Eric DeCosta: Ravens hoped to add Trey Hendrickson and Maxx Crosby

The Ravens didn’t pivot to Trey Hendrickson after reneging on the Maxx Crosby trade. Instead, General Manager Eric DeCosta said in a Wednesday news conference that the team hoped to sign Hendrickson AND trade for Crosby.

DeCosta said losing center Tyler Linderbaum to the Raiders opened the possibility of adding both Hendrickson and Crosby.

“I didn’t really look at him as like, ‘Oh, we’ll do this because of that,’” DeCosta said. “It was really more, ‘How do we get better as a football team?’ In terms of Trey, I think we came to a point probably after we lost Tyler, where as we’re trying to find the best way for us to get better as a football team, Trey kind of made a lot of sense as a possible guy to look it. So, we started some discussions with he and his agent, thinking that potentially we could have two pass rushers on the defensive line, on both sides of the line.

“Again, I think it was disappointing to us, and probably in a way, potentially disappointing probably to Trey as well.”

The Ravens backed out of the deal with the Raiders for Crosby at the 11th hour after the edge rusher failed a physical. Less than 12 hours later, their deal with Hendrickson was announced.

“We had started discussions with both players,” DeCosta said. “We had agreed to potentially the trade with the Raiders, but we had . . . . We were trying to sign Tyler obviously, and weren’t able to get that done. Looking at the best way for us to improve our football team at some point, we just said, ‘You know what, this might be a guy that really fits us. We’ve played against twice a year for the last however many years — four or five years — and thought, ‘Hey, maybe this is a way for us to get better as a football team.’

“That was definitely a possibility for us. Not to say it would have happened, but definitely something that we had contemplated and discussed with Trey.”