After enjoying arguably the healthiest season in franchise history in 2024, the Ravens have sustained a significant injury roughly two weeks before the start of organized team activities.
According to NFL Network, safety Ar’Darius Washington suffered a torn Achilles tendon during spring conditioning. Given the severity of the injury and the typical timetable for a recovery and return to play, Washington is likely to miss most or all of the 2025 season, a brutal development for the 2021 undrafted free agent out of Texas Christian who has battled injuries and finally established himself as a starting-caliber player in 2024. After playing in every game for the first time in his career and moving into the starting lineup in late October to help stabilize a struggling secondary, the 25-year-old Washington was given a $3.263 million tender as a restricted free agent in March.
He collected 64 tackles, five tackles for a loss, eight pass breakups, and two interceptions last season after playing a total of eight games over his first three seasons. Washington replacing veteran Marcus Williams and two-time Pro Bowl selection Kyle Hamilton shifting to more of a deep safety role were major factors allowing Baltimore to surrender NFL lows in total yards per game, net passing yards per game, yards per play, and points per game over the final seven games of the regular season.
Pro Football Focus graded the 5-foot-8, 180-pound defensive back eighth out of 98 qualified safeties last season.
“Ar’Darius is a great example of a guy who got a chance and ran with it,” general manager Eric DeCosta said in January. “He went undrafted because he was a step slow [and] he’s a couple inches smaller. And we got him and were excited when we got him as an undrafted free agent because he was a great football player. … This year, he stayed healthy, and he became that guy that we saw in college — tough, physical, a playmaker, instinctive, smart, a leader. Great story.”
The first-round selection of Georgia safety Malaki Starks softens the blow of losing Washington, of course, but the injury will likely force DeCosta to look at veteran safeties to fortify the depth behind Hamilton and Starks. The only other healthy options currently on the roster are second-year safeties Beau Brade and Sanoussi Kane and undrafted rookies Desmond Igbinosun and Keondre Jackson.
The Ravens wanted to have both Washington and Starks on the field in three-safety alignments to free up Hamilton to move all over the defense and play closer to the line of scrimmage. However, all three possessed the versatility to create fits for opposing quarterbacks trying to diagnose coverage and responsibilities among the members of the secondary
“The offense isn’t going to know who’s going to be back there on any given play,” head coach John Harbaugh said after the first round of last month’s draft. “They’re not going to be able to line up and say, ‘Okay, Kyle’s going to be deep,’ or even, ‘Ar’Darius is going to be deep.’ All three of those guys can be on the field a lot or Marlon [Humphrey]. Marlon can go back and can play deep if we wanted him to, but really now, it’s those three guys as interchangeable parts playing any one of those four positions in there. That’s pretty exciting.”
Washington’s injury alters that vision and reinforces that the Ravens were unlikely to experience the same remarkable level of health two years in a row.
