bring players to Ozzy to look at. You know, he and I always worked together in the draft for 25 years before I became GM. And so, you know, he became a player that we were very interested in. The challenge for us was Joe Flacco was still our quarterback. Yeah. And, you know, they're very, very different. And how do we add a player like Lamar?

and not take away from Joe or change the offense dramatically. So we were fortunate that we had on staff that year, Marty Morningweig and James Urban, both guys are to coach Michael Vick. And so they had an experience with the mobile quarterback. They understood, you know, what types of plays. Lamar would flourish in. And so they love the skill set. But the whole challenge was like, he's so different from Joe Flacco.

And we looked at it like, okay, we have the traditional pocket passer with Joe Flacco. Lamar is dynamic in his own way. We think he's going to get better as a pocket passer. How do they coexist? How does our offense coexist? What's it going to look like? And what players can we add around those two guys to make both those guys be successful? And so that year, what I remember most is Lamar did not have an agent.

And it was, we wanted to bring him into Baltimore. We're very secretive in Baltimore. We don't want to be connected to players. You'll never really, if you see us connected to a player, that probably means we're not connected to that player. We've learned. You know, so I don't ever want to be connected to anybody. So the challenge was how do we get Lamar Jackson to come visit us in Baltimore?

We didn't bring any other quarterbacks in that year. You know, we did like some quarterbacks. We figured they wouldn't be there when we picked. Right. So we felt like Lamar might be the one guy that had a chance to be there in the 20s when we picked. One of my jobs as a scouting director at that time was to assess. league value. How do other teams feel about these players? That's a big part of my job. It still is. And I felt like Lamar would be there in the 20s, maybe in the 30s, but definitely in the 20s.

And so how do we get him? We brought him into Baltimore. The nice thing about a player that doesn't have an agent, there's no leaks. Yeah. Right. No one knew that Lamar Jackson spent a day and a half with us in Baltimore. I got one call from somebody in the media. They said, I heard Lamar Jackson might have visited you guys. I said, no. Can you prove it? Why do you say that? He goes, well, I just kind of caught rumblings of it. I said, well, if you want to report it, you can, but you might be wrong.

I'm not going to say one way or the other. Well, it turned, he did spend the day with us. So at some point then, as we got closer to the draft, the idea was to get as many picks as we could, to trade back as many times as we could, either take Lamar or draft another player, but have a backup plan, we might get back in. And Howie Roseman, a guy that, you know,

He always makes trades. He loves to make trades. He and I have made a lot of trades together. We're pretty active on draft. They're mostly going back. And, you know, I learned from that Joe Flacco trade. We had the eighth pick. We were back to 26 and we went back up to 22.

We got Flacco that if you assess league value, you can go back and still get your quarterback. Right. And so the idea was we were going to do the same thing with Lamar this we did with Joe. So we went, you know, how he was willing to trade. We went back. We ended up drafting Hayden Hurst because we went back and we went back again. We ended up getting two thirds and a fourth. as well. But Howie was willing to trade out of 32 and take our second and give us 32.

So we end up drafting Hayden Hurst at 25. Kevin Byrne, our PR guy, wanted us to go downstairs to the press conference. Kevin, let's just hold off. The scouts and coaches, they thought the draft, they thought we were done. They thought we were done for the night. So Ozzy and I, Ozzy always sits at the head of the table, still does. I sit to his right. Steve Bishotty's across the way, talking to John, they're high five and they're happy, whatever. He looked at Oz and I go, let's call Howie. And he said, do you want to? I said, yeah, let's call him.

So I call Howie. Howie says, I want to do it. So I looked at Ozzy, they said, get Lamar on the phone. Ozzy called Lamar. I'm on the phone with Howie. We did the trade. We turned it in. No one even knew in the room that we were doing it.

Not was paying attention. That's wild. And all of a sudden, I go, hey, guys, we just got Lamar Jackson. And the room just went crazy. That's awesome. That's awesome. What a story. Yeah.

So you get Lamar. And, you know, DeWan Jones, we played with it, Richmond, Kevin Whitea worked with the, like, I've talked to them just about, like, how supportive everyone has been in that organization and early on and kind of what the coaching staff had to do and how, like, really tailored things towards Lamar. But I'm curious from, like, your standpoint, right? You get your guy, and a couple of years, you know, year two in, you know, he's the guy. at that point, what is your thought process as general manager? What are you thinking in terms of how do we best support Lamar? Is it put a great defense around him? And not even just the personnel, but also how do we get him to a position off the field,

all the different aspects that come with supporting a superstar quarterback. Can you kind of take us through that a little bit? Yeah, so you try to figure out what he does best, and then what kinds of players he likes to fill the ball to him. So in his case, it's actually coincidental, but also, you know, we were lucky that he loves to throw the tight ends. Yes. Right? So we drafted Hayden Hurst, ended up trading Hayden.

