The Ravens have played their last preseason snap, and now the real roster crunch begins.
Baltimore’s 41-3 rout of the Washington Commanders on Friday night at M&T Bank Stadium closed the book on the 2026 preseason, leaving Eric DeCosta and first-year head coach Jesse Minter with one final task before Sunday’s deadline: get from 90 players down to the initial 53. Most of the roster feels fairly settled, but there are still a few tight calls hanging over the bubble.
At running back, Derrick Henry and Justice Hill are locks, and Adam Randall and Rasheen Ali also make the cut. Ali and Randall both returned for the finale after missing last week, and Randall in particular flashed as a receiver, showing balance through contact, broken tackles and enough juice after the catch to make a strong case.
The wideout group keeps Zay Flowers, Rashod Bateman, Ja'Kobi Lane, Devontez Walker, Elijah Sarratt and LaJohntay Wester. Dayton Wade, Chris Moore, Cornelius Johnson, Xavier Guillory, Cortez Braham Jr. and Octavian Smith Jr. come off the list. Moore made a strong push early in the finale and forced the issue more than most would in a typical preseason race, but he still looks like a practice squad candidate.
At tight end, Mark Andrews, Durham Smythe, Matthew Hibner and Josh Cuevas survive the cut. Undrafted rookie Ty Pezza capped the preseason with five catches on five targets and 47 yards, but that late surge wasn’t enough to leapfrog Hibner or Cuevas, both of whom also caught two passes in the game.
Up front, Ronnie Stanley, Roger Rosengarten and Carson Vinson stay on the 53, while Diego Pounds, David Sharpe and Gerad Lichtenhan are out. Pounds never really forced his way into the swing tackle conversation, and Lichtenhan, after opening the preseason well, faded late despite switching to the left side in the finale.
The interior line keeps John Simpson, Olaivavega Ioane, Andrew Vorhees and Emory Jones Jr. Jones, the seventh-round rookie, barely saw the field before the final preseason game, so that call was straightforward.
On the defensive front, Nnamdi Madubuike, Travis Jones, Calais Campbell Aeneas Peebles and Broderick Washington make the team. John Jenkins* is projected to be cut, along with Rayshaun Benny, C.J.
Okoye, David Olajiga, Aaron Graves and Dion Wilson Jr. The asterisk next to Jenkins matters, though.
If he’s waived, the expectation is that he won’t be gone long and would return once the Ravens place one of their injured players on short-term injured reserve. Benny, Okoye, Olajiga and Wilson Jr. all turned in strong finishes, especially as interior pass rushers, but Peebles gets the nod because he flashed consistently in practice and carried that over into games against opposing first- and second-stringers.
Edge rusher is where the math gets tricky. Trey Hendrickson, Tavius Robinson, Mike Green, Zion Young and Ethan Burke are in.
Isaac Rucker misses out, despite finishing with a fourth-quarter sack on fourth down to force a turnover on downs. Burke and Rucker both kept making plays, but Burke gets the final spot after a preseason full of disruptive moments, including forcing his second fumble in back-to-back weeks on the Ravens’ first defensive snap of the game.
Inside linebacker goes to Roquan Smith, Teddye Buchanan, Trenton Simpson and Jay Higgins. Carl Jones Jr., Dominic DeLuca and Michael Barrett are cut. DeLuca did close well, piling up eight total tackles and five solo stops, but the overall body of work wasn’t enough to push Higgins off the roster or convince the Ravens to carry a fifth off-ball linebacker instead of a fifth edge defender.
The secondary stays deep, with Nate Wiggins, Marlon Humphrey, Chidobe Awuzie, T.J. Tampa, Chandler Rivers, Keyon Martin and Bihlal Kone making it.
Robert Longerbeam, Marquise Robinson, Amani Oruwariye and Ladarius Webb Jr. are out. This was one of the toughest trims on the board, and the finale made that obvious as Longerbeam, Robinson and Webb Jr. all popped multiple times.
Longerbeam, a 2025 sixth-rounder who missed his entire rookie season with a patellar injury suffered before he ever took a preseason snap, looks like the most likely of the group to get claimed.
At safety, Kyle Hamilton, Malaki Starks, Jaylinn Hawkins and Keondre Jackson round out the unit. Wallace is the notable omission, but he looks like a strong bet to return on the practice squad and get elevated early in the season because of his special teams value.
Special teams ended the preseason with mixed results. The Ravens’ second-year kicker had a rough day, missing two of his three first-half attempts, one wide left and another from beyond 50 yards.
He did knock through a short one later to finish 2-of-4, but that won’t erase a preseason in which he went 5-of-8. Ryan Eckley, on the other hand, kept building momentum.
The rookie punter averaged 46 yards per kick and pinned Washington inside its own 20 twice.
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