Ravens WR Rashod Bateman Has Some Strong Words For GM Eric DeCosta As Ravens Twitter Has Become A Total Minefield

Julio Cortez. Shutterstock Images.

What an absolute hellscape Ravens twitter is these days. Every single day I log on to the bird site and there's some version of non-news regarding Lamar's contract situation and the same old tired takes regurgitated over and over. It's been an exhausting 18-24 months and there's no end in sight. Such is the nature of the beast and I cannot wait for that saga to be over one way or another.

Well today I wake up and we've got a different topic at hand. How refreshing!

The impetus of today's headache starts with the NFLPA's player survey that dropped yesterday featuring quite a strong F- grade for the team's strength coach position.

The grade was enough to drop the overall ranking of a franchise that is typically perceived well among league ranks all the way down to 17th. Behind that F- grade is a fella named Steve Saunders, who was quietly let go last week. 

This dude should've been let go years ago. By all accounts (publicly and privately) this guy was the root of the COVID outbreak that ruined everybody's Thanksgiving night back in 2020. That postponed Steelers game, ultimately played on a Wednesday afternoon with half the team on the shelf, resulted in a loss that cost the Ravens the division that year and honestly could be pointed as an inflection point in the franchise's trajectory. Things weren't as hunky dory throughout the 2020 season like they were in 2019, but that saga can easily be pointed to as the start of a death spiral that it feels like the Ravens haven't ever really emerged from.

Saunders was given a month-long suspension for the incident and wasn't even outed publicly, which is more or less a slap on the wrist given the circumstances.

Now if this guy was some sort of S&C savant who had a real impact on the team's on-field bottom line, I could see that maaaaaaaybe being justifiable. But that's just not the case. It's never been the case. Over the years there have been a variety of reviews of Saunders, and few have been positive. NFL veterans who have played elsewhere such as Eugene Monroe and Derek Wolfe had their public criticisms, and many shooed their complaints away (myself included). My franchise? Treat players poorly? Couldn't be mine, we all said.

But that COVID incident brought him more to the public eye. The more I heard about him behind the scenes, the more stunning it was to me that he was still employed. I don't know if the Ravens knew of this survey's results ahead of his firing, but it's believable that it could have been the final straw. His termination was nearly universally lauded, and now the survey going public has given everybody the opportunity to dunk on him on his way out.

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Well that opened a whole can of worms that has players speaking openly and freely about all their respective beefs with the organization, and the wheels having fully come off.

At GM Eric DeCosta's routine presser at the Combine, he was predictably asked about the team's struggles with putting together a strong WR corps.

"If I had an answer, that would probably mean I would have some better receivers… We're gonna keep swinging. There have been some guys that have been successful players for us that were draft picks. We've never really hit on that All-Pro type of guy, which is disappointing, but it's not for a lack of effort… It's one of those anomalies that I really can't explain, other than to say that we're not going to stop trying. We're gonna keep swinging and hopefully at one of these points, we're gonna hit the ball out of the park." 

Now I think this is a rather harmless and diplomatic answer… but I could also see where a wide receiver could feel slighted by it.

Enter Rashod Bateman, full guns blazing.

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It's now deleted after being up for about an hour, but holy moly. Hollywood Brown, the team's 1st rounder from 2019 since traded to Arizona, felt compelled to jump in the fray too, and he tweeted a few more things since deleted about how the team controls all the narratives.

I can definitely see where these two could feel slighted. And both have had injury issues during their times in Baltimore, which can now be easily linked to the fucking disaster they had on the S&C staff. Their frustrations are understandable, although it would seem that Bateman missed the other part of the presser where EDC gushed over Bateman on his journey back from injury:

"Rashod [Bateman] is doing really well. Obviously, it was a pretty serious injury. I think we got out ahead of it to a degree. Rashod and the Club, we decided to do the surgery, and I think it was probably good that we did it at that point because the injury could have gotten worse. He's doing well; we text quite a bit. I know he's very, very excited, champing at the bit to get into the offseason program. We're very excited about him as a player; I can't wait to see what he can do this year." 

Regardless, there's a serious disconnect going on between players and the organization right now. I've applauded the team's PR staff for doing an awesome job keeping a lot of strife in-house, but this is the kind of thing that can happen when you keep a lid on things for too long. The pot has not boiled over here, it's a damn explosion and the kitchen is on fire.

As bad as all of the above is, the franchise has weathered worse. Isolated, these things would be sure to blow over in a matter of days. But the team is in the midst of a PR cold war in what is slowly becoming one of the most infamous contract disputes in sports history. I just don't know how much longer the levee can hold back all this water. Players are fed up, fans are fed up, and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight. Trading Lamar seems like the most likely scenario at this point, and there will probably be riots in the street if and when that happens. I don't know how the franchise comes back from that.

It's just so bad. All of it is bad. I'm begging someone, anyone, to make the bad go away.