The Facts: Following up on a previous item. ... Ravens assistant G.M. Eric DeCosta said Thursday that the team has “no intentions” of letting Joe Flacco leave as a free agent and they’ll start the work of keeping him pretty soon. PFT's Mike Florio has learned that the team will have their first face-to-face meeting of the offseason with Flacco’s agent Joe Linta sometime Friday night or Saturday.

Diehards Line:According to Florio, the two sides will be trying to hammer out a long-term contract ahead of the start of free agency in hopes of avoiding a franchise tag that would eat up cap space the Ravens might like to use to keep other players. Should the Ravens have to use the tag, they’ll be deciding between the exclusive and non-exclusive tags. The former would cost them more cap space while the latter would leave open the possibility that a team willing to spend two first-round picks could come up with an offer that steals Flacco away. That possibility was called “negligible” by DeCosta on Thursday. Now we'll all get a better idea of just how negligible is really is.