Baltimore Ravens All-Pro TE Mark Andrews escaped without serious injury from a car crash last week. Despite his seeming good fortune, the team has not yet put him back on the football field. While no cause for alarm, it is interesting that the team has held him out of practice during this time.
Ravens head coach John Harbaugh acknowledged that Andrews is dealing with “a very minor thing”, which he repeated, preaching caution. “We’re just not messing with him right now. Don’t worry about Mark. He’s going to be fine”.
I’m sure he will be, but what exactly is the minor thing he is dealing with? When will he return to the practice field? Harbaugh did say that Andrews will be with the team when it travels for their final preseason game, but he did not elaborate, and obviously we can anticipate that he will not play.
A 2018 third-round pick, Mark Andrews has been a key cog in the Ravens’ offense since his rookie year. By his second season, he already made his first Pro Bowl, scoring 10 touchdowns. Over 87 career games, he has 381 receptions for 4,857 yards and 40 touchdowns. He has made the Pro Bowl three times and the All-Pro list once, only failing to qualify when missing time due to injury in 2020 and 2023.
Last season, Andrews only played in 10 games during the regular season, though he returned for the conference finals. In Week 11, he suffered an injury following a hip-drop tackle, missing the remainder of the regular season. He finished the year with 45 receptions for 544 yards and six touchdowns, after being well on track for another fine season.
During Mark Andrews’ injury last season, the Ravens got a much closer look at TE Isaiah Likely. Over the final six games of the season during Andrews’ absence, the younger tight end caught 21 passes for 322 yards and five touchdowns. Baltimore plans to take advantage of this two-headed monster in the offense moving forward.
As for Andrews, well, he doesn’t exactly need the post-training camp work right now. And he certainly doesn’t need to play in the preseason, which is not uncommon for starters today. Many teams rest their key starters, and the Ravens are one of them. QB Lamar Jackson, for example, last played in the preseason in 2021, totaling all of 10 snaps. Andrews played eight snaps that year, and like Jackson, hasn’t played another preseason snap since.
Instead, Harbaugh is focusing this week on the Ravens who will be playing in the final preseason game, the guys who are competing for roster spots and roles within the team. Guys like Lamar Jackson and Mark Andrews are the foundational pieces you don’t need to see until it counts.
After all, the guy was just in a car accident, no matter how minor. The Ravens would be smart to put Andrews in bubble wrap and store him in a closest for safekeeping. He need not come out until Sept. 5 when they play the Kansas City Chiefs in the season opener.
