Ravens Miss Out on Star Defensive Lineman

It's a tragic miss for the Ravens, who were active in the lead up to the NFL trade deadline. The 3-5 team has been in worse jams before, coming off of back-to-back wins for the first time all fall, but they've needed help in the pass-rush about as badly as any of their midseason desires.

How Would Williams Have Fit?

A trade for Dre'Mont Jones earlier in the week signaled their interest in providing some much-needed new blood to a unit that was otherwise headlined by the older Kyle Van Noy and the still-improving Mike Green, two players who probably shouldn't be heaped with too much responsibility in their current forms, but Williams is a level above your slightly-above-average starter.

He's been named to three straight Pro Bowl games, and has a First Team All-Pro under his belt from the career-high 12 sacks he collected for himself in 2022. The 1-7 Jets aren't going anywhere fast, though, and it's shown in their willingness to dump their top prospects.

Williams, the third overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft, wasn't even the first blue-chipper to be shipped out hours before the deadline's close. Sauce Gardner, the star cornerback who went fourth overall in 2022, was sent to the Indianapolis Colts mere hours earlier for a hefty price of two future first-round assets.

New York required a favorable pick from Dallas to make the trade, and that's where questions surrounding how much Baltimore was willing to give up comes into play. They're one of the more active trading teams in the league, as seen through previous moves to trade Odafe Oweh and Jaire Alexander, and they've added Alohi Gilman and Jones in bracing for the season's second half, but the Ravens lack a storied history of dealing assets towards the tippy-top of drafts.

Though the Jet-turned-Cowboy has 40 sacks to his name through six and a half seasons, his lone quarterback takedown may have held some suiters back from offering up the whole farm. With that being said, he;s already up to 32 combined tackles after amounting 37 a season ago, and he still has two months of football left ahead of him in Dallas' schedule.

He'd have been an intriguing all-in target for the Ravens to lock in on, an appropriate signal that they're serious about capitalizing on their early-November momentum, but the Cowboys stepped in to deliver on team owner Jerry Jones' hint that he'd play the role of spoiler.