 So the NFL draft has come and gone. And the Baltimore Ravens, they had a pretty good draft where they addressed several areas of need and some areas where it wasn't so much a need but they got quality players. But it still feels like for some reason there's just something missing. There's something that they just need to do a little more in certain areas but I'm not sure exactly what that is. But to help me find exactly what's missing, who's missing? And to figure out the best way that the Ravens can go about addressing that, I brought on two very special guests to help me with this search. Yeah, this feels like a dream. That's what I mean. You too, team, keep it clean. You see my boy, he like got him made it. Got him made it. Boy, that's my homie, ain't that right engraving? Right engraving. Team Keep It Clean, two very special guests in the building today. We got the fellas, Rodney and Jose from Lunch Break Hot Take in the building. So I appreciate y'all joining us. First off, let everybody know where they can find you at what you all do. Your Twitter, YouTube, all that good stuff, even though it's gonna be in the description. Oh, no doubt. Hey, shout out to Team Keep It Clean and the LBXT crew. Yes, we are the Lunch Break Hot Take. We do a live show every Wednesday night at 7.15 p.m. Eastern time. Just search up Lunch Break Hot Take on YouTube. We also stream live on Twitch, Twitter and Facebook. And you go find us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok at LBHT Show. And also, we do have another podcast with our friend, OTR Mike. That's called Ring King's podcast. We cover boxing, we stream after all the big fights. You can find us everywhere. You're all on the socials at Ring King's pod. I appreciate that. Now, a couple of questions before we get into it. One of the things that I really appreciate y'all about y'all the most is that you aren't afraid to say some stuff that a lot of people are afraid to say. You're not afraid to go against the grain. What makes y'all like that? I don't know if it's, I don't know if we're just that those angry old men sometimes. You know, honestly, I think what it is is like we've been fans of our teams for a while now. And some of the things that we see going on, it's a little history repeating itself. And we just don't want to, we're just not trying to hear it, right? So like one of the things we're going to discuss, we'll discuss, we discussed a lot on the show is not surrounding your quarterback with weapons, not giving them the proper protection and things like that. And although we, Be as a Panthers fan, I'm a Ravens fan. I love the Ravens and I'm going to root for them. But if I see something that's wrong, I'm not going to just ride with it and just say it's okay, because I've seen them not take care of something like that in the past and it comes back to bite us. So it's, I think it's just seeing it before, that's where I come from with it. Yeah, and it's pretty much the same for me. You know, when I was younger and following the Panthers, I was like, yeah, David Armageddon is going to be great. Right? No, he's not going to be great. He's David Geddes. He was a fifth round pick. It's not going to work out. And, you know, just kind of being a fan is not about just supporting everything the team does blindly, you know? Right. If you, you wanted to see the team win, you want to see the team do well, that means holding them accountable sometimes and calling them out when they don't do the right things. Right, I love that about y'all too. And I agree with it too, because if you just, and it's like having a friend. It's like, if your friend, you see your friend, somebody that you care about, somebody that you're riding with, you see that they heading down the wrong path. It's like, you don't just be like, oh, hey, keep doing what you're doing, man. Exactly. You got to put it aside and say, hey, that ain't it, my friend. Now, another thing that I appreciate that you all do every single episode, you do a Black History Effect. Yes. Well, when we first started our live stream, it was during Black History Month. Oh, okay, I didn't know. And, you know, and me and we were like, hey, let's just do this, you know, every week, let's do it for Black History Month. And then halfway through it, we're like, you know what, we're just going to keep doing it. You know, and that's pretty much what happened. We're like, we liked it. The fans liked it. And we're like, yeah, we're just going to make it a part of the show. Okay, cool. All right, appreciate that. All right, so let's get to the good stuff now, man. All right, so these Baltimore Ravens, they just had a draft where they, it was a, they drafted a little good mix of offense and defense. So I feel like defense, they favored it a bit more, especially with some of the earlier draft picks and the more impactful right here, right now draft picks. But they did draft title in the bomb in the first round after trading away one of their weapons in Hollywood. Brown, how do y'all feel the