In today’s era of player movement and franchise-hopping, Eric DeCosta believes there’s an old-school beauty in loyalty. The Ravens GM looks up to those iconic athletes who repped the same team colors their entire legendary careers – hard nuts like Larry Bird lacing ’em up for the Celtics green for over a decade, Cal Ripken Jr. playing all 2,632 games as an Oriole.

“In this part of the country, you had the Celtics, the Bruins…and the athletes that I admired, I have to be honest, most of them spent their entire careers with our teams,” DeCosta stated as he was answering questions by Adam Breneman in the latest episode of Next Up.

 “I always thought there was a beauty to that – to starting someplace and finishing someplace.” It’s a philosophy ingrained from over 20 years of studying the Ravens way under the mentorship of Ozzie Newsome himself.

And DeCosta seems to have found his perfect lifelong fit in Baltimore. A front office lifer who famously rebuffed outside GM interest by saying “You know you’re going to have the job someday…so just wait and make it perfect.” Five drafts into carrying Raven’s torch, the no-brainer successor is crafting his blueprint for sustained excellence.

The key cornerstone? Identifying gamers with that grit-til-the-end mentality, just like those Boston diehards DeCosta idolized. “When I think about success, I think about building relationships and having those people with you along the way,” he preached to the Next Up audience.

“Knowing my owner Steve Bischiotti and the scouts that I worked with, I felt that would give me an edge in our profession you don’t don’t get many second chances to be a GM okay if you get fired you’re probably not going to be a GM again so my whole mindset was how do I maximize my chances for success,” he explained how he wishes to stick with the Ravens.

Interestingly, DeCosta’s 2023 comments on Lamar Jackson also reflect this strong-headedness.

Lamar Jackson’s $260 million extension speaks it all!

The Raven’s GM remains convinced his franchise QB Lamar Jackson isn’t going anywhere. Back in 2023, he doubled down in the team’s 45-minute end-of-season news conference: “I truly believe Lamar wants to finish his career in Baltimore. I just believe that.” DeCosta stuck to those Newsome principles, and Lamar’s precedent-setting deal sealed their fates as the Ravens’ next long-term dynamic.

While building organizational loyalty is DeCosta’s overarching philosophy, his ability to keep Lamar Jackson locked in long-term may go down as his signature move. The blockbuster $260 million extension doesn’t just make Lamar one of the highest-paid QBs ever – it delivers an unprecedented no-trade, no-tag clause typically reserved for an organization’s homegrown superstars.

That groundbreaking contract language cements Jackson as the face of the Ravens franchise for the foreseeable future. This bold statement of mutual commitment after tensions from taxing negotiations that saw both sides dig in their heels at times. But through it all, Jackson made it clear he wasn’t interested in chasing the biggest payday elsewhere.

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“I didn’t really care for other teams…I just really wanted to get something done here. I wanted to be a Raven,” Jackson stated adamantly in the press conference after signing with the Ravens in 2023. With that singular focus on sticking in Baltimore, he followed the lead of his GM in prioritizing loyalty over a potential bidding war.

The 2024 historic MVP campaign of Lamar – 3,678 yards, 24 TDs through the air, with 821 more yards and 5 scores on the ground in his unique dual-threat attack – was just an appetizer. “Lamar is going to play the way Lamar plays,” Jim Harbaugh stated in a recent press conference, “I think Derrick Henry being there, plus Lamar, plus the other guys, it’s a good formula.” That’s indeed a formula to terrorize defenses and points on the scoreboard every Sunday.

Jackson couldn’t be blamed for getting starry-eyed dreaming about one day joining the ranks of Baltimore. With a revamped O-Line and game-breaking weapons galore, the 2024 campaign has all the ingredients to be Lamar’s masterpiece – his ‘Mona Lisa’ season. DeCosta has planted the seeds for dynastic superstardom. Now, it’s up to the human/cheetah hybrid to water them into a full bloom rewriting Baltimore’s football history books. No pressure, right?

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