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On paper, the Ravens entered last season with one of the NFL’s best rosters.
In reality, it was a flawed team. Flawed enough to miss the playoffs. Flawed enough to get coach John Harbaugh fired.
Now, after an offseason reset, the Ravens are back with Super Bowl aspirations. Coach Jesse Minter will have quarterback Lamar Jackson as his headliner, but the two-time NFL Most Valuable Player, like so many of his big-name teammates, is coming off a season to forget.
Ahead of the start of training camp Wednesday, The Banner ranked the top players on the Ravens’ roster based on their projected impact this season. The order was determined by the consensus vote of reporters Jonas Shaffer, Giana Han and Vivian Yao, columnist Kyle Goon, “Banner Ravens Podcast” co-host Paul Mancano and editor Brandon Weigel.
Nos. 20-11 were unveiled Monday. Here are the top 10.
10. DL Nnamdi Madubuike
Highest ranking: 5 | Lowest ranking: 17 | 2025 ranking: 8
There’s no Raven with as wide a range of plausible outcomes as Madubuike. The optimistic case: He returns from offseason neck surgery and finds not only his 2025 form, when he was the Ravens’ most impactful defender over their first two games, but also his early-career durability. The pessimistic case: He’s cleared for practice, then suffers a setback in training camp that again sidelines him for the season and threatens his career.
Madubuike, still only 28, should be in his prime. He’s a two-time Pro Bowl selection who looked like one of the NFL’s best three-technique linemen (lined up over a guard’s outside shoulder) before his neck injury in Week 2 of last season. The Ravens will have to be careful with Madubuike this season; the risk-reward calculus is extreme on both ends.
9. CB Nate Wiggins
Highest ranking: 8 | Lowest ranking: 13 | 2025 ranking: 13
Cornerback Marlon Humphrey’s disappointing 2025 gave Wiggins some cover: He didn’t have a great season, either. Only Denver Broncos cornerback Riley Moss was targeted more often than Wiggins (102 attempts), according to Pro Football Focus. Only three players allowed more yards when targeted in coverage over the second half of the season (419).
Some of Wiggins’ struggles could have been health related; he underwent an undisclosed operation this offseason and said in an interview on “The Journey” that he played his two seasons in Baltimore at “about 60[%], 70[%]” health. An improved pass rush should help Wiggins, who was most effective in press coverage last season. He’s an improving takeaway threat, too. His three interceptions last year matched his career total at Clemson, and he dropped two more would-be picks, according to PFF.
8. DL Travis Jones
Highest ranking: 4 | Lowest ranking: Unranked | 2025 ranking: 16
Jones is coming off a career year that cemented him as one of the NFL’s best nose tackles: 47 tackles, nine tackles for loss, five sacks and nine quarterback hits, all career highs. He played over 70% of the Ravens’ defensive snaps in eight of their nine final games, a stretch in which their run defense ranked fifth in yards per game allowed (72.2) and third in yards per carry allowed (3.5) against designed runs, according to Sports Info Solutions.
The Ravens’ bolstered defensive line should ease the burden on Jones, who was often a focus of opponents’ game plans last season. He’s versatile enough to move around the defensive front, too, capable of winning while inside the guards and outside the guards, and even making the occasional cameo across an offensive tackle.
7. LT Ronnie Stanley
Highest ranking: 4 | Lowest ranking: 12 | 2025 ranking: 7
Stanley, 32, might never return to his pre-2020 heights, before the ankle injury that derailed his career for almost two straight seasons. But his body of work over the past two years suggests that he’s comfortably a good starting tackle. Stanley’s blown-block rate last season (3.1%) tied for 20th among all regular starting tackles and tied for eighth among left tackles, according to SIS.
Stanley’s greatest struggles came against — who else? — the Cleveland Browns’ Myles Garrett, but the All-Pro edge rusher is no longer in the division. In fact, in the Ravens’ 11 non-AFC North games, Stanley allowed just one sack and 12 pressures total. Just as impressive is his durability: Stanley’s missed only two games since October 2023, with practice absences few and far between.
6. ILB Roquan Smith
Highest ranking: 3 | Lowest ranking: 8 | 2025 ranking: 4
Smith’s lowlights last season — a costly missed tackle in a collapse against the Buffalo Bills, a low-impact game in a prime-time loss to the Detroit Lions, iffy coverage snaps in a Kansas City Chiefs blowout — were perhaps magnified by their circumstances. But his game wasn’t immune to broader issues. Smith’s run stop rate (the share of tackles that constitute a “loss” for the offense) fell to a career low, according to PFF, and he didn’t have a sack or takeaway for the first time in his career.
Still, Smith remains a steadying force in Baltimore and one of the NFL’s most consistent off-ball linebackers. He’s a reliable tackler, finishing with a team-high 130 last season (15th in the NFL) despite missing two games. He helped anchor a pass defense that ranked sixth against tight ends in overall efficiency, according to FTN, the Ravens’ third straight year with a top-11 finish there. And he’s only 29, an age that should offer hopes for improvement rather than fears of a steep decline.
