Ravens announce front-office promotions

Much like their roster and coaching staff, the 2023 Ravens saw their front office fall victim to departures for bigger jobs around the league, as well. Executive vice president and general manager Eric DeCosta announced seven promotions this week to help fill some of the new vacancies.

George Kokinis was the first staffer mentioned to take the next step up in his career. After spending the past five years as director of player personnel, Kokinis has been promoted to the title of vice president of player personnel. He is one of the longest-tenured staffer in Baltimore’s player personnel department and has worked in the NFL for 33 years. His tenure with the team technically dates back to when he was a scouting intern in Cleveland in 1991. He was invited by former owner Art Modell in the franchise’s move to Baltimore in 1996.

In 2023, the team had two director of player personnel: Kokinis and new Chargers general manager Joe Hortiz. With Hortiz gone and Kokinis receiving a title bump, former assistant director of player personnel Mark Azevedo will step up into the role the former two once shared. Azevedo is another long-term staffer, joining the team as a player personnel assistant in 2005. In the past 19 years, Azevedo has worked his way up through the scouting department.

Former director of college scouting David Blackburn crossed the beltway to work with the Commanders, leaving the position open for former national scout Andrew Raphael to step up into the role. Raphael has been with the team for 10 years, joining as a player personnel intern in 2013. He will be joined atop the college scouting department by Joey Cleary, a nine-year Ravens staffer who served as a Southeast area scout for the past three seasons.

On the pro scouting side of things, Corey Frazier has been promoted to assistant director of pro personnel. Joining the team as a player personnel assistant in 2017, Frazier spent two years as a pro scout before working the past three seasons as the team’s West Coast area scout.

The team also named a couple of promotions in its analytics departments. DeCosta announced that David McDonald would be named vice president of research and development. McDonald has been in Baltimore for nine years, leading all software and data development aspects of the player personnel department as director of research and development since 2019.

Lastly, Derrick Yam was promoted to director of data and decision science after serving the past two seasons as manager of data and decision science. Yam joined the Ravens as a quantitative analyst in 2019 after earning a master’s degree in biostatistics from Brown University.