But Hayden and Mark Andrews. Yeah, right. You know, so he had these, like, really comfort pieces for him. And then offensive line-wise, and so that same draft class, we drafted Mark Andrews, and we drafted Orlando Brown. And we had Ronnie Stanley and Kevin Zeitler. We built an offensive line around him that suited what we do, which is run the football. We believe we have a good back. So we added backs.

We added Mark Engram that first year. We drafted J.K. Dobbins. We signed Gus Edwards as an undrafted guy. You know, but over the years, Justice Hill was a good player for us now. You know, Derek Henry. We've always had, like, multiple backs, you know, that we can rotate and guys will be productive. And we've tried to add, we always try to add speed to the field. You know, we feel like Lamar.

being the type of player he is, he presents so many challenges for linebackers in the front. You know, getting guys outside. We drafted Hollywood. We drafted Zay. You know, we drafted bait. We've allocated a lot of resources. We don't have that. The one piece we probably have missed on is that big X presence.

We've never really had that. We've tried to find that guy. That guy doesn't go on trees, right? Yeah, right. That's probably the one thing. But for us, it's always been okay. Offensive line, first and foremost, keep it strong. Now, we made some changes this year.

We had some guys leave, but I think the line this year we ended up pretty good. But we allocate a lot of resources to the offensive line, running backs, tight ends, and receivers. But then also, I think, on defense, you know, we've always been a stingy defense in terms of preventing the run, okay? We're a ball control team. We like to control the ball, you know, four minute, six minute, whatever it is. We want to make sure if we get into the fourth quarter of a game, we have the lead. We're tough to play against. We want to choke the other team out, basically.

Run the ball, run the ball, run the ball, take our shots down field, but control the clock. So part of that is not letting the other team control the ball. Right. So we have a strong defensive line. We stop the run as best as we can. Our secondary wasn't that great this year as good as it could have been. It came on the second half of the season.

But what we saw this year with Lamar and the growth of the Lamar is we became a team this year that could come back from double-digit deficits, which we've never really been. We've morphed under Todd Monkin and all the different. things that we do offensively. Lamarie's improved every year as a pass. We've added more talent around him. The lines are doing their part. And we went from being a very run-centric offense to being a very balanced team this year. That can score in many different ways. So look, you can find productive players coming out of college. You guys obviously do a good job of

identifying talent. But how do you figure out how to get the right people in your organization? What's the process look like of discovering whether or not a guy is a raven? Great question. We spend most of our time thinking about that. You know, I tell the scouts all the time, we need the best people finding the best players. So it starts with the scouts, right? And so I'm proud, and I start out as a guy that I'm a lifer with the Ravens. I started out when I was 24 years old.

That's an in-house player personnel assistant. And under Ozzy and Phil Savage, and there's a way that we train our guys and develop our guys and what we look for, the qualities, whether it's been a Joe Ortiz, or Joe Douglas, a Chad Alexander, or Andy Widel, Ian Cunningham. You know, we've had a million guys. We've had a million guys. And I believe in what we do.

And so our scouts understand, you know, the qualities that we're looking for, the background, you know, whether it's growth mindset, pride, attention to detail, durability, leadership qualities, whatever that entails. All those different things

kind of go into our formula, right? And then we build out what we call it a football GPA. And it's based on a full point scale. every player that we evaluate gets assigned the grade. And so we have the football grade, and then we have this kind of football GPA. We combine the two of those things,

and that's really how we, at the end, how we rank our players and what we come up with the board. That's awesome. Is there, you know, kind of putting you on the spot, is there a player or two during the course of your career when you sat down with them and you had a chance to spend time with him? You were like, man, this guy's a raven if I've ever seen a rame. Yeah, I mean, there's been a lot of guys.

I mean, I can give you a couple of recent guys, you know, 22 draft. you know, Kyle Hamilton, you know, Tyler Linderbaum. I mean, our first two picks, both guys, I think, destined for greatness. Unbelievable makeup. You know, a guy like Marshall Nyanda, another guy that I would put in there, Hologna Nata, you know, Ed Reed, who was a guy that I remember interviewing back in the day. So we've had a lot of, you know, and they come in all different shapes and sizes,

backgrounds, it doesn't really matter where they come from. Like, I think, you know, it doesn't matter. You come from the northeast or south. East of Southwest, the West Coast, you know, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what division you play at. All different. But you're looking for these similar qualities that we believe make great players. And we make mistakes.