Ravens did overall with this draft as a whole? Mixed feelings about this, man. Like, as a whole, I mean, talent-wise, I mean, it's up there. They got a lot of good talent. I mean, let's just start with this. I think, overall, I'd probably give them like a B minus for the draft. I love, love, love that they got Tyler Lindebaum and Daniel Vallele in this draft. You know, we've been pounding the table that they need to protect Lamar, and they seem to be taking that serious. So I love that move. But I also hate the fact that they went into the draft knowing that they're going to trade Hollywood Brown, they see a bunch of teams trade ahead of them to get Y receivers. Y receivers are flying off the board and they did nothing about it. And instead, they took a safety. So it's one of those things where, even though they know what they need to do, they just can't fight. I think they can't resist that urge to go defense, even though it's just not a defensive league anymore, right? Like we have to be able to adjust to respond when teams score on us. Like that's my whole thing. Like, yes, we want to build this great defense like we used to have, and we want to be able to hold teams to 13 points, but that's just not realistic anymore. Like teams are going to score on you, no matter what kind of defense that you have, and you have to be able to respond with touchdowns. Yeah, I kind of feel the same way. I kind of, I gave them an incomplete because yeah, while they got a lot of talented players, one thing about the Ravens that I've noticed is that they value what are generally considered lower value positions, right? The league doesn't value safeties as much as Baltimore does. You know, the league doesn't value interior linemen as much as, or interior defense linemen as much as Baltimore does. And they undervalue offensive players just in general, and particularly wide receivers. So I liked the Kyle Hamilton pick a lot more until we found out they knew they were trading Hollywood Brown, and I'm like, you can't sit at 14 and just wait and wait and wait and let all the receivers, all the top receivers go ahead of you. But that's kind of a Baltimore thing, right? Like they consistently are surprised when other teams value offensive weapons. Like they're like, I can't believe these guys went that high. Well, they're the top wide receivers of the draft. They're not gonna just fall to you, right? In terms of just the talent, I thought they did a pretty good job. But the, you know, outside of Hollywood, trading away Hollywood and not replacing them, the biggest problem is they drafted six players in the fourth round. Yes, yeah, one being a punter. I don't care how many draft picks that you have. You didn't hit on six fourth round picks. No. You were never gonna hit on six fourths. I mean, EDC said before the draft, he knew they weren't gonna hit on six fourth round picks. So, you know, call somebody up, package those picks up, move up and get an impact player. And you know what was crazy? I really, I was like, there's no way I'm gonna be wrong about this. No way. I went into this draft for sure on two things. And this was before the Hollywood trade. I was for sure that they were gonna draft to receive in the first three rounds. I would say it's so many times. And then when they traded Hollywood, I was like, oh yeah, they buy to do it for real. Yes, yeah. For sure, without a doubt. They didn't do it first round. I was like, oh, okay. They gonna do it tomorrow, second round for sure. Third round, ah, but second round, they doing it for sure. Second round came around? Nope. Third round came around? Nope. I was like, oh, okay. Well, fourth round, ah, they could do it here, but if they do it here, even if they did it in the third round, then the guy really wouldn't have much hope. But they didn't do it at all. But the thing that I was even more for sure about than that, Ravens were going into the draft with 10 draft picks. I'm like, there is absolutely no way that these dudes are going to draft 10 rookies. They upped that and they drafted 11. Right. Yeah, yeah. And we've actually talked about this in the past. I think it was the 20, was it the 2019 draft B? Which draft was it with Patrick Queen? 2020 draft? 2020. 2020 draft? Yeah. I think they had like 11 picks in that draft as well. And we said, look, on average, NFL teams hit on about 30% of their draft picks, right? So if you have 10, if you've drafted 10 players, three or four of them are realistically going to work out for your team. So we were asking our fan base, which four do you think are going to work out? There's the same thing in this one. Like, okay, we have 11 picks. You know, pick four, maybe five players are going to work out. The rest? One question. Yeah, you know, the rest aren't going to work out. So which ones do you like? And then which ones do you think we wasted our time with? All right, you know, six fourth round picks. I know it's a fourth round, but man, like, that's a lot of picks. That's a lot of picks for, you know, the majority