Jeremiah Attaochu worked out for the Ravens on Monday; the team has since added the veteran outside linebacker to its practice squad. Baltimore released cornerback T.J. Carrie to make room on its 16-man P-squad.
A veteran who has bounced around the league, Attaochu has been available since the Bears released him in June. The Ravens will bring him in days after signing Jason Pierre-Paul to their active roster.
This will be Attaochu’s fifth NFL team. The former Chargers second-round pick previously bounced from the Bolts to the Jets to the Broncos to the Bears. Intermittent production has followed, but Attaochu managed to collect a bit of money based on his last decent season. He posted five sacks off the bench for the 2020 Broncos, a team that did not have Von Miller throughout that campaign. After totaling 8.5 sacks in two seasons under Vic Fangio in Denver, the Bears gave Attaochu a two-year, $5.5MM deal to play behind Khalil Mack and Robert Quinn.
The Georgia Tech product, 29, did not tally a sack with the Bears last season. Though, Attaochu only played five games with Chicago; a torn pec sustained in October 2021 ended his season early. Justin Houston suffered a groin injury Sunday, limiting the starter to just six defensive snaps. The Ravens also have Tyus Bowser and David Ojabo out of the picture for the time being. Bowser cannot return until Week 5, while Ojabo — who suffered an Achilles tear preparing for the draft — is unlikely to debut until later this season.
JPP stands to take some heat off the starters. Brandon Copeland, who signed with Baltimore’s P-squad last week, played that role against the Patriots. Attaochu will join Copeland as stopgap insurance behind the team’s top trio soon. A ninth-year veteran, Carrie joined the Ravens’ taxi squad nearly two weeks ago.
Ravens finally doing a decent job of building up rotational depth at the edge. They might not get a lot of production, but being able to rotate out and keeping the bodies they do have fresh is pretty important. They also brought in Copeland for depth behind JPP.
The original article made no mention of Copeland, otherwise I wouldn’t have pointed that move out.
I just don’t understand how they waited until the regular season started to do this. Not saying too little too late but why piecemeal it together on the fly when you had an off-season to build depth.
Also what is going on in the Bmore training room. Feels like they are a walking IR the last 2 seasons!!
The death of Jaylon Ferguson shook things up quite a bit and I think they were banking on some guys coming back sooner than they thought. Then it became supply/demand/price. I agree they dragged their feet way too long to address an area they knew was a need.
Evening Hope all is well. Help me out here, fellas. Didn’t they not too long ago restructure someone’s deal to help create cap room? So salary constraint could have been the culprit in the delay?
They did, I believe it was Chuck Clark and Ronnie Staley, but Staley’s was done back in August, so they had the room back then. JPP seems to be the only “money” deal here, the other guys are all scraps off the street that shouldn’t command big deals.
I think the delay might have been their negotiations with Lamar and them banking on the health of the guys they already brought in, which is kind of silly when you look at the health histories of guys like Steven Means and Vince Beigel. They also signed an already injured Kyle Fackrell hoping he’d have enough time to heal up before the other guys went down, but since the injuries stacked up they couldn’t wait and they cut him, too.
Thanks NP. Great stuff. Cheers! Speaking of Staley, rumor has it maybe he’s available this weekend? Fingers crossed.