The Ravens continued to fill out their roster with veteran free agents Friday, addressing depth at key positions by signing outside linebacker Shane Ray and wide receiver Michael Floyd.
Terms of the deals with the former first-round picks were not disclosed. Organized team activities begin Monday in Baltimore.
Ray, 25, signed just one day after former Ravens outside linebacker Pernell McPhee agreed to return to Baltimore. (McPhee’s deal was also finalized Friday.) Both have struggled to produce amid injury problems in recent years.
The No. 23 overall pick in 2015 after earning Southeastern Conference Defensive Player of the Year honors at Missouri, Ray had just one sack each of the past two years with the Denver Broncos. He had a career-high eight in 2016, the one season in which he’s played 16 games.
Ray missed half of the 2017 season because of a wrist injury before undergoing his fourth surgery on the joint in less than a year last summer. He appeared in 11 games for Denver last season and saw action on 23.5% of the defense’s snaps, a career low. For the Broncos’ final three games, he was a healthy scratch.
“I will be a starter the next place that I go,” Ray told The Denver Post at the end of the season. “That’s the kind of player that I am and that’s the type of player that I’ve been. Wherever I go next, they’ll want me and it will be time for me to do what I could have been doing. And I’ll be healthy. That will be a difference, too.”
Ray is more of an edge rusher than McPhee, who can line up inside. They’ll compete for snaps and perhaps a starting job opposite Matthew Judon with Tyus Bowser, Tim Williams and third-round pick Jaylon Ferguson. The Ravens are attempting to rebuild their pass rush after losing Terrell Suggs and Za’Darius Smith in free agency, key contributors on the NFL’s top-ranked defense.
The 29-year-old Floyd had 10 catches for 100 yards and a touchdown last season in 13 games for the Washington Redskins. In 2017, with the Minnesota Vikings, he had 10 receptions for 78 yards. He’s the 13th receiver on the Ravens’ 90-man roster, and just the fourth with an NFL catch.
His production has waned as off-field problems have cropped up. A former first-round pick of the Arizona Cardinals in 2012, Floyd had a career-high 1,041 receiving yards in 2013 and followed with back-to-back 800-plus-yard seasons.
But the Cardinals released him in the fifth and final year of his rookie contract after a drunken-driving arrest, his second in six years. He played just two games for the New England Patriots before landing in his native Minnesota. He was suspended for the Vikings’ first four games of the 2017 season for violating the NFL’s substance-abuse policy.
Floyd played nearly a third of the Redskins’ offensive snaps last year and could find a spot on the Ravens’ season-opening roster. The team lacks veteran outside receivers — Willie Snead IV and Seth Roberts are better in the slot, while Chris Moore has struggled at times — and Floyd has the size (6 feet 3, 220 pounds) to be a safety-net target for quarterback Lamar Jackson.
To clear space on their roster, the Ravens waived undrafted free agents Jalan McClendon, a quarterback from Baylor, and Kalil Morris, a Kent State defensive tackle.
