Jermaine Eluemunor to the Patriots: 3 big for the Ravens

According to Jim McBride of the Boston Globe, Jermaine Eluemunor has been traded to the New England Patriots. What does this mean for the Baltimore Ravens?

1. The Ravens traded a potential starter at their thinnest position:

There is no getting around the fact that this is a shocking trade. It’s the evening before the Ravens final preseason game and they traded a potential starter for the offensive line. The left guard position was thought of as the thinnest spot on the roster when training camp started. All of the sudden, the Ravens found Eluemunor expendable. If the Ravens traded Kenneth Dixon away it wouldn’t have been too surprising. That would have been a move that we saw coming. This is a move that nobody in the world would have predicted.

The Ravens now have the following options at left guard: Ben Powers, Patrick Mekari and James Hurst. The Ravens have depth that you wouldn’t believe at safety. They have a surplus of talent at running back, inside linebacker and at tight end. The Ravens may have enough bodies on the offensive line, however they don’t have enough trusted pieces of the puzzle. Before you can even get into grading this trade, or thinking about the ramifications, you have to process how unpredictable this trade was.

It’s actually somewhat surprising that the Patriots made this trade. They are a team that has an uncanny ability to get these things right and Eluemunor has never been all that impressive. He has his moments and his physical traits give him potential. Until about an hour ago, it seemed like Eluemunor was the starting left guard of the purple and black. Did the Patriots see something that the Ravens didn’t? Who jumps into the starting left guard battle? Is there another trade in the works? How does this affect the roster math? Eluemunor never convinced Baltimore that he was the right man for the part and the trade still created a Pandora’s box of questions.