In an NFL Draft that was extremely heavy on offensive players as first-round picks, the Baltimore Ravens were an exception. Sitting on the clock with the No. 30 overall selection, the Ravens landed former Clemson cornerback Nate Wiggins.
According to ESPN, the Ravens coveted Wiggins so much that they turned down eight trade offers for the pick while they were on the clock — mostly because they were surprised he was even there to begin with. Before the draft started, per ESPN, one of the coaches asked the others in the room, “What if Nate Wiggins falls to us? Wouldn’t that be something?” The other coaches apparently replied, “Nah, that’ll never happen. That couldn’t happen.”
Alas, it did happen. And the Ravens snatched him up as soon as it did.
“For us, it was always, ‘If Nate [is] there, we [are] going to pick,'” Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta said. “In our opinion, [he’s] a guy that can be a true shutdown-type corner.”
The Ravens already had Marlon Humphrey, Brandon Stephens, Arthur Maulet, Kyle Hamilton and Marcus Williams in the defensive backfield, but adding a perimeter corner with the flexibility to move all over the field was apparently a priority. Wiggins played almost exclusively out wide with the Tigers, but the Ravens let Wiggins know that could change in the league.
“With the guys that we have in our room, they’re truly interchangeable,” passing-game coordinator Chris Hewitt said, noting that Wiggins told him he was not worried about that type of change. “[We’re] trying to get the best guys on the field. Whatever that position is, or how we get them on the field, that’s what it’s all about.”
The Ravens love nothing more than continually restocking the defensive backfield so that they can maintain having one of the league’s top secondaries, and they have especially prioritized it in recent years after spending a couple seasons managing a barrage of injuries at the position. Clearly, they are confident that Wiggins can and will be the latest in a long line of successful bets they’ve made at that spot.
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