Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome is a stand-up guy and a very good communicator— and he lived up to the reputation yet again at a special Ravens’ pre-Draft presser on Wednesday, April 4th, in downtown Baltimore…
Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome in his earliest playing days with the Cleveland Browns…
Most of the talk around the Ravens this offseason has been about the team trying to lock up Joe Flacco and Ray Rice to long-term contracts. Turns out, the Ravens are also in contract negotiations with two of their budding defensive stars, cornerbacks Lardarius Webb and Cary Williams.
“We are involved in negotiations with both,” General Manager Ozzie Newsome said Wednesday at the team’s pre-draft press conference. “What the status is, I don’t know.”
The Ravens starting cornerbacks are both heading into the final season of their four-year rookie contracts and are restricted free agents. Baltimore protected Webb with a first-round tender and used a second-round tender on Williams. The first-round tender guarantees Webb a $2.74 million contract for next season and the second-round tender pays Williams $1.93 million.
The two cornerbacks are both young emerging talents on the Ravens defense.
“Our restricted guys are guys that we would like to extend to longer term deals,” Newsome said. In their first season as full-time starters, both corners helped the Ravens become the fourth best team in the NFL against the pass (196.3 yards per game).
Webb led the team with five interceptions and 20 passes defended and also had 68 tackles. He added three more interceptions in the playoffs and proved to be a valuable punt returner throughout the year. Webb’s play earned him Pro Bowl consideration and his performance in the playoffs continued to elevate his profile.
Williams was quieter, as he didn’t have any interceptions, but finished the year with 77 tackles and 18 passes defended. The former seventh-round draft pick won the starting job after an impressive training camp and went on to start every game of the season.
Williams also played hurt for part of the year, as he had a procedure on his hip to repair a torn labrum after the season ended. Some pundits have speculated that second-year corner and last year’s first-round draft pick Jimmy Smith could challenge Williams for his starting role.
Any team interested in trying to sign Webb or Williams away from Baltimore would have to give a corresponding draft pick to their tender and make an offer that the Ravens wouldn’t match. The other 31 NFL teams have until April 21 to make an offer to the Ravens’ restricted free agents, but Newsome is hoping that both young corners will be with the Ravens for the foreseeable future.
The Ravens other restricted free agent is linebacker Dannell Ellerbe, but Newsome did not specify whether the team is trying to work out a long-term deal with him.
Newsome isn’t worried about being pressed up against the salary cap. The Ravens reportedly rank third among NFL teams in the smallest amount of cap space remaining ($1.7 million), but Newsome said the team still has flexibility to make some moves.
“We talk about the cap basically every day, and if there’s a good player that can come in and help our football team, we’ll be able to fit him under our cap,” Newsome said. Unlike some other teams in the NFL, the Ravens often don’t have much salary-cap space to use during the offseason. They tend to eat up the bulk of their cap signing players they originally drafted, like Terrell Suggs and Haloti Ngata, rather than being big spenders on the free-agent market.
The Ravens did make some free-agency moves this year – re-signing linebackers Jameel McClain and Brendon Ayanbadejo and bringing in defensive backs Corey Graham and Sean Considine – but they stayed out of the bidding for the marquee free agents.
If they want to add more players to that list, fans can take comfort in savvy front-office executives who are experienced in dealing with cap limits. “It’s not unique,” Newsome said. “We’ve been here four or five other times that I can recall.”
Part of the Ravens’ approach to managing the cap is avoiding the restructuring of contracts to back-load the deals. The risk with that approach is that teams can potentially get bogged down with “dead money,” where they are paying players who aren’t even on the team anymore.
“Teams do some things that we try not to do because Steve gives us the talk all the time about what it’s going to be in 2013 and 2014,” Newsome said. “So we just don’t try to put everything into one year.”
A time where the Ravens did try to structure contracts in a way to put all the stock in one season was in 2001, Newsome said. The Ravens fell short of the Super Bowl that season and then had to disband the core of that team after the season. “We just turned the whole team over,” Newsome said. “I think we’ve learned from that.”
Baltimore prefers to use free agency as a time to fill holes on the roster by targeting affordable players and use the draft as a place to rebuild the core of the team. But if there’s a player that comes available at the right price, Newsome and the Ravens still have the flexibility to jump.
“With us,” Newsome said, “the cap is very fluid.”
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