It seems as though the Baltimore Ravens are playing catch-up with their latest move in signing an All-Pro return man. Just hours after the league approved new rules to modify the kickoff, the Pittsburgh Steelers signed a former All-Pro kick returner in Cordarrelle Patterson. Now head coach John Harbaugh, a former special teams coordinator, has his All-Pro in Deonte Harty.
The Baltimore native comes home after spending four years with the New Orleans Saints and one with the Buffalo Bills. His signing is a response to losing Devin Duvernay in free agency, himself a two-time Pro Bowler as a returner.
Harty is experienced in both kick and punt returns, though like most of the league, he’s had few kick returns in recent years. The NFL seemingly annually introduced new rules that discouraged returns, but they’ve done and about-face more recently. Now they want to encourage returns while aiming to make the play safer on the whole. And the Ravens want to continue their success in that arena.
Last season, Duvernay averaged 12.6 yards per punt return for the Ravens on 23 returns, while Tylan Wallace scored a touchdown on a return. Collectively, they averaged 24.5 yards per kick return, but on just 13 returns.
A year earlier, the Ravens averaged 24.4 yards per kick return on 27 returns. Duvernay, who made the Pro Bowl, posted a 25.5-yard average on 15 returns, including a 103-yard touchdown. Meanwhile, in New Orleans, Harty missed most of the season due to injury.
As for Harty, he owns a 25.2-yard kick return average for his career, totaling 1,914 yards on 76 returns. In 2021, he returned 29 kicks for 690 yards. The year before that, he posted a career-high 27.3 yards per return on 16 returns, managing a long of 75.
He has never returned a kickoff for a touchdown; however, he has returned two punts for scores. Just last season during his one year in Buffalo Harty recorded a 96-yard touchdown off a punt. In all, he averaged 12.6 yards on 26 punts for 323 yards. He also returned a punt for a touchdown in 2019, leading the league in punt returns and yardage that season. In all, he has 1,075 career punt return yards on 103 returns with two touchdowns.
Offensively, Harty is not really boosting the Ravens’ wide receiver depth. He has 79 career receptions for 943 yards with five touchdowns, in addition to 19 rushing attempts for 123 yards. They are rather thin behind Zay Flowers and Rashod Bateman and Nelson Agholor—though so are the Steelers.
But in terms of returns, the Ravens already had a good one in Duvernay before the rule change. The Steelers are just adding one now in Patterson; they haven’t had a consistently good returner since Antonio Brown. Diontae Johnson had one good season as a punt returner in 2019 as a rookie, but he became too important. He made the All-Pro list as a returner, but he suffered an injury early the following season on a return and he never played there again. Now they have Patterson, and the Ravens have Harty.