And we made a million, I could give you five guys we made mistakes on. Bad mistakes. Like, I literally would have said to you, this guy's a stone cold assassin. This is one of the greatest picks we've ever had. You all got a hit list, right? And then six months later, I'm going, oh, my God, this guy's absolutely terrible. Why did I pick this guy? And it happens every year.

We want to be right about, you know, if we can be right 75% of the time, we're going to be better than most of the other teams. That's a good hit, right? That's our goal is to get to 75% or higher with our draft class. Now, that doesn't mean that a six-round pick is going to be a starter. I'm not saying that. But guys that can come in and add value to organization and contribute in different ways, if we can get to 75% we feel pretty good about it. You play in a conference, right, with, I mean, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert.

You've got your guy, obviously, but you talk about a slim margin for error. It's unbelievable. Like, you guys have a great football team. You've built it the right way. You've got the quarterback. You have a great football team. And, like, it feels like this close, right? And there's a lot of teams that say this.

I'm curious for you now, like, all right, so here we go in the offseason. We're at the senior bowl. We're getting ready for the combine. We've got free agency. how what are take us through the challenges of kind of walking that tightrope of like we've got so many great parts we've got to maintain that but how do we get some kind of competitive edge whether it's a piece here or something something that we try to do different in tinker or the coaching something like whatever it is when you wake up after the season's over take us through

your thought processes all right how do we get just a little bit better great so i'll tell you that when the season ends, when our season ends, I think people would expect me to be, like, miserable. It's one of the happiest days of the year for me because I know now I can be a part of the solution, right? When you're in the season, if you're a GM in the season, you're like a hostage to the carnage that's going to take place out there. And I despise that.

I've never heard that. I despise the feeling of waking up on a Monday. If you talk to anybody that knows me, they would say, Eric Acosta is an absolute asshole on Mondays after games because I'm not in control. I'm like you guys watching games, it's miserable. When the season ends, I'm all about how do we get better? What's the solution?

What are the areas we can exploit? How do we find value? What are the small little margins we can play in to get better as a football team? And so I love it. And, you know, we always try to be innovative. We'll look at the roster. We'll look at how do we save money. Who should we sign?

How many compics do we have? How can we get more compics? You know, at the end of the season, we claimed Deante Johnson after we cut him. And people are like, what the hell of the Ravens doing? They cut the guy. He goes to Houston and gets cut. And the Ravens claim him.

He can't play for anybody now. Well, we did that because there's a small chance that he signs a contract for more than $2.5 million. And if he does that, he qualifies for a compick. Yeah. So those are the things that really motivate me how do we gain a small advantage? How do we gain a big advantage?

You can go get Derek Henry. You get a huge advantage. Right. For me, part of the excitement is how do we just keep getting all these small advantages that roll into something big? And so it is tough with a salary cap. You hate to see good players leave. Last year we lost a slew of good players on defense, right?

We had all these guys last year that overperformed. We lost all those guys last year. Well, you know what? We replaced. You traded Morgan Moses in offense. We let Kevin Zay at the walk. You know what? A running game was better than it was last year, and Lamar got sacked less.

So that's what motivates me is how do you take advantage? Because you know the reality of it is if you have a good team, right? You spend a lot of money on players. You can't keep everybody. You become a victim of your own success by drafting really good players. So you have to find all these little small ways of gaining advantage. And that's what I love. I feel like we've kind of gotten through the era of the great debate of like,

like nerds versus meatheads, analytics versus game tape and all that. But like, and it seems like every organization that I've talked to would kind of settled into how they utilize technology and analytics and those sorts of things. What do you utilize, what do you find to be helpful? You know, what are the things that you've tried to, as technology has become more and more part of this game in every facet, what have you found to be really helpful for your job? So the first way that we've really, I think, used technology. in analytics is just developing our own software.

And I think we have an unbelievable product that we started developing in probably 2013. It's very, very advanced. We have two developers, full-time developers on staff with football backgrounds. Is it for sale? No, it's not for sale. Unfortunately, no. We've worked, I'll tell you, some of the best tweaks we've made are ideas that I've gotten from the Orioles because they're very advanced.

