Russell Street Report NFL Draft Best Player Available Strategy Explained

The Ravens are regarded as one of the NFL’s best drafting teams, mostly because of the success of General Manager Ozzie Newsome’s steadfast Best Player Available (“BPA”) approach.

Selecting the best player available, regardless of position, allows the Ravens to stockpile a deep, talented roster. Since positions of need fluctuate rapidly from year to year (offensive line was the team’s weakest positional group 12 months ago and is now arguably the strongest), acquiring picks and drafting the highest-caliber player possible allows Baltimore to get quality contributions from young players still under their rookie contracts.

With some glaring deficiencies on the current roster at wide receiver, tight end, and cornerback, Ravens fans may be getting nervous this time of year that Ozzie’s need-blind BPA philosophy may not necessarily target those areas of the roster.

But let’s re-examine the pre-draft process to shed some light on what exactly the BPA draft strategy entails.

The Ravens scouts and executives do not group college prospects by draft “rounds.” Instead, the front office asks scouts to take a stance on players and group them into professionally relevant categories, such as elite player, pro bowl player, first-year starter, second-year starter, developmental starter, backup player for the Ravens, backup player for the rest of the league, etc.

The Ravens typically use a numerical system when evaluating prospects. Assistant GM Eric DeCosta has previously explained a general numerical framework that looks something like this:

8.0 = Perfect Player

7.0 = Pro Bowl Player

6.0 = Starter

5.0 = Backup/Role Player

Each year, the Ravens formulate a list of roughly 140 to 180 “draftable” players with the final number usually settling around 150. The organization evaluates those 150 players, grading prospects using something like the 5.0 – 8.0 scale above, but a bit more nuanced. These grades use the tenth decimal place—some teams may get more specific and use the hundredth place, but for sake of this discussion we’re dealing with grades such as 5.8, 6.2, 7.9, etc.

So, slotting players between 5.0 and 8.0 creates 31 possible grades for 150 players, on average resulting in about 5 players tied at each grade—rarely are there any 8.0s and likely very few in the high 7s.

But the Ravens are a “vertical board” team, meaning that they assemble a list of 150 players ranked in a single list from 1-150 from which to choose on draft day. So how do we get from multiple players clumped together at certain grades to a vertical list of sorted players? There are many factors that affect this determination, but one of these considerations is assuredly the Ravens need at certain positions.

DeCosta has made clear that, “if we’ve got two players [tied] in our sequence, one player is a need position, the other player is not a need position, we’re going to flip it, we’re going to make sure the need position is ahead of the non-need position.”

The Ravens will never elevate a player’s grade based on need, but think of positional need as a tiebreaker of sorts. The exact mechanics of the draft board are kept extremely close to the vest, and there are a multitude of factors that result in each particular draft selection, but if after all the scouting, film study, and front office debate, two players are tied on the board, the Ravens will favor positions where the roster is weakest.

Usually, the BPA philosophy plays itself out with a quality player falling to the Ravens who is ranked much higher than where he is selected (such as C.J. Mosely or Torrey Smith), but for those fans nervous about BPA resulting in nothing but middle linebackers and guards this draft season, know that team need is always a factor.

In Ozzie We Trust.