of them to not work out. I mean, we got to wait and see. Maybe we're wrong about that. But history, history says probably not. Yeah. And wow, that, yeah, six fourth round picks. I remember like, you kept hearing it on like, he is being, he kept seeing it all over Twitter. Raven's got the record for most fourth round picks. And I'm just looking at all these tweets and all these news articles like, yeah, they do, but nah, I ain't picking no six feet with the fourth. Nah, they ain't doing that. Yeah. I mean, and to just sit there and look, I think David DeJabo's a fine prospect, but to take him over a wide receiver when George Pickens was sitting there, and you may not even get anything out of DeJabo this year was alarming to me, to say the least. I don't have a problem with taking DeJabo if you're again, gonna package up some of those later picks, get back into that second round and still get Pickens. That's fine. But they said, no, DeJabo's our guy and then we're gonna keep him moving. So I just, like I said, I can't give them a grade until I see what their plan is at wide receiver. Right now it doesn't look like they have one, but there's still a lot of time left in the off season if they go out and they get a true number one receiver or just a couple of guys, a couple of talented guys. Then that changes my outlook on the draft, but right now it's not looking great to me. And that's a perfect segue into this next segment because right now I just don't know, I don't know, I don't see what the Ravens plan is at wide receiver because the situation is just so weird. I've been saying before the draft and even right up after the draft, it's still early in the off season, but at the same time it's kind of not. And when you think about it, you look at everything sort of in retrospect, it's like, all right, and Hollywood put it out there. I talked to Lamar about getting traded for the past couple of years. He said, this is not a new topic. It wasn't anything that just came out of nowhere. He'd been on this for the past couple of years. And the Ravens knew even this off season, hey, all right, we're gonna trade Hollywood, Hollywood wants out. And I said it before, Ravens are like the new NBA because it seemed like a lot of the players who won that, the players are taking over because Hollywood won it out, he got out. Orlando Brown Jr. won it out, he got out. Hayden Hurst won it out, he got out. So if you were Ravens player and you contributed too and you won out Ravens, okay, hey, do your thing. But with them having known that Hollywood won it out and then of course I'm sure they were like, all right, yeah, we're gonna trade them. I just, I'm a little bit concerned and confused as to why receiver wasn't addressed earlier in the off season if you knew. Like, so you could cover this already if you knew that Hollywood was gonna be gone. And cause I've heard that heard some stuff about, oh yeah, the Ravens, they wanted to draft one of the top receivers in the draft. But yeah, like you mentioned earlier, they didn't move up for anybody. They didn't move around for anybody. So I'm just wondering like, what do you guys think? I don't know, Brody just mentioned that. You don't even think they got a plan to receive, but what do you think is next? Cause I just, for me, I just really just don't know. When they didn't draft a single wide receiver, I mean, I just knew that they had, they must have had something worked out with the team, but they're gonna trade for somebody. But you know, we haven't heard anything yet. I think in their mind, a trade is gonna get done, right? I think they're thinking, hey, we gotta be patient. You know, we'll land somebody. They probably have some players that they're looking at, you know, some possible deals that they can try to work out. And if not, I'm sure they had the backup plan of going to get a couple of veterans like they usually do. I mean, I think that was in the works anyway, that they're gonna bring in another veteran, like a Jarvis Landry or somebody like that. But worst case scenario, they'll say, yeah, you know, we'll pick up a veteran and we like our guys. I mean, that was their plan last year with Orlando Brown, right? They knew ahead of time that they needed to move on from Orlando Brown. They weren't never gonna pay him. And you know, Orlando Brown just kind of sped up the process a little bit and they said, ah, Bill and the waiver, good enough, good enough. You know, we've drafted a lot of linemen. And you know, I think on EDC's part, he figures I'm drafting all these guys. I know it's not me. I know it's not Ozzie who's still in the building scouting. Like I know we're getting the right players. It's on the coaches to coach them up. And I feel like that's kind of message that he's trying to send. Like, hey, I'm getting the guys. We're not wrong. You guys need to get it right. Yeah, I think that right now, you know, before the draft, you heard that New Orleans and Cleveland were both interested in signing Jarvis Landry. New Orleans went and