After falling short in the AFC Championship game last season, the Baltimore Ravens have entered the offseason with one goal: catching the Kansas City Chiefs.
With the first week of free agency over, it seems that much of the attention around the league is beginning to turn toward next month’s NFL Draft. While there is still plenty of talent left available in free agency, for a team like the Ravens, who have just $13 million in cap space, adding more veteran talent may not be feasible.
This begs the question: how close are the Ravens to surpassing the Chiefs? According to NFL.com’s latest power rankings, the Ravens are close but not quite ready to surpass the back-to-back Super Bowl Champions, as they sit at No. 3. “I thought about ranking the Ravens first or second, and they’d be entirely deserving of a spot that lofty, but I do want to see how they handle the depth they’ve lost; plus, replacing the impact of former defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald (who left to head up the Seahawks) isn’t a finger-snap operation,” Eric Edholm writes.
So, who is ahead of the Ravens, then? Obviously, the repeat Super Bowl champion Chiefs are No. 1, but the San Francisco 49ers take the No. 2 spot right above the Ravens. Similar to the Ravens, the Niners faced their own set of attrition through free agency, specifically upfront, as they lost Arik Armstead, Javon Kinlaw, and Chase Young, among others, like how Baltimore lost contributors like Geno Stone, Patrick Queen, and John Simpson; so what’s the difference?
It seems the Niners’ decision to go ahead and replace those losses through free agency rather than wait possibly until the draft has been the major difference. The Niners signed four players to add to their front seven in hopes of replacing what they lost. Contrastingly, the Ravens have yet to replace many of their key departures.
