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Ravens guard Marshal Yanda has appeared in at
least 13 games 10 times during his 12 seasons in the NFL. (Lloyd Fox /
Baltimore Sun)
At 34, Ravens guard Marshal Yanda is old for
an NFL player. Hall of Fame left tackle Jonathan Ogden retired when
he was 33. Ravens special teams coordinator-in-waiting Chris
Horton is just a few months younger than Yanda. No other Ravens lineman
was born in the 1980s.
And yet Yanda was honored as second-team All-Pro last season. He
was named a Pro Bowl starter. Before Yanda, who turns 35 in
September, agreed to a contract extension through 2020 last week, Ravens general manager Eric
DeCosta said the team hoped its longtime right guard would "continue
to play for us for years."
Ravens head strength and conditioning coach Steve Saunders doesn’t
doubt that he could.
“It’s
his work ethic as much as anything,” Saunders said Tuesday, the second
day of the team’s offseason workout program. “That guy comes to work. He takes
care of himself. He understands it as a vet, and he never lets himself get out
of shape.”
Yanda missed most of the 2017
season with a fractured left ankle and toiled through the subsequent offseason
after shoulder surgery, but he nonetheless started all 16 games last season. In his 12 seasons, he has
appeared in at least 13 games 10 times.
Yanda’s Pro Football Focus
rating has slipped each of the past five years, but he still graded out as the
third-best guard in the NFL in 2018. Saunders said that, physically, Yanda
could be only getting stronger.
“When we talk about building a base,
and it just increases year after year, Marshal has, I don’t know, 13, 12
[years], whatever it is, of those under his belt already,” Saunders said. “So
as long as he avoids that freak happenstance, he’s just getting better and better. I think guys
[in their] early to mid-30s are just reaching their peak, as long as they
didn’t have that freak injury where something happens to the joint.
“I tell the guys all the
time, if you were in the mob and I owed you money, and you said, ‘I’m going to
break your femur or blow out your knee, take your pick,’ I’d say, ‘Break my
bone. Break my femur’ — because bones heal. Joints are never the same.”
Ravens right tackle Orlando
Brown Jr. said he was “very happy” he’d get to play at least another year
with Yanda, who was not among the players who spoke Tuesday at the team
facility. All five starters return on a line that helped make the Lamar
Jackson-led rushing attack one of the NFL’s best, and PFF had the Ravens as the
league’s third-most efficient pass-blocking team in 2018.
“We definitely want to be the best
offensive line in the world,” Brown said. “I think our vision up front is to be
great, and it’s going to take work, it’s going to take time. Fortunately, the
urgency is there, but we still do have some time to continuously get better.
Once we get out on the field, training camp starts, we get Marshal back and all
those things, we’ll hit the ground running. I’m pretty confident in it.”
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