Quote Originally Posted by RavingMad View Post
They may have loved the kid. That's not the point. The odds are he would have still been there later. And if not there were high quality centers still available.
Well, what do you expect? I don't know how they break down the process of picking players, but I'm sure they stick to it as the draft unfolds. I'm sure that every pick they made followed the plan they went into the draft with, probably updated every night. Particularly in taking Gradkowski--he was the third pick off the board that day! Givens (WR) and Miller (RB) were taken before the Ravens picked, and since we'd already taken an RB, you can be sure we weren't targeting Miller. So that means that at worst, Gradkowski was the Ravens' #2 choice for that draft slot--they'd had all night to think about it...

Don't think they panicked at all--I think they stuck to their plan. It's just that the picks other teams made pushed them a lot farther from their ideal plan than they would have liked...