The Baltimore Ravens saw their season fall apart in 2025 for a lot of reasons, but on the defensive side of the ball 1 of the main ones was the lack of a dominant edge rusher.
For the New England Patriots, they looked at the Ravens’ top edge rusher in free agency and decided to make him a very rich man. That might end up being a big mistake.
ESPN’s Seth Walder called out the Patriots for signing edge rusher Dre’Mont Jones away from the Ravens on a 3-year, $39 million free-agent contract on March 9, giving them a middling “C” grade for the deal.
“Jones, 29, is coming off a season in which he recorded 7.0 sacks — a career high — between his time with the Titans and the Ravens,” Walder wrote. “But his down-to-down metrics actually took a slight dip compared to where he was in previous seasons. He put up just a 22nd percentile pass rush win rate at edge in 2025, and a 25th percentile number in run stop win rate at edge. The latter number was higher than K’Lavon Chaisson but still nothing to write home about. Jones’ pressure rate was slightly better, in the 53rd percentile. But we also have a long history of Jones’ play at this point. He has failed to surpass an 11% pass rush win rate at edge in each of the past four years, meaning he was below average in the category in all of those seasons … at over $13 million per year, the contract is not trivial.”
Ravens Made Midseason Move for Jones
The Ravens traded a conditional 5th round pick to the Tennessee Titans right before the NFL trade deadline to get Jones in hopes of jump-starting a zombie-like defense.
Jones, 6-foot-3 and 260 pounds, came to the Ravens playing some of the best football of his career.
“Sources: The Ravens are trading for Titans edge Dre’Mont Jones, sending a conditional 5th rounder that could possibly become a fourth-rounder,” NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport wrote on November 3. “More defensive help in Baltimore from a player whose has had 4.5 sacks in the last four games.”
“The pick going to Tennessee is the Jets’ 2026 5th-round pick that Baltimore had; but there are conditions in which that pick could become the Ravens’ 2026 4th-round pick,” ESPN’s Adam Schefter wrote on his official X account.
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