Baltimore Ravens were never ever in the running for Jamal Adams

The Baltimore Ravens were never going to get Jamal Adams. Even if they flirted with the idea it wasn’t going to happen:

According to reports, the New York Jets have dealt Jamal Adams, and to the frustration of many fans, not to the Baltimore Ravens. The Seattle Seahawks parted with a safety, two first round picks and a third round pick to get Adams to go from dark green to crazy highlighter green. The Ravens were never going to be able to make a move like this. They never would want to.

Think about what the Baltimore Ravens have done with their first round picks in the past four years. First round picks have given the Ravens Patrick Queen, Marquise Brown, Lamar Jackson, Hayden Hurst, Marlon Humphrey and Ronnie Stanley. This is a franchise that trusts their ability to pick in the first round and that trust is built on plenty of evidence. Eric DeCosta has tinkered with the Ozzie Newsome formula and the new approach on an old trick has gotten building block pieces of a team that could legitimately win a Super Bowl or two.

The Seahawks are gearing up to try to win it all. As long as they have Russell Wilson and Pete Carroll, they are going to have a shot at doing that. The problem is that this is the wrong way to go about team building. They are paying Russell Wilson what was top dollar at the quarterback before Patrick Mahomes had something to say about it. It’s crucial that they continue to build in the draft and they just hampered their ability to do so. The Seahawks have another superstar to pay and just forfeited the ability to get five year affordable contracts to starters at areas of need.

If the Seahawks want to do that, it’s fine. It’s not Baltimore’s problem and it may work out for Seattle. If you traveled back in time to tell me that the Seahawks are about to win a Super Bowl, I wouldn’t exactly be stunned. Adams is a superstar and the Seahawks improved their team in a huge way with this trade. The Ravens were never going to do this.

Forget the draft picks that the Ravens would have given up. The Ravens would have had to give away Chuck Clark. That’s the safety the Jets would have wanted. Clark is an up and coming player who signed an affordable extension in Baltimore. Thomas is an ageing safety who compares less to Adams. The Jets want the future and they couldn’t care less about the 2020 season. If the Jets win eight games this year, they’ll take it but 2021 is where they want to be.

Putting it all together:

So you have a team in the Ravens, who have been hitting on draft pick after draft pick. So you have a general manager who likes to give up on home grown talent as much as I like to go to the dentist (I loathe and avoid the dentist). So you have a team that hasn’t given a big deal to their MVP quarterback yet and has Ronnie Stanley just standing there waiting for the bag, and you think they could even think of making a deal like this?

The Adams trade wasn’t going to happen for the purple and black. It probably wasn’t considered as much as people think it was. Remember when everybody thought DeCosta wanted Le’Veon Bell? They signed Mark Ingram and made a lot of us look silly (yeah I fell for that one). If we’re supposed to be learning from past decisions by DeCosta, we should learn that a blockbuster trade like this isn’t his style. He likes to be the general manager doing the fleecing. This was never ever going to happen and that’s a good thing.