The Baltimore Ravens are annually one of the best teams in the NFL Draft. Each year, they seem to get incredible value and select impact players no matter what number pick they have. That's not by accident, either. After the 2025 NFL Draft, Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta shared his intriguing draft philosophy with the world.

DeCosta shared that his draft strategy is based on a study by economists Richard Thaler and Cade Massey called The Loser's Curse.

“The idea, basically, is that teams simply don't do any better drafting than anyone else. You're all going to be about the same,” DeCosta explained.

He went on to say that, according to this study, the draft is basically a “luck-driven process,” which he doesn't totally believe. What he does believe, though, is that because the 30th pic could be just as good as the first pick it makes no sense to trade up in the draft as so many teams love to do.

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This philosophy has made the Ravens anything but losers in the NFL draft since DeCosta took over for legendary GM and Pr Football Hall of Famer Ozzie Newsome in 2019. In that time, DeCosta has stayed put in his draft spot (for the most part) or traded back and selected Pro Bowl players like Justin Madubiuke, Patrick Queen, Kyle Hamilton, Tyler Linerbaum, Zay Flowers, and more.

In the 2025 NFL Draft, the Ravens once again held their ground, making their pick at 27 and getting incredible value with Georgia safety Malaki Starks. The defensive back was widely considered one of the top-10 most talented players in the class, but due to positional value, he slipped to the back end of Round 1.

Now, though, DeCosta's Ravens will have one of the most talented young safety duos in the league headed into the 2025 NFL season, as Starks pairs with Hamilton who fell to No. 14 in the 2022 NFL Draft for similar reasons—reasons the DeCosta was happy to take advantage of among all the NGL GM “Loser's.”