Ravens Top 10 Draft Picks Of the Last 10 Years: #4 Ray Rice
Feb 3, 2013; New Orleans, LA, USA; Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice (27) runs behind the block of full back Vonta Leach (44) on San Francisco 49ers safety Donte Whitner (31) in Super Bowl XLVII at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Mandatory Credit: Chuck Cook-USA TODAY Sports
With The Draft upcoming, i thought it would be appropriot to take a look at some of the shining accomplishment and most glaring faults in terms of draft picks.
Now That I Have Recapped the Ravens 10 worst draft picks, lets get to the good stuff, Here are the Ravens 10 best draft picks of the past 10 years. Like with the worst picks, I have a few parameters here.
- Players who signed a second contract with the team were given priority over those who did not.
- Non Starters were not included. There are way to many good picks for me to include players who don’t start, at least occasionally.
- Players on the Superbowl squad were given the edge over players who were not.
- Proven commodities are worth more than potential success.
Those arent shackling restraints, but because the Ravens draft so well, this was actually a bit of a challenge. There are probably a lot of player that should have made this list but didn’t, just because there wasn’t enough room on the list to include everyone.
Ray Rice was selected in the second round of the 2008 NFL draft. All he has done since then is produce more scrimmage yards than almost any other player in the league and produce two 2000+ scrimmage yard seasons. All that despite only being a third RB in his rookie season.
Rice being the 4th best pick in the last ten years just further proves that the Ravens are the best NFL team when it comes to draft success.
Rice took a full year to take over as a starter, but once he did, he immediately showed he was ready to be one of the leagues elite backs. Rice notched 1339 rushing yards to go along with his 702 receiving yards. He also scored 8 TDs.This gave Rice his first 2000+ yard season(2339).
2010 saw Rice continue to produce at a high level, though he did take a bit of a step back, he still was top 3 in the league in scrimmage yards with 1776 rushing and receiving yards combined.
After 2010, the Ravens released Willis McGahee, which opened the door for Rice to be a full time work horse in 2011. He reponded by setting career highs in every category. Rushing Yards- 1364. Receiving Yards- 704. Rushing TDs- 12. Receiving TDs- 3. This obviously gave him his second 2000+ yard season and many expected Rice to take over as the leagues top RB with Adrien Peterson injured at the end of 2011(of course we all saw how that worked out).
In 2012, Rice had his lowest totals as a starter, but much of that was thanks to a confused identity on the offense as a whole. despit that, he still had 1621 total scrimmage yards and 10 TDs, his second consecutive year with double digit TDs.
Rice is a top 5 NFL back, and a top 5 pick over the last decade for the Ravens.