The Ravens have so many holes to fill in the upcoming draft that they have little choice but to take Joe Flacco for granted again this year.
He's going to be the starting quarterback for the foreseeable future and if there is an offensive player taken in the first three rounds, the emphasis will be on giving him another weapon or improving his protection.
Which makes perfect sense, but everybody knows the clock is ticking.
The time is drawing near for the Ravens to begin grooming a replacement for the 32-year-old Flacco — in a perfect world, creating an Aaron Rodgers/Brett Favre situation that would make the team less vulnerable to a season-endangering injury as Flacco advances in age.
If that seems simple enough, it's not. General manager Ozzie Newsome certainly isn't resistant to the concept, but the Ravens are a team with a number of higher priorities — mostly on defense — and they aren't sitting on a ton of picks this year.
They might end up trading some draft position for extra picks, but the seven picks they possess at the moment would be their lowest number since 2010. With the team needing help at so many other positions, it seems unlikely that a quarterback is going to end up in the mix, though the front office is under orders to keep an open mind.
"We will evaluate the quarterbacks, and they are slotted where they belong in our sequence," Newsome said. "If we get to a point that the best player is a quarterback, even though we might have needs in another area, we are mandated by Steve (Bisciotti), our owner, to take the quarterback. Because the other aspect of that is if you have a good, young, rookie quarterback, you have him on a rookie contract for four years."
The Ravens have only drafted two quarterbacks — Tyrod Taylor and Keith Wenning — since moving up in the first round to get Flacco in 2008. But assistant general manager Eric DeCosta said after the team's pre-draft news conference Wednesday that it isn't for lack of trying.
"We have tried to take some quarterbacks and they've gotten picked before us," DeCosta said. "Secondly, we have a good quarterback and in building your roster, you've got to try and address as many issues as you can and we always have an issue or two. When I look at players, I look at the intrinsic value to a player that we say, 'OK, this is what he's worth. This is where we'd take him.' When the player drops to the point where you feel like you can get value for taking him at that spot, then you do that."
Those opportunities have been rare because the market for quarterbacks doesn't usually dovetail with the Ravens' best-player-available draft philosophy.
"Quarterbacks are typically drafted higher than what their value truly is, so we never get to that point," DeCosta said. "There will be quarterbacks that we really like, that we would take given this particular round, but they go a round above us. So we never get to that point."
Of course, there might be more of a sense of urgency if the organization was not satisfied that Flacco is fully healthy and ready to guide the team back to the playoffs next season. The team is pretty much all in on him contractually for at least the next two or three years and veteran backup Ryan Mallett signed a one-year contract in March.
If there is a case to be made for moving on a young quarterback more quickly, it is that the supply-and-demand equation might soon become problematic. One of the more intriguing stories to come out of the NFL scouting combine was the amount of interest the Pittsburgh Steelers showed in young quarterbacks, and they are one of several teams with superstar quarterbacks in their mid-30s.
The question for the Ravens is how long they can afford to wait.
This year, they don't appear to have much choice.
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