Ravens Insider: Ravens news, notes and opinions

[ExtremeRavens]

The two names you read here and pretty much everywhere else in the days leading up to the draft as it relates to the Ravens and their original 29 th overall pick were Alabama linebacker Dont’a Hightower and Wisconsin center Peter Konz . As it turns out, neither was as high on the Ravens’ draft board as we all thought. In a live chat yesterday on the Ravens’ team website, www.baltimoreravens.com , Director of Player Personnel Eric DeCosta said that the team had about seven players that it really liked in the first round and Hightower was “not one of the players that we would have traded to get.” Again, that doesn’t mean that the Ravens weren’t interested in Hightower, but it does make it pretty clear that they liked several other players better. As for Konz, DeCosta said that that they think he’s going to be a very good player, but they had other players, including Courtney Upshaw , rated higher. My take on it is if the Ravens really liked Konz as much as we thought they did, they would have been willing to trade up five or six spots in the second round to make sure they got him. They did it for running back Bernard Pierce in the third round, even though that didn’t cost as much as it would have to move up and grab Konz. Instead, the Atlanta Falcons selected Konz with the 23 rd pick in the second round, and five picks later, the Ravens took Iowa State guard Kelechi Osemele . I guess the moral of the story is don’t believe everything you hear around draft time. Teams, especially ones that take the draft as seriously as the Ravens do, simply aren’t going to expose their hand until it’s absolutely necessary.

 

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