And I've looked at their software and we've added it. component. So that's the first thing. The second piece, though, it really is the modeling that we do. We do pro modeling and we do college scouting modeling, which basically assigns a grade to every player. And that's a part of the process. And so that grade, along with the scout grades, and in some ways that grade is driven by scout grades, but a lot of other stuff too that we use, for instance, Madden ratings. Who would ever think that the NFL team would use Madden ratings in one of their models? Well, we do. giving you just a small piece of what we do that's fascinating yeah so we have these models that we use

and it spits out grades and values for players and we use those and in some cases it you know uh we can look back and say you know what the model is actually three percent better than our scouts grades in terms of predicting what the player is going to do to a three percent crazy uh now again the model is taking aspects of the scout grades components for instance so for instance if you're a running back and, you know, the model thinks that, you know, say, instincts and vision is really important, they're going to pull that information into the model, hands for receivers. That information from the scouts is going to get pulled into the model. But they're also taking other stuff outside information that we're using that we subscribe to,

player performance stuff, player tracking GPS stuff, and that all goes into it. And every single college player gets assigned a grade. How does that help us? Well, say you have four scouts that go into Saginaw Valley State, and they give free agent grades to every prospect there. And the model comes back and says there's one guy there that has a draftable grade. We're going to see that and we're going to assign that player to other people and we're going to get additional looks. Right. The other way it's helpful is if we have a player, two players, say we have two receivers.

They're graded identically by the scouts. And I can't split the tie. The model will chime in and say, this guy's better. Well, why is he better? And I can say, why is he better? Well, he's younger. Now, I might seem counterintuitive, but a younger player has a chance to develop more than an older player.

That makes sense. So we defer to the model in that case. So that's kind of what we do, I would say. That's great. Can you talk about the synergy between you and the coaching staff, how you guys work together during this time? Yeah, so I've been blessed to work with Ozzy for 29 years, and I've had a chance to watch him with Coach Marcha Broda,

Brian Billick, and Coach Harbaugh, very different personalities. different types of relationships, but always thrived. And when I would see other teams, the majority of the dysfunction in organizations, usually between coaching staffs and GMs and scouting staffs. We've never had that. So I think it's a division of labor. It's being a good partner.

It's having a great owner. Understanding your roles, responsibilities, and then it's communication and its inclusion. And so, like, for us, our scouts are a big, our coaches are a big part of the scouting process. In some organizations, the coaches may not even be a part of the process. They may not go to the Combine. They may not go to the Senior Bowl.

They may not go to the scout meetings. They may not be assigned players. To me, that's crazy. And we've never done that. And I think if your coaches are going to coach your players, they should have a chance to chime in and evaluate and give feedback and all those types of things. Now, some coaches are better evaluated than others.

Yep. Right? I need to figure that out. But Coach Harbaugh and I talk every single day. Our offices are across from each other. We live next to each other. So, I mean, you know, we can't really be enemies. We live literally next door to each other.

But we speak every day about all things football. And I think you have to have that to be successful long term. We talked to Nick Casario about his relationship with Bill Belichick and obviously unique. And in your relationship, when I think about your growing up, if you will, for lack of a better phrase inside the industry. You learned a lot from Ozzy. There's no denying that.

And I know you're the first to promote that. If you can just think back, right, all your time with Ozzy, what was the toughest lesson you learn from him? Yeah, you know, there's a lot. But I would say you have to sometimes do what's right for the organization, even though you know it's the wrong thing to do. And what I mean by that is like, we had a player that historically was just one of the great ravens of all time

Anquan Bolton we traded for Anquan he was a total stud as a person on the field off the field just epitomize what it meant to be a raven like a guy that when you went into Pittsburgh he wanted Anquan right and the reality of it is we were in a bad cap situation and we had to trade them and we didn't get much for them. And it was a horrible football decision, but we had to do it, and it was hard. And I think sometimes you have to just accept that you have to make the hard decision.

We might have made it work. We could have probably finagled some contracts, done some cap deals. We probably would have put ourselves in a worst position in future years have we done that. And Ozzy just has this way of when the time comes in, we've got to do it. So my first year as GM, 2019, I had just taken over.

January 19th, I took over and got to the first day of the new league year. And we lost Zedaria Smith, Terrell Suggs, Eric Weddle, and it was one of the player, and I can't think of it. Oh, C.J. Mosley. Four, like, legit, Pro Bowl players. We couldn't sign them back. I tried to sign CJ we couldn't. So Darius went as a free agent. I had to cut Eric Weddell and Terrell Sugg signed with Arizona because he wanted to go back to Arizona.

