Future Hall of Famer Already Paying Dividends For Ravens, Lamar Jackson

The Baltimore Ravens added to their mix of skill players by signing DeAndre Hopkins in the offseason, but acquiring the veteran receiver might also be like adding to the coaching staff.

Hopkins’ best football is behind him. The Clemson product just turned 33 and is nearly a decade removed from a three-season run in which he earned All-Pro honors each year.

Looking at the depth chart, he’s going to take a backseat to Zay Flowers and Rashod Bateman in the receiving room, and quarterback Lamar Jackson will continue to feed the two-headed tight end monster of Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely before he leans heavily on Hopkins.

Hopkins is coming off a relatively quiet season with the Tennessee Titans and Kansas City Chiefs where he combined in his two stops to catch 56 of 80 targets with five touchdowns. Four of those scores came with Kansas City after a midseason trade where he provided some badly needed depth for the eventual AFC champions.

DeAndre Hopkins Could Make Major Off-Field Impact for Ravens

But as ESPN.com’s Dan Graziano and Jeremy Fowler noted in their training camp tour diary, the Chiefs raved about Hopkins’ veteran presence, especially his ability to help young receivers.

“When I was at the Super Bowl, I remember a couple of Chiefs coaches telling me how impressed they were with wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins’ coaching ability after they’d traded for him midseason,” Graziano wrote for ESPN.com. T”hey credited Hopkins with helping the development of rookie receiver Xavier Worthy, saying Hopkins would grab Worthy after drives and go over routes with him on the tablets. Hopkins even made suggestions for changing practice drills that were well-received enough that the Chiefs’ coaches changed the drills.”

Surely, the Ravens would love for him to play a similar role with Flowers and Bateman this season. The duo is more experienced than Worthy but even adding a little bit of polish to either could go a long way toward taking Todd Monken’s offense to the next level.

Lamar Jackson Will Benefit From Hopkins’ Presence, Too

And it’s not just his fellow receivers Hopkins can impact. The Ravens, according to Graziano, are already seeing how he can make a quarterback’s life easier, working closely with Jackson as he gets up to speed on a new offensive system.

“Hopkins has been a help to Jackson in terms of figuring out passing game concepts that Jackson likes and getting (Monken) to add them to the playbook. Hopkins isn’t done playing, obviously, but late in his career he seems like the type of player who can have an impact on a team in a lot of different ways.”

As far as chemistry with Jackson, that probably won’t come overnight, but it sounds like they’re making quick strides. Quarterbacks coach Tee Martin recently recalled a play in the red zone in seven-on-seven where the duo made the most of a broken play based almost solely on instinct and knowledge.

“(The called play) didn’t go right, and Lamar just stuck with him, and it ended up being a touchdown,” Martin told reporters after practice on July 31. “You usually don’t see that kind of trust with a new face this early in training camp. So, I think DeAndre has a history of making quarterbacks feel good, because the outcome has been good most of the time. He makes plays.”