Ravens want starting offensive line competitions settled ‘the sooner the better’

The team would prefer to have their top five solidified for the most part by the second week of training camp per head coach John Harbaugh.

Among the most heated and competitive position battles for both roster and starting spots for the Baltimore Ravens in 2024 is in the trenches. While they have brought back the entire defensive depth chart from last year, the offensive line is currently undergoing a rebuild after letting both starting guards walk in free agency and trading away their starting right tackle.

On Tuesday, Ravens head coach John Harbaugh was asked about a realistic timeline for when he would like this year’s starting lineup solidified with more openings than usual up for grabs. Compared to recent years where only one or two spots have had to be decided in training camp or not until the end of the preseason, the coaching staff would like to know “the earlier the better.”

“It would be nice if we could kind of [know] by the first into the second week of training camp, [that] would be a goal to have a good idea,” Harbaugh said. “If it goes into the [preseason] games, it could go into the preseason games, but maybe just one spot up for grabs or something like that. That would be OK, but the sooner the better.”

After being manned by 2023 Pro Bowler Kevin Zeitler for the past three seasons, the right guard spot will have a different starter for the first time since 2020. The presumptive favorite to replace the 12-year veteran who is now in the Motor City with the Detroit Lions is fourth-year pro Ben Cleveland who started the final two games of the regular season in his stead last year and played exceptionally well, earning a career-high overall grade of 85.9 from Pro Football Focus.

For the past two seasons, 10-year veteran Morgan Moses was a rock at right tackle for the Ravens prior to returning to the New York Jets via trade back in March. He had started 31-of-34 regular season games and three postseason contests during his tenure with the team and the competition to replace him in the starting lineup will likely come down to a battle between third-year pro Daniel Faalele and rookie second-round pick Roger Rosengarten.

The one position on the starting offensive line that has had a different Week 1 starter in each of the last four seasons and will continue to do so after 2023 starter John Simpson signed with the Jets in free agency is left guard. This time around, the top two contenders to be the next man up are 2023 late-round picks Malaesala Aumavae-Laulu who competed with Simpson for the job last year, and Andrew Vorhees who spent his entire rookie year recovering from a torn ACL but is the presumptive starter in the eyes of many pundits.

While the addition of fifth-year veteran free agent Josh Jones flew under the radar this offseason, he could be this year’s Simpson and go from dark horse candidate to claiming one of the three starting vacancies given his positional versatility to play both guard and tackle. Sixth-year veteran utility lineman Patrick Mekari is the preferred swing tackle but can play all five spots and could potentially be a Week 1 starter if it means the Ravens have the best starting five combination on the field.

One of the biggest concerns most pundits have about the Ravens’ approach to their offensive line rebuild is the lack of continuity the group will have after losing three-fifths of its starters this offseason. Growing pains are inevitable when a blocking unit is influx and still sorting itself out and those were on display during Tuesday’s practice when several false starts occurred when the offense was working on different snap counts and cadences, resulting in the offending players having to run laps.

“There’s a really easy way to stop it: don’t be jumping offsides,” Harbaugh said. “We’ve been going through the offseason, and we’re doing a lot with cadence. We’re doing a lot with at-the-line communication, and it’s challenging, so we understand there are going to be those moments, and you have a choice. You either always go on one, or you push through it [and] say, ‘We’re going to live with the mistakes, but we’re going to get good at it,’ so we want to get good at it, because we think cadence is a weapon.”