DeCosta Wasn’t Lying

Tyler Linderbaum set a record for interior offensive lineman when he signed a 3-Year deal with the Las Vegas Raiders for $81 million, $60M fully guaranteed. The 3-time Pro Bowler and the Ravens second first-round pick in the 2022 NFL Draft who turns 26 on April 7, will have an opportunity to test the market again in three years before he’s 29. Nicely played by Lindy and his agent Neil Cornrich of NC Sports.

The former Iowa Hawkeye was a solid and extremely dependable offensive line signal caller for the Ravens, playing in 66 out of a possible 68 regular season games during his 4-year career in Baltimore. Adept at combination blocks and climbing to the second level in the ground game, PFF ranked Linderbaum 4th in run blocking among centers. In pass pro, Tyler was assigned a ranking of 22nd among the 40 centers graded, yielding a total of 26 pressures in 2025, 36th best in the league.

Next Gen Stats however paints a different picture when it comes to Linderbaum’s prowess as a pass blocker.

Tyler Linderbaum allowed pressure in an average of 3.64 seconds in 2025, the 2nd-longest mark among centers (min. 250 pass blocks) and the best of his career.

Linderbaum blocked 1-on-1 on 49.7% of his pass blocks, the highest rate at the position.@Raiders | #RaiderNation https://t.co/fX9U6M2Wd4 pic.twitter.com/JQk0KsXRNa

— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) March 9, 2026

Maybe the wide swing in pass pro evaluators can be attributed to the liabilities to Linderbaum’s left and right – namely Andrew Vorhees and Daniel Faalele, neither of which I expect to be on the Ravens 53-man roster come September. But at the end of the day, the Raiders valued Linderbaum more than the Ravens and given the teams needs at guard, it’s no surprise that GM Eric DeCosta had to draw the line somewhere and unfortunately the Ravens reported 4-year, $88M offer to Lindy wasn’t enough.

Book Ends?

“So, we had started discussions with both players. We’d already agreed to potentially the trade with the Raiders, but we were trying to sign Tyler [Linderbaum], obviously. We weren’t able to get that done. [While] looking at the best ways for us to improve our football team, at some point we just said, ‘You know what? This might be a guy that really fits us.’ And we’ve played against him twice a year for the last whatever many years, four or five years. And thought, ‘Hey, maybe this is a way for us to get better as a football team.’ So, that was definitely a possibility for us. Not to say that it would’ve happened, but definitely something that we had contemplated and discussed with Trey [Hendrickson].” ~ Eric DeCosta on the possibility of Maxx Crosby and Trey Hendrickson as bookend edge rushers.

Most observers, me included, believed this statement above from EDC to be a tale of fiction. For the Ravens to give up two first-round picks, a hefty paycheck to Crosby and then to double down with a splash free agent acquisition in the form of Hendrickson, seemed completely out of character for the Ravens. However, a closer look suggests that there might be something to it.

Trey Hendrickson’s cap figure for 2026 is $15M. Maxx Crosby’s deal could have been easily restructured with a simple salary conversion on his contract that would drop his acquired cap hit from $30.7M, down to $7.73M. The Ravens haven’t had book end edge rushers like this since Terrell Suggs and Elvis Dumervil lined up together. That pairing produced 29 sacks during the course of 16 games in 2014. To put that into perspective, during the 17-game 2025 season, the Ravens as a team produced 30 sacks.

Dead Weight

Over the weekend I wrote about Lamar Jackson and his enormous impact on the Ravens cap. It sticks out like a sore thumb. But Lamar’s contractual status is not the only sore thumb on the Ravens cap scoreboard. There are a couple others.

Roquan Smith carries a $32.7M cap number into 2026 and an identical number in 2027. Simply put, he needs to play better. In 2024 and 2025 he’s been merely a shadow of the player he was for part of 2022 and throughout 2023. Slowed during part of the season by a hamstring injury, Smith was assigned a ranking of 20 among off-the-ball linebackers. The rub comes from his W-2. Roquan earns $20M per season which is second only to Fred Warner who PFF lists far and away as the NFL’s best Mike-backer. Parting ways with Smith in 2026 is unlikely but if he’s merely an average LB in Minter’s system come 2027, he’ll be gone unless he borrows a page from Ronnie Stanley’s book on career survival and takes a healthy paycut. Cutting Smith in 2027 represents a $20M cap savings.

Another sore thumb wears number 44. Humphrey had a subpar 2025 when too many times the back of his jersey was on full display as the receiver he defended finished a pivotal play. Marlon is due $15.25M in 2026 and carries a cap figure of $26.3M. Humphrey is the 10th highest paid CB in terms of APY. He ranked 105th out of 114 CB’s graded by PFF. One would think that he’d accept a significantly reduced salary to preserve his status as a current Raven.

(Cap) Space, The Final Frontier

The Ravens have the flexibility to create more cap space if needed. RSR’s Brian McFarland lists some options above in his Effective Cap Space graphic. ECS means that after all things are considered, that’s the amount of money the Ravens have to spend on free agents as of this writing. But if needed, they have some options with other players to create more. Some are more practical than others – one of which could be Nnamdi Madubuike who continues to put in the work, suggesting his return in 2026. That would be huge!

I’ve seen all I need to see. Nnamdi Madubuike will be back playing football for the Baltimore Ravens this season, mark my words. pic.twitter.com/ojGoWKbujF

— Nic Mason (@British_Raven19) March 17, 2026

D-Hop

There’s no denying that DeAndre Hopkins was completely underutilized in 2025. When called upon, D-Hop delivered. The culprit behind his rather pedestrian numbers last season (22/330/2) was former OC Todd Monken.

Some believe that the Ravens failure to re-sign Hopkins before March 2, the day the voidable option number hit the salary cap books ($2.996M), signaled a lack of interest in bringing D-Hop back. That’s not necessarily true.

If the Ravens had signed him before the void, only $749K of that total would have counted in 2026 (plus the new deal numbers) and the balance ($2.247M) would have counted in 2027 (unless extended again). So just because the Ravens didn’t act by March 2, doesn’t mean they won’t. It could be that they’ll wait until after the draft. And if you think about it, that’s the more prudent thing to do.

Of course, if you listen to a former local sports talking head (not something I’d recommend), Hopkins wanted out of Baltimore to go to a contender – something D-Hop quickly refuted. Incidentally, said former local sports talking head took down his post. Read into that what you will…

DeAndre Hopkins calls out a report saying he wanted to leave the Ravens to go to a contender last season pic.twitter.com/mDqq2JfKCa

— Kevin Oestreicher (@koestreicher34) March 17, 2026

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