got Crystal Lave, Cleveland got David Bell fairly early in the draft. I think Baltimore is doing the thing where they kind of hang back and they're waiting for Jarvis Landry to run out of options and then come to Baltimore so they can sign them on the sheet. And if that doesn't happen, I think that they are, you know, they signed several underactive free agents and they're going to try and sell Bateman, DuVernay, Wallace, Proshay. And, hey, one of these guys is going to pop, right? Maybe they go out and get another vet. I'm looking, you know, right now you got Julio Jones, Landry, Will Fuller, T.Y. Hilton, Paul Beasley. I mean, it gets worse from there, right? I mean, Odell is on the list, but, you know, he's coming back from that torn ACL. Not sure what exactly he's going to be healthy. So that's what I think that they're trying to outlast Jarvis Landry right now. What I think their plan should be is going to get in decay in my calf. I think that they need to just come up off of next year's picks, give them the contract and get Lamar a real number one receiver. I like him better than Debo for Baltimore, especially considering their coaching situation and Debo not wanting to play the role that he's currently playing. But yeah, if they go out and they get a decayed mat calf and then even still go sign, you know, Jarvis Landry or one of those other veteran wide receivers, I think that you're looking at a Super Bowl contender in Baltimore. If they say Rashad Bateman, man, that was a really impressive 500 yards. You're the man now. I think that, you know, they're a team that challenges for the playoffs and that ultimately gets there and can't score and gets eliminated again. Well, we had to bring it at least two wide receivers. We lost three this all season, right? We released Moz Boykin. We didn't bring back Sammy Watkins and we traded away Holly Brown. So we at least need to bring in two more wide receivers. So yes, it needs to be trade for one and bring in a veteran for sure. Okay. Yeah. And with decayed mat calf and really just with any receiver, young guy who would demand a contract in addition to being traded. I was listening to Speak for Yourself yesterday with Marcellus Wiley and Acho. And that's, I like watching and listening to that show. It's very interesting to say the least, but sometimes I agree with what stuff they say. Sometimes I don't, but it's very entertaining. So I appreciate it for that. But Marcellus Wiley, he said something and when he said it like, it hurt my soul, but it was true. He said for the Ravens, why would they pay a receiver like 25 mil per year or whatever when they don't really care about a receiver like that? When they don't value receivers like that. And that's just where I'm a bit, I'm a bit worried and my expectations for them trading for one of these premier wide receivers, they're super low because of that. And I don't feel like, I feel like with the Ravens, they really have to prove like, hey, a receiver can thrive here. So that's why I know Brodney mentioned that that they could possibly go with the undrafted rookie free agents and the guys that they already got. That's why I think that that, I'm kind of in the back of my mind to go, they gotta have something up their sleeve, right? They gotta have something planned, but I'm not gonna expect it. But they will have to really like prove to people like, hey, receivers can eat here too in order to attract people to the Ravens. And this has been, this isn't really a philosophy issue. Cause I know a lot of people say, oh man, Lamar Jackson, that's cause of him or oh, Greg Roman, that's cause of him. No, no, it goes a lot deeper than that. This has been happening even in the Flacco days too. Yes. This is nothing new when it comes to receivers just not being attracted to the Baltimore Ravens. This has been an ongoing thing. How do y'all feel about that? Good. Good. I know, I was gonna say, the thing with Baltimore is, and this is what I really feel is the solution in Baltimore is just a shift in leadership. And that's from Eric Tocosta on down through the coaching staff and everything because their way doesn't really work. They missed the playoffs four out of five years before Lamar Jackson showed up. Lamar Jackson saved all their jobs. All of them. Right. You know, there was talks about John Harbaugh being fired in that season, you know, in Lamar's rookie season until they switched to him and they went six and one down the stretch and made the playoffs and all that. So I mean, what they do, the way they view the league, the way they value players, it doesn't work, but they have a superstar quarterback, which is the most important thing in the league and he's kind of elevating the team, right? But, you know, even with that, you know, even they see him go out there and win unanimous MVP. They see him carrying the offense. They still are not, it's not clicking in their head that, hey, maybe we need to surround this guy with talent and let him carry us where we want to go. So I think ultimately