Coming off a season where they boasted arguably the best running back tandem outside of Detroit in which five-time Pro Bowler Derrick Henry and follow veteran Justice Hill combined for 2,725 yards and 22 touchdowns from scrimmage, the Baltimore Ravens don’t have a glaring need at the position.
Both players are under contract through the 2025 season and they will have Keaton Mitchell back nearly two years removed from a major knee injury that limited him to just seven games and mainly a special teams role as a kick returner when he did suit up.
However, none of those facts are stopping them from doing their due diligence and potentially exploring the possibility of adding another young playmaker to the position which is one of the deepest and strongest in this year’s class. In a recent interview with the Draft Network’s Justin Melo, former University of Central Florida standout running back R.J. Harvey shared that the Ravens are one of a handful of teams he has a top-30 pre-draft visit scheduled with.
Harvey is a hard-nosed runner with the ball in his hands who possesses excellent vision, power, contract balance, quick feet and breakaway speed. He is a elusive in tight spaces and is a big-play waiting to happen anytime he touches the ball. One of his other greatest attributes that might sometimes be a weakness at the next level is his patience and desire to find the crease or cutback lane to hit the big play instead of getting north sooner but that could be situationally addressed with coaching.
At 5-foot-8 and 205 pounds, he has a compact build which allows him to have a natural low center of gravity that he uses to plow through would-be tacklers who try to go high to bring him down because they can’t get low enough to get his muscular legs. He had a strong showing at the 2025 NFL Scouting Combine with the fourth-best 40-yard dash time (4.40), vertical leap (39″) and broad jump (10-foot-7) as well as the fifth-best marks in the 20-yard shuttle (4.34) and bench press (16).
Harvey averaged over six yards per carry in each of his last three seasons with the Knights. After taking over as the featured back as a junior, his production exploded and finished sixth in FBS in rushing in back-to-back years to close out an incredibly prolific collegiate career. In 2024 as a senior, he recorded career-highs across the board with 232 carries, 1,577 rushing yards, 22 rushing touchdowns, 131.4 rushing yards per game, 6.8 yards per carry, 267 receiving yards, 13.4 yards per catch and three receiving touchdowns.
The Ravens selected former Marshall standout running back Rasheen Ali in the fifth round of last year’s draft at No. 165 overall but he struggled with injuries and didn’t have much of a role outside of special teams in the six games he appeared. He finished his rookie season with just 31 rushing yards on 10 carries, no catches on two targets and 107 kick return yards on four attempts with a long of 38 and made just one assisted tackle on special teams. By no means is his roster spot secure heading into year two especially if the Ravens believe they can find an upgrade reserve option in this year’s loaded class at the position.
Henry only has one year left on his contract and while he is expected to receive a pay raise in the form of an extension sometime before or during the 2025 season, he is 31 years old. Any new deal likely wouldn’t be for more than two or three years at the most. Harvey has been projected to come off the board as high as the late second and as late as the early fourth round. While the Ravens are better served using No. 59 overall in the second round at a more pressing need, with 11 total picks this year, taking him between the middle rounds would be a solid move.
