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When it comes to the Baltimore Ravens, the safety position just seems to mean more.
Call it a byproduct of employing Ed Reed for over a decade, call it a byproduct of being a defense-first team since its inception, or just call it a byproduct of the ever-evolving landscape of the sport, with safeties now one of the most important position groupings because of their varied responsibilities from snap to snap, but the Ravens have been at the forefront of investing in the position over the years and they have been largely rewarded for their efforts, as Marcus Williams and Kyle Hamilton are widely considered the top tandem in the NFL today.
And yet, just because Baltimore paid up in a big way to acquire their top two talents, giving Williams a five-year, $70 million contract after his run in New Orleans, and Hamilton coming off the board with the 14th overall pick in the 2022 NFL draft, they've also gotten lucky with some later round picks and free agent fliers who have played big snap counts for the team on value-deals.
In 2024, that player is Beau Brade, a local safety made good who has officially secured a spot on the 53-man roster after a strong summer off the Chesapeake Bay.
A three-star recruit out of Clarksville, Maryland, who took his talents to College Park as a member of the University of Maryland, Brade was a pretty prolific player for the Terapins over his college career, racking up 177 tackles, 9.5 tackles for loss, a sack, three interceptions, and three forced fumbles while establishing himself as one of the defensive focal points of Mike Locksley's defense. Given a fourth-round grade earlier this year by Lance Zierlein of NFL.com, Brade sat through over 250 draft picks without hearing his name called and ultimately opted to sign with his hometown Ravens to keep his football career exclusively in the Free State, at least for now.
Now, sure, the Ravens do have a pretty loaded defensive backfield both in the starting lineup and from a depth perspective, but Baltimore's brass clearly like what they've seen from Brade over the summer, as, according to Ravens GM Eric DeCosta, he earned his spot on the roster through effort, not because the team simply needed another body at the position.
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Ravens GM Eric DeCosta believes in Beau Brade as a prospect
Sitting down with reporters on Thursday to discuss the state of the Ravens after trimming down the roster to 53, DeCosta was specifically asked about adding Brade to the elite fraternity of former undrafted free agents who made Baltimore's roster. While the Ravens do have a bit of a reputation to uphold, as by DeCosta's own admission, Baltimore have hit home runs in undrafted free agency for two decades now, Brade made his job easy, as he came in and played his way onto the 53-man roster.
“Someone said maybe we had 20 out of 21 years we had a guy make it. That's not necessarily a streak we're trying to address. Even that one year – I don't know who it was – [but] had I been aware of that streak, I probably would have kept a guy just to keep the streak going. I really didn't know about that streak,” DeCosta told reporters.
“In this year, I just think with Beau [Brade], that guy just really earned it. And if you looked at our games – the Packers game, let's face it, it was kind of a joke. It was hard to watch in a lot of ways. I couldn't wait for the game to be over, really to get the Popeyes' chicken sandwich on the plane. The reality is, Beau actually just played great, and he did it consistently. He won the job. He took the job. And in the end, he deserved being on the team, and that's what it was all about.”
Standing 6-foot, 209 pounds with position versatility across both safety spots, Brade is a quality depth player not unlike many former Ravens prospects like Geno Stone who weren't the highest profile players around but did the little things to become well-respected NFL players, splitting time between special teams and defensive subpackages as they slowly worked their way up the depth chart before earning eight-figure contracts in free agency. If Brade can follow in Stone's footsteps, putting in work on kick and punt returns while putting good plays on film whenever he gets a chance to line up defensively alongside Marcus Williams and Kyle Hamilton or in place of them, maybe he too will play over 900 snaps during the final year of his rookie contract before landing a $15 million contract from an AFC North team at some point down the line.
