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

The players know the problem is bigger than them. They all grew up in the area, from Fredrick, Maryland, to Norfolk, Virginia, and like so many guys before them, they came to believe that, to reach their potential, they had to leave.

So, when their names are read on stage this month at the NFL draft, they will step into the spotlight as the newest Testaments to Elsewhere.

In the aughts, 20 players who attended high school and college in D.C., Maryland or Virginia were drafted in the first three rounds.

In the 2010s, 10.

In the 2020s so far, two — and there will almost certainly be none this year.

For homers, this will be an especially cruel draft. There is no generational talent who was always destined to leave — no Caleb Williams or Chase Young — and two of the top local prospects were home until last season.

But now, instead of representing Virginia Tech and James Madison, their names will be announced as “Mansoor Delane, cornerback, LSU” and “Elijah Sarratt, receiver, Indiana.”

Despite many deeply ingrained challenges, and despite the madcap rootlessness of modern college football, this year’s prospects believe better days are ahead for the hometown teams, which is important for reasons greater than just pride. If major college sports continue to stratify, separating the haves and have-nots, schools such as Maryland, Virginia and Virginia Tech must stay on the right side of things to keep the big money spigot flowing. And keeping homegrown talent is one way to regain a lost edge.

“The amount of money these schools would need to compete at the top of the Big Ten and the ACC [Atlantic Coast Conference] — I don’t know if they’ll continually have it,” Ricky Goings, a name, image and likeness agent who helped establish Maryland’s collective, said. “But what they can do is two things: Use the dollars that they have efficiently and try to identify players who don’t get an opportunity at those bigger schools to come develop with them. That’s their path, to me.”

Maryland looks like the strongest candidate to keep the region’s best at home. Even though Coach Mike Locksley has been uninspiring — he’s 36-44 since returning to Maryland for the 2019 season — the athletic department and its boosters seem committed to building a roster that can finish in the top half of the Big Ten.

The school gave $14 million of its $20.5 million revenue-share pot to football, according to 247Sports, which is reportedly about the same as Iowa. “Rev share” does not account for a team’s entire payroll, because schools use donor dollars and brand deals to juice player salaries, but the Terps can clearly write big checks when they want to. They recently signed the highest-ranked recruit in program history, five-star edge rusher Zion Elee.

Maryland needs Elee to live up to the hype. The school will probably never get an extra $20 million-$30 million from its boosters, as NIL juggernauts such as Texas Tech do, so Goings said Terps must wring the most out of every dollar.

Two of the most important factors: recruiting talented players out of high school and retaining them in college. Although recruiting has nationalized overall, the Baltimore-Washington corridor is such a talent-rich area that the backyard still feels critical, especially because Maryland is coming off back-to-back 4-8 seasons and hasn’t regularly mined talent elsewhere.

The good news is Locksley has long recruited well. The bad is he’s long struggled with retention. The Terps had a top 20 class in 2021, but three headliners left a year later. None of the top recruits from 2022, 2023 and 2024 stayed in College Park, either.

But things seem to be changing. In November, athletic director Jim Smith vowed to spend bigger on retention and the transfer portal, and now all three top prospects from the 2025 class are set to return, giving the school local stars including Elee from Baltimore, offensive lineman Jaylen Gilchrist from Virginia Beach and quarterback Malik Washington from Glen Burnie, who started as a freshman and impressed in spurts.

If Elee & Co. stay and win, that could go a long way toward solving what Sarratt sees as a main obstacle to keeping talent at home: relevancy among local kids.

Sarratt, a projected Day 2 pick, was born in 2003, grew up just north of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and said he never dreamed of playing at Maryland, Virginia or Virginia Tech.

“I didn’t really know nothing about them,” he said. “Well, I knew about [Michael] Vick at Tech, and that was really it, to be honest. Since I’ve been young, they haven’t been really relevant, so us kids around the area just kind of looked to other teams.”

In one way, Sarratt had a typical journey for a local kid. He admired the national juggernauts of the era — Alabama, Clemson, Florida — and didn’t feel he had to leave to get there. In high school, he transferred from his local public school to Saint Frances in Baltimore, one of the region’s many private powerhouses.

