One of the areas that the Baltimore Ravens cited as an area to target for improvement is the offensive line, but in order to take steps forward, they are going to be forced to take one back, because tackle Orlando Brown wants out, and it appears increasingly obvious that he will get his wish.
Brown, a 2018 third-round draft choice, has been the Ravens’ primary starting right tackle for the past three years, making the Pro Bowl in 2019, but has always held that he is a left tackle. He got the opportunity to play there substantially last season due to Ronnie Stanley’s multiple injuries, including a season-ender, and he is now committed to finding a home that will allow him to play where he believes he belongs.
He spoke to Mike Garafolo over the course of the past week about his ambitions to move to left tackle on a full-time basis, which is not feasible in Baltimore because they just signed the All-Pro Stanley to a five-year extension in October worth just a hair under $100 million, and explained that it goes much deeper than you might think.
Garafolo writes that there are six teams in discussions with the Ravens about acquiring Brown via trade this offseason, who is due over $3 million in the final year of his rookie contract, and that hammering out a new contract would be part of the process, with everybody involved confident that the trade would get done.
Brown talked about growing up in football with his father, Orlando Brown, Sr., who was a very respected tackle in his own right, and how he always instilled in him the drive to do better and be better than his father was before him, and not to settle.
“One of the things he always stressed to me as a kid growing up was, ‘be better than me. Put yourself in a better position. I was an undrafted free agent. Get drafted in the first round, shoot for the stars’’, he quotes Brown as saying in a phone conversation for NFL.com.
“He always told me, ‘don’t settle for playing right tackle. Make sure that when it comes time and you get to every level, you’re playing left’”, he added. Brown did show that he was more than capable of playing at left tackle last season.
“I’m better at left tackle; it’s what I dreamed about being my whole life. We all have dreams, and we all get put in positions where we have an opportunity to upgrade. That’s it for me”, he stated. “It’s a lot more emotional or spiritual for me, I guess you could say, playing left tackle”.
