The Baltimore Ravens provided quarterback Joe Flacco with two new potential targets Wednesday Authentic Tanner Lee Jersey , agreeing to terms with wide receivers Ryan Grant and John Brown on the first day of free agency.
Addressing a position that is a top priority this offseason, Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome added a pair of 27-year-olds he hopes can improve a passing attack that last year ranked 27th in the NFL.
To help make room for the newcomers, Newsome freed an estimated $5 million in salary cap space by cutting receiver Jeremy Maclin.
Grant has played in 64 games, including 15 starts, with the Washington Redskins. The 2014 fifth-round draft pick out of Tulane set career highs in 2017 with 45 catches for 573 yards and four touchdowns.
Brown has played four NFL seasons, all with Arizona. Selected in the third round of the 2014 draft, Brown has 173 career catches for 2,515 yards and 17 TDs.
The contracts are pending the passing of physicals. Grant reportedly received a four-year contract and Brown agreed to a one-year pact.
The Ravens are counting on Grant to continue the improvement he showed last season. Though he has never had a 100-yard receiving game and has scored only six career touchdowns, he ranked second on the Redskins in 2017 in catches and TD receptions.
Brown’s best season was in 2015, when he had 65 catches for 1,003 yards and seven scores.
After a season in which Baltimore’s wideouts totaled 11 touchdown receptions, the team made no secret of its desire to bolster the receiving corps.
”We will be exploring all options in free agency and in the draft for targets for Joe (Flacco),” owner Steve Bisciotti said.
Baltimore signed Maclin as a free agent in June, hopeful the accomplished pass catcher would regain the form he showed in 2015 with Kansas City, when he had 87 catches for 1,088 yards and eight touchdowns.
But Maclin missed two games with a shoulder injury, two more with knee issues, and finished with only 40 catches for 440 yards and three touchdowns.
That, along with the poor performance of 2015 first-round pick Breshad Perriman (10 catches, 77 yards, no TDs), left the Ravens looking for speed outside after finishing 9-7 and missing the playoffs for a third straight season.
Mike Wallace, who had 52 catches for a team-high 748 yards in 2017, became a free agent Wednesday. It is unclear whether the Ravens will attempt to bring him back the 31-year-old, nine-year pro.
Newsome’s pursuit of top-tier free agent receivers has been hindered by a tight salary cap, which likely contributed to Allen Robinson and Sammy Watkins signing with other teams.
In an effort to free up salary-cap space Albert Wilson Jersey Elite , Newsome earlier this week cut running back Danny Woodhead and did not pick up the option on right tackle Austin Howard.
Maclin, Woodhead and Howard were all acquired before the 2017 season.
Also on Wednesday, the Ravens extended tenders to seven exclusive-rights free agents, the most notable running back Alex Collins, the team’s leading rusher last year. The players still have to sign their tenders, but cannot negotiate with any other teams.
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Just before the most improbable of Stanley Cup Final in the most improbable hockey city around, Gary Bettman and Bill Daly put on a little show of their own.
As lounge acts go, it probably wouldn’t play on the Las Vegas Strip. Then again, no one ever thought the Vegas Golden Knights would be playing on the Las Vegas Strip – and certainly not as late as Memorial Day.
But play they did, in a wild 6-4 win over the Washington Capitals that officially ended with Elvis singing ”Viva Las Vegas” and the Golden Knights taking a 1-0 lead in the series.
The greatest expansion team ever against a classic underachiever was already a story that has played well even among those who wouldn’t think of watching anything but playoff basketball this time of the year.
But a thrilling Game 1 couldn’t have been scripted any better even if Bettman and Daly had spent their pre-game writing it instead of sitting in front of the media, sharing laughs and a few inside jokes. They completed each other’s sentences, and seemed to be having so much fun that they didn’t want to leave.
And why not? They could have taken a victory lap outside the T-Mobile Arena and no one would have seemed to mind.
They are the architects of NHL expansion, the gatekeepers who decide which cities are in the league and which cities must watch from the sidelines. They came up with the plan – hatched privately a decade ago – for billionaire Bill Foley to pay $500 million to put a team among the gamblers, degenerates and Davante Adams Jersey Elite , yes, upstanding citizens of the city where fun never stops.
They then made sure it would work, despite all the naysayers who said hockey would never catch on in the desert and certainly not in a city where there are a lot of other things to do than watch hockey players race up and down the ice.
But even the top league execs didn’t expect this.
”No one saw this coming,” Bettman said.
They didn’t in New York, and they didn’t in Las Vegas. A generous expansion draft helped set the Knights up to be competitive, but competitive doesn’t mean scoring 109 points in the regular season and then going 13-3 in the playoffs.
Competitive doesn’t mean taking the ice on Memorial Day with nearly 19,000 crazed Knights fans cheering them on inside the arena on the Strip and thousands more partying as the game unfolded on big-screen TVs outside.
It was, as Bettman pointed out, 342 days since the expansion draft in the same arena. And what a 342 days it has been for not only the new franchise but a league that took a chance on Sin City when no other league would.
Bettman and Daly rolled the dice that Las Vegas would raise the league’s profile and not just because it isn’t, well, Columbus or Ottawa.
”We thought being in Las Vegas would give hockey a greater presence and make the game stronger,” Bettman said.
And the NHL is on a bit of a roll itself. The controversial decision not to halt play during the middle of the season for the Olympics paid off in increased attention for professional hockey and television ratings for the playoffs, while not nearly up to NBA levels, are up across the board.
And so far no one has said a word about the evils of sports betting and how a major sports franchise can’t exist in a city that allows it.
”This commissioner wasn’t scared by the things other sports leagues may have been scared about,” Daly said.
No one, of course, could have expected a hockey team to help heal a city in the wake of the Oct. 1 massacre that killed 58 people just down the street from the hockey arena. But the Knights helped that cause, too, adopting the Vegas Strong name and honoring victims not only at the opener nine days after the shooting but at games since.
The players – who call themselves the Golden Misfits – have also done their part, both on and off the ice.
”They seem to be playing with the emotion of a higher purpose,” Bettman said.
That’s one reason why the bookies had them favored to beat the Caps and win the iconic trophy before the first puck dropped in Game 1. So far they’ve not only run through every obstacle in their way, but smashed through them.
Good times in Las Vegas, and good times for the NHL.
Little wonder that Bettman and Daly couldn’t stop smiling.
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Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg(at)ap.org or .