And I was just getting crushed. Literally, knowing a job, right? Right. What the hell is this guy doing? It was hard. And I could have finagled a way to keep those guys, some of those guys on the team, probably. I could have overpaid CJ. I could have probably kept Weddell for another, who I was very close with.

We might have overpaid Suggs. but it wasn't the right thing to do at that moment for the club. And so I had to just eat it. I had to do it because it was the right thing to do. It was very hard. And I learned that from Ozzy. So in our audience, I think there's a handful of people that aspire to become a general manager, working in the NFL.

And I've come to realize that I think there are a lot of, you mentioned Madden. I think a lot of Madden GMs that think they can be GMs in the NFL. Maybe they'll encourage them. But there's only things. 32 of you out there in the world, right? And it's a unique responsibility that I know you, you know, obviously you cherish and you take, you take it to heart. If you now, though, could look back to a young Eric DeCosta, just getting 24 years old, you said, right? Starting in the business, what advice would you give to him? Realize that you don't know as much as you

think you do about the game number one. Because I'm still now, you know, 30 years later, figuring stuff out, especially like X's and O's-wise and like coaching-related stuff. As scouts, we evaluate ability and talent, but a lot of scouts don't have any background in terms of X's and O's and what the player is supposed to be doing. So learn the game, except that you don't know as much. Just because you played four years in college, you were a GA for two years, doesn't really mean that you know the game. But two, appreciate what other people do, build relationships with people in all the other departments. I was, blessed. We came from Cleveland. I didn't. I was a GA up in Connecticut at a small school called Trinity

College. And I came down and it's just like those books, that book series left behind. A lot of people got left behind in Cleveland. They weren't invited to Baltimore. So we were very, very small. And it was a, it was a blessing for me because I became that guy that would like just have Eric to it. So whether it was a training room, security, equipment, PR, community relations, whatever. it was, they would say, just have Eric do it because there was nobody else. And I learned everybody else's job, what their roles were, how the whole thing kind of fits together. It's not, everyone thinks that being a GM is scouting players, drafting players, signing players, and trading players. It's about managing people and solving problems. So if you understand what everybody's

role is in the organization and how they all work together, if you've built important relationships with those people, you'll thrive. I also want to ask you this. Like, I know for me, we've very different jobs, but for me, it's like with all the TV and the bullshit and the radio and the writing and all this stuff. Like, when I actually get to sit down and put on the tape, like, for me, that's where I'm like, fine, you know, and you could turn the phone off or you can block everything up.

Like, what is it for you? What is still to this day your favorite? part of the job? Well, you used to always be scouting. Like, that's my whole identity. I'm proud that I was an area scout. I'm proud that I was a college director and ran the draft. I've always run the draft, you know, for the last, since 2004, I've run the draft, still run the draft. I love that aspect of it. But I think now my biggest weakness is the things that I would always have said to you guys, like I'm a nervous about, one would be salary cap and negotiation. And then two would be relationships with players because I'm not Ozzie Newsom. I'm not in every Hall of Fame. I'm not a

six-foot-four African-American guy that played at Alabama, right? So I was always nervous about that. I have to say that now in my six-year's GM, I relish getting a deal done, negotiating a deal, right? I've done two deals with players, Lamar Jackson, Roquan Smith. I love that. I love the negotiation aspect of the job, managing the cap. But the second thing is really leading the players, you know the players, helping the players through challenges that they might be faced with, solving problems, encouraging, in some cases, disciplining. That's part of the job. But the relationship, I think, with the players, now I'll say this, I still love to scout, right? But I can't just sit there now for hours on end and watch, you know, four players and watch four games or four players.

I have to be strategic. You know, I have to, figure out when I'm going to do that. So what I started doing, it's just going to sound crazy. But like, as we get closest to the draft, on Friday nights, I go to bed at like 8 o'clock, and I get up at 3 o'clock in the morning, and I go into the office. And I work from on Saturday mornings, I work from about 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. And people say, well, why do you do that? Well, my kids are sleeping.

Yeah, I know. Right? They're sleeping. So I can get eight hours worth of tape when there's nobody in the building done, get home and still make my boy's pancakes. And there's a joy to that. You know, for me to be able to succeed, I have to do that. Well, we appreciate you, man.

We appreciate you taking the time. We appreciate everything you've done in this industry. We've obviously got a lot of people that we've worked with or played with in college that have worked with you. And, you know, best of luck to you moving forward. Well, thanks, guys. Thanks for the support. Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino. Or 18 plus and present in D.C.

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