If you were watching the Ravens pick at number 26 in last night’s NFL draft, you were likely just as confused as us and Chris Berman when the Ravens passed their first round pick. Initially it seemed the team had fumbled or failed to negotiate a trade, but as Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com points out, it was all the Bears’ fault.
The Ravens on announced later in the evening on their twitter feed that they had negotiated a trade with the Bears with two minutes and thirty seconds remaining, but that the Bears didn’t confirm it with the league.
Bears’ general Manager Jerry Angelo confirmed the news and accepted the blame for the error.
“It was our fault,” Angelo said. “They did everything according to the rules. . . . We had a disconnect. Whatever you hear, Baltimore did everything right.”
Angelo claimed that the Bears were trying to trade up in order to get the guy that they drafted with the 29th selection, Wisconsin tackle Gabe Carimi. Apparently, the Bears feared that the Chiefs would take Carimi with the 27th pick. The Chiefs instead took receiver Jonathan Baldwin.
Dan Kolko at MASN said that he heard the Ravens were “not pleased” with Chicago. Kolko said that Angelo called to apologize.
It reminded me of the time that they had a trade with Minnesota to draft Byron Leftwich, but got a mysterious “busy signal”. I’ll take them at their word.
Even if the Bears did fail to confirm the trade with the league, the Ravens should have had a card written and ready to submit in the event that there were 5 seconds left on the clock and they hadn’t received confirmation from the league that the trade had been approved.
Dean,
Not only that, but then the spin masters get on the tube and say “this was our guy”. Really? Is that why you tried to trade down 3 picks? Ravens VP on 105.7 today saying that the Milwaukee Sentinal was reporting bad things on Smith so that the Packers could possibly land him at 32. Again, really Kevin Byrne, that’s why the reported the facts on Smith? Again, why did you look to trade the pick if this was the guy ypou wanted and had rated so high? It’s total BS which is what is coming from this organization since Bosciotti took over.