{"id":951777,"date":"2026-07-21T19:24:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T19:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/951777\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T19:24:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T19:24:20","slug":"welcome-to-almost-ravens-week-at-baltimore-beatdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/951777\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to Almost Ravens Week at Baltimore Beatdown!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">In (dis)honor of the Ravens\u2019 aborted trade for Maxx Crosby, Baltimore Beatdown is excited to launch Almost Ravens Week!<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">We will be talking about all of the players and coaches who nearly became Ravens over the last 30 years, including potential draft picks, attempted signings, abandoned trades, and even a few potential hires to the coaching staff. This page will serve as a hub for all of our Almost Ravens content as well as a tracker for our bracket-style tournament to determine the biggest near-acquisition in franchise history!<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The bracket will be run using polls in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimorebeatdown.com\/feed\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Feed<\/a> and on Baltimore Beatdown\u2019s X page. To keep voting simple, we have broken the bracket up into four categories \u2013 trade, signing, draft pick, and coach \u2013 with preliminary rounds scheduled for Tuesday. Those will feature four players with the top two advancing to the quarterfinals, unless one of them gets a majority and goes straight into the semis. Quarterfinal voting in each category will take place on Wednesday with semifinals on Thursday and finals on Friday. Results will be announced on Saturday!<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Below is the list of players and coaches you\u2019ll be voting on. To set the bracket, we factored in their careers and potential impact in Baltimore, as well as the craziness surrounding their potential acquisition. We also eliminated players that were once Ravens or later became Ravens after a near-miss (i.e. Za\u2019Darius Smith, DeAndre Hopkins). Xavien Howard and T.Y. Hilton were two other tough cuts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Reader participation will be crucial for these polls, so please participate both on our site and on social media! Be sure to check in regularly to stay up-to-date!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In (dis)honor of the Ravens\u2019 aborted trade for Maxx Crosby, Baltimore Beatdown is excited to launch Almost Ravens&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":951778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2052],"tags":[184,117,81555,2282,7,6,169],"class_list":["post-951777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baltimore-ravens","tag-baltimore","tag-baltimore-ravens","tag-baltimore-ravens-analysis","tag-baltimoreravens","tag-football","tag-nfl","tag-ravens"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116959606406989256","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951777","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=951777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/951778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}