In February 2020, wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins posed a question on X that accompanied a photo of himself next to quarterback Lamar Jackson and running back Derrick Henry:

“How many TD’s would this trio total?”

Five years later, the NFL will get an answer. Hopkins is set to join the two All-Pros in Baltimore after agreeing to a one-year deal with the Ravens reportedly worth up to $6 million.

Hopkins, who had 56 catches for 610 yards and five touchdowns last season with the Tennessee Titans and Kansas City Chiefs, is not the game-breaking wideout he was five years ago. But the 32-year-old’s arrival can still bolster the Ravens' elite offense. Here are three takeaways from his pending arrival.

Depth chart shake-up?

Unlike so many of the big-name, free-agent wide receivers the Ravens have signed over the years, Hopkins is not all the way over the hill. He graded out as a top-30 wideout last season among qualifying wide receivers, according to Pro Football Focus. His “open score,” an ESPN metric that measures a receiver’s ability to get open on every route relative to expectations, ranked 20th among wide receivers, tied with the Cincinnati Bengals’ Ja’Marr Chase.

But the Ravens are not bringing Hopkins in to carry the load as a WR1. Or likely even as a WR2. On a Chiefs offense desperate for wide receiver production last season, Hopkins played at least 60% of the offensive snaps in just two of his 10 regular-season games with the team. He was targeted on 22.5% of his routes overall last year, according to TruMedia, his lowest target share since 2021. Hopkins’ days as a field-tilting wide receiver are almost certainly behind him.

That shouldn’t matter in Baltimore, where Zay Flowers and Rashod Bateman are an ascendant one-two punch. Flowers, a Pro Bowl player last season (1,059 receiving yards), played over 65% of the offensive snaps in every competitive game. Bateman, who had a career-high 756 receiving yards in 2024, played at least 60% of the snaps in all but two competitive games: the Week 12 win over the Los Angeles Chargers and the Week 13 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, when a knee injury sidelined him in the second half.

Flowers is just 24. Bateman is 25. Their final forms haven’t been reached yet. The Ravens won’t need Hopkins to get in their way.

If anything, they should be able to coexist. The Ravens lined up in 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end and three wide receivers) on an NFL-low 28.1% of their snaps last season, according to TruMedia. If coordinator Todd Monken leans into more wide-receiver-heavy looks, Hopkins should pose more of a threat than Nelson Agholor and Tylan Wallace — both of whom are now free agents — ever did as the offense’s third wide receiver. Their skill sets seem complementary, too, with Hopkins' feel for short and intermediate routes, Flowers' yards-after-the-catch ability and Bateman’s downfield prowess meshing nicely.

Hopkins’ on-field presence can help unlock more presnap trickery for Flowers, who caught 24 of the 31 targets he earned as a motion man last season for 285 yards and a touchdown, according to Sports Info Solutions. Bateman, a relatively static receiver before the snap over his Ravens career, could also get more free releases at the line of scrimmage as part of a beefed-up receiving trio.

‘X’ marks the spot

In an interview with The Ringer’s Todd McShay at the Senior Bowl earlier this year, general manager Eric DeCosta acknowledged a shortcoming in his roster construction.

“We feel like Lamar being the type of player he is, he presents so many challenges for linebackers and the front,” DeCosta said. “We drafted ‘Hollywood’ [Marquise Brown], we drafted Zay, we drafted ‘Bate.’ We’ve allocated a lot of resources. … The one piece we’ve probably missed on is that big ‘X’ [receiver] presence. We’ve never really had that. We’ve tried to find that guy; that guy doesn’t grow on trees. Hard to find those kind of guys, right? That’s probably the one thing, but for us it’s always been, OK, offensive line, first and foremost, keep it strong.”

In his heyday, Hopkins was a prototypical X receiver. He could win in isolation versus in-your-face, man-to-man coverage. He could find holes in zone coverage. He could make plays downfield. He could create yards after the catch.

In 2025, Hopkins is no longer that kind of offensive force. But he does give Jackson the kind of big-bodied target the Ravens have lacked at the position for years.

According to PFF, Hopkins had 13 contested catches on 24 opportunities last year, tied for 19th most in the NFL and more than Flowers and Bateman have had in any season. Hopkins’ most impressive contested catch with Kansas City might’ve come in his 86-yard, two-touchdown performance against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 9, when he brought in a 35-yard, over-the-shoulder grab in double coverage near the goal line.

Jackson did not often have to throw into tight windows last year, but Hopkins’ arrival could give him the confidence to. Of the 28 quarterbacks with at least 300 total pass attempts in 2024, Jackson ranked 24th in the number of throws in which his target had less than a yard of separation from the nearest defender (52), according to TruMedia.

Jackson completed 18 of those attempts (34.6%), close to the league average for accuracy. But most of those go-and-get-it catches came from Ravens tight ends, not wide receivers. Jackson went just 7-for-32 when targeting wideouts on tight-window throws. Hopkins’ strong hands, body control and ball-tracking skills should make him a better bet out wide.

A fading big-play threat

What can Hopkins add to the NFL’s most explosive offense? Durability and physicality, but probably not a lot of big-play ability.

Hopkins was targeted just 11 times on passes thrown at least 20 yards downfield last season, a career low. Nine deep shots were catchable, according to SIS, but he caught just four, close to another career low.

In Kansas City, where the Chiefs’ offensive line struggled to protect quarterback Patrick Mahomes on longer-developing drop-backs, most of Hopkins’ production came closer to the line of scrimmage. Thirty-seven of his 41 catches came on throws of 10 air yards or fewer. But he struggled to add much after the catch, averaging just 2.1 yards per reception. (The Ravens, meanwhile, finished third in the NFL with 6.6 yards after the catch per reception.)

Still, Hopkins is versatile enough to produce in the red zone, where he has 10 touchdowns over the past three seasons, and wherever else the Ravens might need him. Hopkins’ route tree in Kansas City last season showed just how much coach Andy Reid trusted him to win in various concepts; Hopkins’ six most common route types (crossers, slants, hitches, in routes, out routes and go routes) varied only slightly in overall usage, from as low as 13.7% to as high as 17.3%, according to TruMedia.

“He’s such a professional,” Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce said on his “New Heights” podcast after Hopkins arrived in a midseason trade. “He knows how to win football games. He knows how to be accountable. You don’t need to tell that guy much. He gets it. He gets it and he’s only made us better already, and I promise you, as he gets more incorporated into the offense and gets more in tune with Pat and how Pat likes to do things and how he likes to do things for Pat, I think all that will just make him a very vital part of this offense.”

And now Hopkins can do it in Baltimore alongside Jackson and Henry, just as he once imagined.