In (dis)honor of the Ravens’ aborted trade for Maxx Crosby, Baltimore Beatdown is excited to launch Almost Ravens Week!

We will be talking about all of the players and coaches who nearly became Ravens over the last 30 years, including potential draft picks, attempted signings, abandoned trades, and even a few potential hires to the coaching staff. This page will serve as a hub for all of our Almost Ravens content as well as a tracker for our bracket-style tournament to determine the biggest near-acquisition in franchise history!

The bracket will be run using polls in the Feed and on Baltimore Beatdown’s X page. To keep voting simple, we have broken the bracket up into four categories – trade, signing, draft pick, and coach – with preliminary rounds scheduled for Tuesday. Those will feature four players with the top two advancing to the quarterfinals, unless one of them gets a majority and goes straight into the semis. Quarterfinal voting in each category will take place on Wednesday with semifinals on Thursday and finals on Friday. Results will be announced on Saturday!

Below is the list of players and coaches you’ll be voting on. To set the bracket, we factored in their careers and potential impact in Baltimore, as well as the craziness surrounding their potential acquisition. We also eliminated players that were once Ravens or later became Ravens after a near-miss (i.e. Za’Darius Smith, DeAndre Hopkins). Rob Gronkowski and T.Y. Hilton were two other tough cuts.

Reader participation will be crucial for these polls, so please participate both on our site and on social media! Be sure to check in regularly to stay up-to-date!

We are also running a weeklong survey about the biggest overall Almost Raven in franchise history. You can find that in the Feed; it is also embedded below:

Who is the biggest Almost-Raven in franchise history? | Baltimore Beatdown

Trade (Round 1 poll)

Signing (Round 1 poll)

Draft pick (Round 1 poll)

Coach (Round 1 poll)