There hasn’t been much of an update since Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson revealed that he requested a trade from the team last month. And even though Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta conducted a pre-draft press conference this week, he made it clear he had no intention of talking about the Jackson situation.
To begin his press conference, DeCosta acknowledged that reporters wanted to talk about Jackson, but said he wanted to keep the focus on the upcoming NFL Draft.
“Yeah, so I understand the need to ask those kinds of questions,” DeCosta said according to Pro Football Talk. “I think out of just respect for the process, this is a draft luncheon. And we’re going to try to keep as much of this discussion as we can to the draft, to the coming weeks building the best football team we can build. So, I understand those questions. I think we’ve spoken about this situation probably five different times this spring in various different press conferences and such. So, we’re going to try to just defer those questions and move forward to the draft.”
DeCosta was asked a draft question that pertained to Jackson as a reporter asked if the team was evaluating quarterbacks differently given Jackson’s situation.
“You know, I don’t think we really are,” DeCosta said. “We go into every draft trying to take any kind of bias out, any kind of need-based situation out of the draft equation. We really do try to build a board that’s really best player available. … And so if that’s a quarterback, if that’s a receiver, corner, offensive tackle, we’re going to look at that very strongly and make the best decision we can — knowing that over time, we think, building a team [with the] best available player is the right way to go.”
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