Baltimore Ravens guard Ben Cleveland left Thursday’s practice with an apparent head injury and is undergoing further evaluation, head coach John Harbaugh told reporters.
Cleveland, 25, is in the running for the starting right guard job and had been considered the favorite to win it earlier in the offseason. Now, though, the odds seem to be moving in favor of Daniel Faalele, a third-year lineman from Melbourne, Austrailia.
Faalele is a massive man at 6-8 and 380 pounds, being both the tallest and heaviest player on the Ravens’ roster. Cleveland is close behind at 6-6 and 360 pounds, which is technically more in line with a guard but not by much.
A 2021 third-round pick out of Georgia, Cleveland has started just seven of the 37 games he’s appeared in thus far. He has been relatively average in those starts, and the fact that Faalele is reportedly getting first-team reps over him is quite ominous for his starting chances.
In fact, Jeff Zrebiec of The Athletic recently listed Cleveland among players whose stock fell over the first week of training camp.
“Andrew Vorhees entered camp as the favorite to start at left guard, and nothing happened in the first week to change that,” Zrebiec writes. ” [Daniel] Faalele is getting the first opportunity to win the right guard job. Where does that leave Cleveland, who was once perceived as the favorite to start at right guard? There’s still time for Cleveland to get a shot as a starter, but that the Ravens are auditioning a converted tackle inside rather than giving him the early first-team reps probably doesn’t bode well.”
Hopefully Cleveland gets back on the field show, because if trends hold up, he’ll need every last rep to prove he can indeed be a starting-caliber lineman.