St. Frances has four alumni in this year’s draft. Archbishop Spalding, in Severn, has two. And McDonogh, in Owings Mills, has one. DeMatha Catholic, in Hyattsville, had six alums in the NFL last season, tied for fifth most of any high school.

You can still make it from public school, too, Maryland safety Jalen Huskey argued.

A projected Day 3 pick, Huskey went to Quince Orchard in Gaithersburg and studied older teammates such as Chop Robinson, who became a first-round pick in 2024. Huskey believes the early exposure to elite talent helped him succeed, and, unlike Sarratt, he grew up dreaming of a super team at his favorite school.

“If people stayed, Maryland would be really something,” he said.

Georgia corner Daylen Everette, who grew up in Norfolk, is one of the few local prospects who left the area before college. He transferred from his local public school to IMG Academy, the famous sports factory in Florida with 17 alums in the NFL, nearly double the high school with the second most.

“It was difficult leaving,” Everette said. “The biggest thing that made me do it was COVID. They ended our season early in Virginia and they were still playing down in Florida, and I just wanted to play ball.”

Unanimously, the prospects said the key to keeping local talent is simple: scout better, recruit harder and compete financially.

No one believes this more strongly than Sarratt. It’s hard to bury local schools for missing on him — he was a zero-star recruit whose only Division I offer was from St. Francis University in Pennsylvania — but he felt especially disrespected by them. He shared with The Banner dozens of messages he sent to coaches all over the country that went unanswered, including at local schools Richmond and William & Mary.

“They never really showed love to the core Virginia guys,” he said. “It kind of put a chip on my shoulder, like, ‘Man, I’m from Virginia, and these schools don’t care about me?’ …

“I’ve wondered [why] since I was in high school. I don’t know if the film doesn’t get to them or [if] they don’t believe the competition we’re going against is good enough for what we’re doing on tape.”

After one year at St. Francis, Sarratt transferred to James Madison and broke out. Then he followed coach Curt Cignetti to Indiana, formed one of the best receiver duos in college football and won a national championship. Sarratt believes he could’ve developed just as well at a local program had one of them recognized his potential earlier.

“Coming from Saint Frances Academy, I’m going against the best of the best every day,” he said. “I’m proving myself in practice, in the games, and you still don’t get a shot? I know there’s some guys there [in the region now] that are kind of going through the same thing.”

The second key to the strategy is retention. If Elee plays as well as expected, Goings, the NIL agent, believes Maryland can keep him until he turns pro. Look at basketball star Derik Queen.

“It was a three-year investment to get him here for that one year,” Goings said. Maryland’s collective could offer Elee a similar package that includes guaranteed annual raises and access to private planes.

“With a kid like that, if he’s enjoying what he’s doing and he has a chance to make the NFL, he’s not necessarily going to say, ‘Let me go get $3 million more at Texas Tech or Michigan,’” Goings said. “He can say, ‘Maryland’s taking care of me, I got a lot of other benefits, and I can make the NFL from here.’”

If Maryland wins, its homegrown stars could begin to change the culture. They could create a blueprint for the next Elee, prevent more Sarratts from falling through the cracks and capture the imaginations of the next generation. And Maryland has the talent base to make success sustainable. The state has the sixth-most NFL players per capita behind Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

And yet, despite Maryland’s new money, beautiful facilities and recruiting success, it’s hard to ignore the nagging skepticism. The last time the Terps signed the best recruit in program history — receiver Stefon Diggs, in 2012 — the team finished 2-6, 3-5 and 4-4 in conference play with him. And, the year after he left, it fired coach Randy Edsall.

The Terps could fail to break into the top half of the Big Ten because of misspending, mismanagement or a lack critical infrastructure. Maybe they don’t have the right leaders. Maybe they do but the leaders won’t work well together. Maybe they’ll just get unlucky. The sport’s flagship schools enjoy much more entrenched support: Does Maryland have the rabid donor base to keep spending if things don’t go well right away?

Consider this moment from the NFL scouting combine: Delane, the LSU corner from Silver Spring, said nice things about his high school, Virginia Tech and the idea of future stars staying near home. But he grinned bigger and spoke more animatedly when talking about his time in Louisiana.

“With LSU, you have the exposure, you have the brand,” he said, and what he left unspoken was lear: Schools in Maryland and Virginia don’t.