the fix in Baltimore is for sure Harbaugh being gone and coming in with a whole new coaching staff. I think, you know, I would say Tocosta as well, but, you know, maybe he can adjust once he sees some heads start to roll. I don't know. But the way they like to do things right now, I mean, they, like I said, they don't value the players and the things that win in the NFL today. Yeah. Also, we have to start asking, like, what do they value? Because they don't value edge rushes either, right? I tweeted out before the draft that, like, patch rushing is not a priority for the Ravens and a lot of people disagree with that. Yeah, we got a little reaction for that, but they don't value patch rushing. They've been showing you that for the last few years as well. Right? Matthew Judon, they're like, well, even before that, Zadaria Smith, they weren't going to pay Zadaria Smith. Okay, let him go. And you see what kind of players Zadaria Smith turned out to be. Matthew Judon, Yankees and Gakwe, both gone immediately as soon as they leave, you see what kind of players they are. So we've always had good players here at patch rushing, but this scheme just doesn't really rely on that. Like, they want to bliss. And I think even with the new coach there, Mike McDonald, they still want to be a bliss heavy team. That's why they're not that worried about a top-end edge rusher. So I never really thought that that was somebody we're going to get in the draft. And, you know, that's why even in the double pick, people were excited about the double pick, they're not going to rely on him this year. That's something for down the road, hopefully, he can recover and give us something a little bit towards the end of the year and go into next year. But this year, you know, well, we got Justin Houston there if need be, but their plan is to bliss. And when you mentioned the part about the pass rushes, them just continuously letting guys go. I think the Ravens, they felt like, all right, we got 55, we're going to be straight. Whoever on the opposite side of him, we could put anybody over there and we're going to be just fine. And it seemed like that for a little while, but recently, and especially once Terrell Suggs, once he was going to, a lot of that got sort of exposed, I guess. And yeah, it just, it has been rough that they had some ups, they had some downs as well. But I think a lot of the philosophy there, and that's something that I've been talking about a lot in the off season that for the Ravens to really be contenders, not competitive, but contenders, a lot of the philosophy would need to change. So that's, it's just big. Because I feel like with like pass rushing guys, like you mentioned to Matt Judon, Zadaria Smith, I think Ravens felt like, and maybe even still feel like, well, David O'Jabbo will see, cause he was a second round pick, so that's a little bit different. But more recently, I feel like they felt like, all right, well, we drafted this guy and Matt Judon with a fifth round pick. Oh yeah, he turned out good. We're just running back. We could do another fifth round pick. But Zadaria Smith, he was like a fourth or fifth round pick. I forget what round he was in. Oh, he turned out good. Oh, and we're flipping. We get a comp pick for him when he sounded big money somewhere else. We'll just run it back all over again. But it's important that the Ravens do quality over quantity. And that's something that we talked about on here prior to the draft. And that's another reason too, why I didn't, of course, hope that all 11 draft picks work out. But to be realistic, like you mentioned the 30% that Jose mentioned earlier, a lot of them don't. A lot of them don't. This could be the draft where 100% works out. But we'll see. Yeah, we need it. Yeah, they really do, man. Because with the quality over quantity, that was one of the biggest reasons why I didn't feel like they were gonna use all 10 picks. Because I just knew Ravens got all these picks, especially the five and the fourth round that they had before. I'm like, they're gonna use some of those to move up. But it just, it didn't happen. So hopefully it ends up working out. Honestly, you know that the hit rate in the draft goes down significantly in every round. So why is the fourth round where you wanna stack up on draft picks instead of the second or third? Like why do you wanna get all of the picks that you can in a round where you know you're not gonna hit on these picks? Cheap labor. Cheap labor, yeah. They're cheap starting in the late first. Well, look, this is the thing with them. I think they got to a point where they're kind of, they're a victim of their previous success. They're more interested in getting bargain deals, right? Like, like engrave said, cheap labor, they're more interested in that than just making sure that they have the best talent possible. And we say it all the time, like when you pay for, when you get these bargain deals, all you worry about getting bargain deals, you get what you pay for, right? All you end up with