Ravens Add a Veteran Safety. The Secondary Still Has No Real Answer.

Baltimore signed Rayshawn Jenkins to the practice squad Monday, adding a former Browns and Steelers safety as the team tries to patch a secondary that gave up 35 points to Cincinnati on Sunday. It is a sensible, low-cost move. It is also not close to sufficient.

The deeper problem has been visible all season. K'Von Wallace is the listed starter at the DB position, and he has not played like one. There is no functional depth behind him — Anthony Levine and Jordan Richards are on the depth chart, but neither has logged meaningful snaps. Jenkins gives the Ravens another name, but he lands on the practice squad, not the active roster, and the structural hole at the position does not close because a veteran with Cleveland and Pittsburgh stops on his résumé is now in the building.

What makes this harder is that the secondary is not the only thing breaking at once. Rookie guard Olaivavega Ioane sprained his MCL against the Bengals and is expected to miss time, which means Baltimore heads into a game against Buffalo already without Lamar Jackson and now short a starter on the offensive line too. The injury list has been relentless, and the Ravens are 4–3, half a game from the wild card line, with ten games left to figure it out.

Jenkins might help eventually. The team needed to do something. But the secondary was a structural problem before Sunday, and one practice-squad signing does not change the architecture.