In the name of "contending" and chickens coming home to roost on a slew of bad drafts, our cap has been sorely mismanaged. A rebuild should have taken place four years ago, but instead, they saddled themselves with more cap debt via Flacco's 3-year, $66M extension. Then, with shallow depth at key positions, Oz repeatedly kicked the can down the road extending and signing a number of stopgaps to backloaded deals that ended up counting as dead money when they were let go, creating a vicious cycle of cap mismanagement.

Meanwhile, many of the other teams around the league were using the explosive salary cap growth to lock up their top homegrown players. Inevitably, the overall talent pool is diminished, the Ravens have more notable free agents than other teams, and some franchises have more cap space than they can. That equation equals an exodus of decent to good players from the Ravens because the market has opened up.

DeCosta is finally prioritizing long term salary cap health and that is the best move he could possible make. Lamar will come on the cheap until 2022. With fiscal responsibility, patience and excellent drafting, the Ravens will be fine. Let's let EDC work his plan.