Ravens on the roster bubble: Jaleel Scott edition
With training camp set to open later this month, there will be a handful of Baltimore Ravens’ players that will be facing an uphill climb and tough competition in order to make the final roster for the 2020 season. It’s hard to rest easy knowing you’re on the roster bubble and in jeopardy of having the dream you’ve worked towards all your life snatched away in the very near future if you don’t make a good enough impression in a little over a months’ time.
The players featured in this six-part series face an even more daunting task than most would in their shoes in any given year because this offseason has been like nothing any of us has experienced in our or even our parent’s lifetimes with the physical restrictions and limitations placed on us all, professional athlete and common folk alike, due to the global pandemic caused by COVID-19.
According to multiple reports in recent weeks, the league and the NFLPA are considering shortening or canceling the entire preseason to give players more time to get into football shape after only being able to attend virtual workouts all offseason and decrease the chances of potentially exposing players, coaches, and other team officials to the virus to play exhibition games. These unfortunate developments have made not only life but making the roster much more difficult for fringe players that need every opportunity they can get to leave enough of a lasting impression on their organizations.
Here is the first Raven on the list of features that needs to have a strong training camp and preseason—if there is one—to keep his hopes and dreams alive, at least with this team:
WR Jaleel Scott:
The fourth-round pick out of New Mexico State in 2018 is set to enter his third training camp with the Ravens and will need to make an even bigger splash then he did last preseason to make the final cut this year. He spent his entire rookie season on injured reserve and turned an impressive training camp and preseason last year into a spot on the final 53-man roster. However, he failed to build off that momentum once the regular season rolled around and was a healthy scratch for 13 of a possible 16 regular-season games. In the three games, he did appear in, he only managed to record one reception on three targets for meagerly six yards.
He’ll enter this training camp facing even stiffer competition than he had last year with the addition of rookie draft picks Devin Duvernay who the coaches and scouts were ecstatic to get in the third round and James Proche who they traded up to select in the sixth. Last year he also benefited from 2019 first-round pick Marquise ‘Hollywood’ Brown being held out for most of the team portions of organized team activities (OTAs), training camp, and the preseason as he worked his way back from Lisfranc foot surgery.
Now that Hollywood is fully healed, looking even more explosive than his pre-injury form according to the multitude of training video posts that have been disseminated all over social media, and is poised for a breakout sophomore season, there will be even fewer reps to go around so Scott will have to make the most out of the ones he does receive. At 6-foot-5 and 210 pounds with strong hands, great body control, and a huge catch radius, he has all the tools to become a difference-maker and a monster in both the red zone and in must convert situations.
Scott had a flair for making extremely acrobatic plays and hauling in highly improbable catches in college but struggled to make the routine catches. If he wants to make this year’s squad, he’s going to have to show that he can consistently make the mundane as well as the occasional spectacular on offense and become more of a factor on special teams. Hopefully, that will be enough to beat the unforgiving game of numbers that often costs deserving players roster spots.
