Last Thursday night, I had the pleasure of being at the Sports Boosters/ Press Box Night with Eric DeCosta, director of player personnel of the Ravens. To the best of my memory here is tale of the drafting of Joe Flacco.
One of the Ravens area scouts called Eric and told him to take a much closer look at Flacco, ie this scout believed Flacco was far superior then most people thought. DeCosta first watched Flacco take apart the Navy defense at Annapolis then immediately started an intensive film study of #5. Shortly thereafter DeCosta went by himself to observe Flacco workout. That day , according to DeCosta, Flacco threw about 500 passes–498 of which were on the money. Now his interest was sky high. He related the story to Harbaugh and Cameron who were somewhat skeptical because of the Delaware reference. Eric insisted they go observe #5 and so they did. It was a rainy windy day, but again Flacco was on the money with almost every pass he through, The coaches were totally blown away. Secrecy was the word as they left the workout, not relaying any of their feelings to the Flacco camp, Delaware coaches or the press. They clearly wanted the guy. Draft day comes and the Ravens were drafting 26th. Through 17 picks Flacco was not taken and DeCosta believed there was no chance anyone would take Flacco before the Ravens. However Ozzie and Bishotti were extremely worried that the Ravens could lose this Franchise Guy and finally the owner DeCosta to move up to 18 by giving up a 3rd round pick, stressing the importance of such an impact player. The rest is history. If a few of my facts are off, I apologize but what a fascinating story. Hats off to Eric DeCosta!!!
Dave Vatz
That is a great story, and I hope Flacco can keep adding to it. It takes a lot of guts for a team to trade up for a potential franchise player not from the FBS, and it looks like they did it.
· 11/12/2019