5. OLB Trey Hendrickson
Highest ranking: 3 | Lowest ranking: 9 | 2025 ranking: N/A
Not since Terrell Suggs have the Ravens had an edge rusher of Hendrickson’s pedigree. Over the past six seasons, Hendrickson finished with 13.5 sacks or more four times. No Raven in that span reached those heights for a single season, and only three even finished with double-digit sacks. (Madubuike came closest, finishing with 13 in 2023.)
Hendrickson’s four-year, $112 million contract will age poorly if he can’t contribute as a run defender or loses a half-step — edge rushers can fall off sharply in their 30s, and the four-time Pro Bowl pick turns 32 in December. But on paper, Hendrickson gives Minter a high-motor pass rusher he won’t need to scheme up pressures for. The former Cincinnati Bengals star is also a much-needed late-game closer; his 26.5 fourth-quarter sacks since 2021 rank second in the NFL.
4. WR Zay Flowers
Highest ranking: 3 | Lowest ranking: 7 | 2025 ranking: 10
Few Ravens wide receivers have ever meant more to their passing attack than Flowers did last year. By the end of his career-best 1,211-yard season, he’d accounted for 55.9% of the team’s wide receiver targets and 62.2% of the wide receiver room’s total receiving yardage. According to FTN, only the Seattle Seahawks’ Jaxon Smith-Njigba (56%) had a higher target share at the position, and no wideout had a higher yardage share on their team.
Just about the only thing Flowers didn’t do well last year was find the end zone. He had five touchdown catches, matching a career high and giving him just 14 over his three seasons in Baltimore. Whether Flowers signs a contract extension before this season or enters Week 1 without a new deal, he’ll still hear questions about whether he’s a “true” WR1. Flowers’ consecutive Pro Bowl appearances and impressive underlying metrics — only three receivers with at least 50 targets had more yards per route run last season, according to PFF — suggest he’s at the very least close.
3. RB Derrick Henry
Highest ranking: 3 | Lowest ranking: 7 | 2025 ranking: 2
Henry ended last year with a bruising reminder of his unique talents — and a glimpse at what the Ravens’ inconsistent run blocking had squandered. Over the regular season’s final five weeks, he had an NFL-best 664 rushing yards; the runner-up in that span had 500. He averaged 6 yards per carry; the second-best back, just 5.4. And he had six rushing touchdowns; no one else had more than four.
Henry turns 33 in January, but his consistency and work ethic have quieted the kind of age concerns that would dog others with similar mileage. He finished second in the NFL in rushing yards (1,595) for the second straight season, just 26 yards behind the Bills’ James Cook, and he had 16 scores. Only three running backs hit 20 mph last season more often than Henry, who did it five times, according to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats.
2. S Kyle Hamilton
Highest ranking: 2 | Lowest ranking: 2 | 2025 ranking: 2
No game better captured Hamilton’s importance to the Ravens’ defense than the one that ended their 2025 season. Before Hamilton left the Week 18 loss in Pittsburgh with a concussion, the Ravens had held the Steelers to 3.9 yards per play and minus-0.27 expected points added per play, both elite marks. And in the 35 plays without him, according to Next Gen Stats, the Ravens allowed 6.9 yards per play and 0.44 EPA per play, both terrible marks.
The challenge for the Ravens’ remade defensive staff will be not only helping Hamilton protect himself but also finding new ways to weaponize his skill set. Minter has some experience working with apex-predator safeties; he helped rejuvenate Chargers star Derwin James’ career in his two years with Los Angeles. Hamilton, a three-time Pro Bowl pick, can do almost everything and can line up almost anywhere. But he said in June that, in Minter’s defense, “I feel like I’ve got a long way to go to be where I feel like I can be as a player.”
1. QB Lamar Jackson
Highest ranking: 1 | Lowest ranking: 1 | 2025 ranking: 1
A lot went wrong for Jackson last year. He missed four games with an injury, then played at less than full strength after coming back. He was sacked at a career-high rate. He struggled in the red zone and without play-action. He didn’t have a run longer than 20 yards. He finished with his first career losing record as a starter.
But Jackson’s highs are so intoxicating, and the prospect of an evolution under a new staff so tantalizing, that it’s easy to forgive and forget. His three-game stretch to open last season was among the best of his career: 72% accuracy, 240.7 passing yards per game, 9.6 yards per pass attempt, 7.9 yards per carry, 10 total touchdowns and no turnovers. Jackson, 29, earned NFL Most Valuable Player honors in his first season under his two previous offensive coordinators. Even with questions about the Ravens’ offensive line and receivers — not to mention his own future in Baltimore — Jackson’s among the favorites to win a third. And deservedly so.
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