Baltimore acted uncharacteristically throughout the first week of free agency, reacting to a larger-than-usual exodus of players by first pulling out of the Crosby deal before throwing significant money at Hendrickson, another player who, like Crosby, is coming off a season-ending injury. Unlike Crosby, however, Hendrickson is further along his timeline toward returning to the field.<\/p>\n
In fact, he said Friday he’s been cleared for football activities since January. That revelation, plus Hendrickson’s history of production — including two straight seasons of 17.5 sacks in 2023 and 2024 — sold DeCosta on the big-ticket addition.<\/p>\n
“I think there’s a lot of factors that go into it,” DeCosta explained when asked why now was the time to hand out a big contract to a veteran like Hendrickson. “This year, we actually had a bit of a nest egg.<\/p>\n
“Just looking at it, we felt like the guys that we would probably covet the most in the draft would be gone, maybe, before (No.) 14. It’s typically what happens. We felt like this was the year to take a big swing. We saw some players that we thought could impact us, Trey being one of the main guys. I love when you have a familiarity with a player that you played against. That really resonates with me. … Trey’s always been somebody that’s really impressed me in that regard.”<\/p>\n
DeCosta noted he didn’t find satisfaction in plucking Hendrickson from Cincinnati, but was instead excited to add “a hell of a player” and a “force multiplier” in Hendrickson to Baltimore’s roster. He also admitted he was both disappointed and proud of the players who left Charm City for new opportunities elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Those losses are officially in the past. Although the work is far from finished, Hendrickson’s arrival signals DeCosta’s intent to position the Ravens as best as possible to chase a Lombardi Trophy.<\/p>\n
Hendrickson can’t wait to get started in the same division he’s known since 2021.<\/p>\n
“It’s gritty football and that’s the kind of football I like,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Baltimore acted uncharacteristically throughout the first week of free agency, reacting to a larger-than-usual exodus of players by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2052],"tags":[1227,184,117,2282,7,4609,88,6,609,169,1503],"class_list":{"0":"post-811562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baltimore-ravens","8":"tag-around-the-nfl","9":"tag-baltimore","10":"tag-baltimore-ravens","11":"tag-baltimoreravens","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-free-agency","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-no-minute","17":"tag-ravens","18":"tag-trey-hendrickson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116226506228896016","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}