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Historically, the Ravens have had great success finding talent among the pool of undrafted players.
Bart Scott, Wil Demps, Maake Kemoeatu, Jameel McClain and Dannell Ellerbe can attest to that; they were all signed by the Ravens as rookie free agents, battled their way onto the roster, and went on to contribute to the team.
Here's the list of reported undrafted signees who will attempt to follow that trend and make the 53-man roster this year. (One note on the list of undrafted guys: It now looks like Josh Morris, the cornerback out of Weber State, has decided to join the Eagles. The Ravens reportedly had a contract out to Morris, but he apparently opted to go to Philly.)
The process of signing an undrafted free agent is a complicated one. It begins long before the draft actually starts, with Southeast Area Scout Joe Douglas and Pro Scout Mark Azevedo coordinating the efforts and contacting players that might go undrafted.
"Our guys have been starting for a long time," director of player personnel Eric DeCosta said. "We've been calling players for the last month or so. We've been recruiting guys, sending out some letters, different technological things with Twitter and different things like that."
This might come as a bit of a surprise, but teams are actually allowed to talk to potential undrafted free agents during the draft itself. In the late rounds, teams can call players that they don't expect to be drafted and express interest in signing them as free agents.
"Sometimes, a guy you're talking to actually gets picked, which happened [Saturday] and it happened last year," DeCosta said. "It's kind of a funny thing, but we're ahead of the game. That's one of the nice things about not having a seventh-round pick [this year] is you can start early in this process."
Once the draft ends, teams start aggressively talking with agents and trying to agree to terms with various players.
"The coaches [make] phone calls getting back to Joe and Mark trying to get commitments from players after the Draft," DeCosta said. "We can't actually get a solid commitment until they're not picked. In that case, we get these guys signed up, get the contracts out to them and come back on Monday and see how many of those guys actually sent back the contracts and move forward."
The Ravens have yet to confirm their list of undrafted free agent signings; that news should come sometime in the coming weeks. Rookies are eligible to start participating in team minicamps starting May 16.
