The Ravens on Tuesday received three compensatory picks in next month’s NFL draft, giving them nine selections in the first four rounds and 10 overall.
The Ravens were awarded another third-round pick (No. 100 overall) for the Houston Texans’ 2021 hiring of coach David Culley, who was fired in January, and two fourth-round picks (Nos. 138 and 141) for the free-agent departures of pass rushers Matthew Judon and Yannick Ngakoue. Under NFL rules, a team losing more or better compensatory free agents than it signs in the previous year is eligible to receive compensatory picks.
Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta already had seven picks in the draft: the team’s first-rounder (No. 14 overall), second-rounder, third-rounder, fourth-rounder, the New York Giants’ fourth-rounder, the Arizona Cardinals’ fourth-rounder and the Miami Dolphins’ sixth-rounder.
“If you think about our list, our master list, if we have 100 players ranked, we feel like all of those nine picks will probably come within our top 80 players,” DeCosta said last month. “So if we do our job correctly, if we stack the board the right way, if we’re able to play the combinations correctly — what I mean by that is drafting the players with an eye toward maximizing each pick positionally — I think we have a really good chance to build some serious and quality depth to help this team be the best it can be.”
The Ravens have received 55 compensatory draft picks in franchise history, the most in the NFL since the system’s 1994 inception, a total that doesn’t include their two third-round picks for Culley’s hiring. The Dallas Cowboys have received the second most (49).