when you start the season is a worse team than you could have had. Cause you're just getting guys that, oh, well he's a steal cause he only costs this much and he's good enough, but he's not great. He's not the best. So you're making your team as a whole a worse team because you're getting guys that are just good enough and just good enough isn't good enough when you get to the playoffs. Yeah, like you can say, hey, we'll get Justin Houston at $4 million and that'll be 20% of what Vaughn Miller's making and he can give us like 60% of Vaughn Miller's production. So that's a great value. But when you start playing the games, all you're getting is 60% of Vaughn Miller. Yeah, right. It doesn't matter. Value doesn't have a position on the field. Right. Okay. So in closing, I know Bradley talked about it before, but what do the Ravens need to do next to really take this team to that next level? All right. You want me to start B? Of course. Okay, okay. Honestly, I know it sounds like doom and gloom when we point out the things that are wrong with them, but I don't think it'll take much. I think, you know, when you have Lamar, Lamar covers up so much of your weaknesses and highlights some of your strengths. I think they go and get a good starting wide receiver, Debo, Samuel, DK, Metcalf. And one person we haven't mentioned that's coming up for contract as well is Terry McLaurin. That's probably my favorite one. We get one of those guys. That changes things. And also it has to be that in a combination of Greg Roman. Yes, Greg Roman is here. We got to deal with it, but if you notice they've been bringing in a lot of help on that offensive side of the ball. T. Martin, Keith Williams, who was the other guy that brought in? Dixon. Dixon, yes. I feel like conspiracy theory, Jose feels like this might be a situation, maybe behind the scenes. It is. They kind of downgraded, they kind of downgraded Greg Roman's role a little bit like, hey, listen, we're going to give you the, we're going to give you the Marty Mourneywig offer. Right? You remember that? Hey, we're not going to fire you, but you're not necessarily calling plays anymore. So hopefully something like that's going on where he doesn't have as much control over the offense as he used to. They're just doing it quietly. Those two things would be huge. Those two things would be huge if, hey, we're changing up the offense just slightly. We're still going to be a running team, but we're going to implement a lot of passing and Greg Roman is not going to have as much input in that and get another star wide receiver. I think we're super bowl contenders if we do those two things. Okay. Right? Yeah, no, I agree. If they fix the wide receiver situation, they can be super bowl contenders this year. The problem is, you know, normally I say, hey man, get Lamar, the old line, get him, get him a receiver and he'll take you where you want to go. But this isn't really like the other years because I mean, the AFC North is probably the best division in the NFL. And right now, they're arguably the worst team in it. Even if they go out and they get a DK Metcalf, it's going to be extremely tough coming out of that division. You know, I think they can do it if they go, you know, if they go all in, you know, I think they can do it. But if they try to kind of half step and like, oh, well we'll get Julio Jones and we'll go and get, you know, Will Fuller and hope he stays healthy for the year. I think they're going to end up not making it. Like I said, you know, with the coaching staff, it kind of is what it is. Greg Roman has been the coordinator on a super bowl team or a team that made it to the super bowl and went, but so, you know, he can get you there if you have the talent. And this is kind of one of the things that I, that irritates me talking with Ravens. There's a lot is, hey, why would we bring in a great wide receiver? Why would we get DK Metcalf when Greg Roman is here and he's just going to hold him back? Oh, because if you think your coach is bad at his job, you need to give him more talent, not less. And to be able to overcome his shortcomings, right? Yeah, you mitigate, you mitigate poor coaching, you need overwhelming talent. No, nobody says, hey, man, our quarterback isn't the best. Let's not bother investing in this a lot, right? So yeah, I think if they go out and they get a high end receiver, they're going to be set. It's just going to be, it's going to be a tough season regardless because of that division they're in and the AFC in general really, really stacked up this season. So it's going to be tough. All right, perfect, perfect way to end it. I appreciate y'all coming home. Thank you, man. Wow, man. All right, so shout out to Lunch Break High Tech for joining us on today's show. Y'all make sure y'all subscribe to their YouTube channel and follow them on Twitter as well. All of this stuff is down below in the description. Hopefully, Rodney, appreciate the vote of y'all. Thank you. Thank you for having me. We already know, man. We out.