Join the huddle. Sign up here for Ravens updates in your inbox.

Smart people in football circles have often alluded to how great the Ravens’ analytics department is.

Now, Baltimore’s group has officially been recognized as one of the best.

This offseason, Inside the League decided to hand out its first award recognizing the best analytics department, and the Ravens were one of three teams recognized.

Inside the League is an influential publication for those working in football founded by Neil Stratton, a former walk-on football player at Navy. It hands out peer-voted awards to scouting departments each year. This was the first year he added an award for analytics groups, and the Ravens, led by David McDonald, were named as one of the best, along with the Dallas Cowboys, led by John Park, and the Philadelphia Eagles, led by Alec Halaby and James Gilman.

The Ravens have rarely made members of the analytics department available to reporters, and again declined to do so for this story. Coaches and other executives discuss their impact, but the exact nature of their work is often shrouded.

But the validation of peers is meaningful, Stratton said.

“The analytics society has its own little ecosystem,” Stratton explained. “They go to the big Data Bowls, they go to other events, they go to Sloan [MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference].”

Stratton said he polled analytics people across the league, and got about a 40% response rate. He was excited by that number, considering that it’s the first year of the award and he hopes it will continue to grow.

Stratton said he’s realized that no two teams approach analytics the same way. From conversations over the years, he was aware that the Ravens analytics team was highly regarded, a “blue blood” in the area, so he wasn’t surprised by the results.

“There’s still, I think, in some quarters, some reluctance on trying to marry purely numbers with what has always been kind of more of a judgment, a film-watching kind of thing,” Stratton said. “And so I think maybe these three teams are doing a better job of marrying those two sides of player evaluation. But again, I don’t have any metrics on why they’re doing better than others.”

NFL sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly talk about other teams’ operations, explained that consistent team success and draft success are big reasons for why the Ravens are so highly regarded. They acquire a lot of compensation picks (as do the Cowboys), and their hit rate in the draft has been good. The Ravens’ 2022 draft class earned almost $300 million on their second contracts.

The Ravens have clear organizational principles, and their discipline in sticking to them tells the analytics community that the team’s decisions are driven by an analytical approach.

The Ravens also invest well in the department, league sources said.

“Eric [DeCosta], Oz [Newsome] and the organization have done a great job at positioning us to try to find competitive advantage. One area that I think that’s been — we don’t publicize much — but it’s in the area of football operation [and] intelligence,” team president Sashi Brown said last week at the annual league meeting.

Analytics can help in a variety of ways, former Ravens coach John Harbaugh said at the conference. That includes help with prospect scouting, pro scouting and in-game evaluations. Sources were also impressed with the project Harbaugh started last season where the Ravens graded players on every practice rep.

“Throughout the organization, it’s kind of divided up in different areas, and they did everything they could to help us on the football side,” Harbaugh said. “They were great on the draft side, the [salary] cap side. Just a good bunch of people, and they deserve it.”

Brown said they also have a team of business analysts.

Current and former members of the Ravens’ analytics team are recognized for their prowess in the field.

Sources recognized the work of McDonald, the vice president of research and development, Derrick Yam, the director of data and decision science, and Jeremy Parks, the senior director of enterprise applications and data, on the Ravens staff.

But they also pointed to people who are less well known who have done impressive work, as well as those who moved on to other teams.

Corey Krawiec, who spent 10 years in Baltimore and is now the director of player personnel strategy for the Los Angeles Chargers, and Daniel Stern, who was the director of football strategy and is now the Seattle Seahawks’ pass game strategist, are a few sources named. Sarah Mallepalle, who is on the Cowboys team that was just recognized, was also with the Ravens.

New game manager Charlie Gelman, who coach Jesse Minter mentioned at the annual league meeting, learned from Stern.

McDonald accepted the Inside the League award from Stratton at the NFL scouting combine in February.

“He was pretty excited, I think it’s fair to say, that they won,” Stratton said. “And it was really cool to see him bring his whole department out to accept the award.”

When Inside the League first started handing out awards, they were naming the 10 best scouts in the AFC and the 10 best in the NFC. It has since evolved to more categories, Stratton said. The Ravens have been awarded in multiple areas.

This year, Chas Stallard was recognized as one of the best road scouts, which is awarded to national and area scouts. David Blackburn, now the director of player personnel for the Washington Commanders, has won multiple awards in previous years.

“We’re grateful to have in this area just the dynamic power, value of having innovation, technology, data available to help us make great decisions and to have leaders on both sides of the organization that really invests and believes in the process and information so that we can make the best possible decisions,” Brown said.