Let me get the following things out of the way immediately so that everyone who reads this column can know it up front.
1. Lamar Jackson is an absolutely phenomenal football player and deserves to be paid as one of the top quarterbacks in the NFL.
2. You know, I guess that’s all I really need to cover at the top and I can just refer to everything else within the body of the column. I just realized that after I had already typed out the first sentence and everything up to the number “2” and we’ve come too far to go back now.
Within the past week, we’ve finally gotten the first pieces of relevant information regarding where the Baltimore Ravens and Lamar Jackson find themselves in terms of contract negotiations. And now that we finally have some answers, we have … drastically more questions than we did before!
It began at the NFL Scouting Combine, where general manager Eric DeCosta reiterated what he had said about Jackson during his postseason press conference, essentially saying that they were ready to go to the table whenever Jackson was. CBS Sports’ Josina Anderson followed that up by laying out why the former unanimous MVP might not be in a rush.
OK, fair enough. While conventional wisdom has been that Josh Allen’s deal would provide guardrails for a Jackson contract and these particular quarterbacks are a good bit older than Jackson, this makes some sense. If the annual average value of any quarterback’s contract, even a short-team deal, ends up in the $50 million range, Jackson of course should attempt to get that number himself. So why not wait it out a bit and see what happens? This was a reasonable suggestion of why the current stalemate was no more than a speed bump en route to an eventual deal.
But then NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport came flying in from the top rope.
Bro, what?
No disrespect to Rapoport, who is merely passing along what he knows, but what in the hell? Neither Dak Prescott nor Kirk Cousins had accomplished as much in the first four years of their respective careers as Jackson has, and neither Prescott nor Cousins were first-round draft picks who had to ride out five years before their first tag.
More succinctly, we know there was a uniqueness to those situations. Dallas used the tag to keep negotiating, and Washington used the tag twice because it had legitimate questions about whether Cousins was really worthy of a long-term deal. (Fairly so!)
That can’t possibly be where we are with Jackson. He is a revelation. He is a marvel. There is absolutely no reason why he should be forced to wait out two franchise tags while the Ravens drag their feet like they were Roy from “The Office.” So why in the blue hell would Jackson be interested in going this route?
Here comes CBS Sports’ Jason La Canfora:
Numerous sources close to this situation indicated he is quite well-versed in the quarterback financial landscape, and league sources also indicated the Ravens have never presented an offer in the stratosphere of the $40M-$45M per year that other top young QBs have secured, instead focusing on long-term deals (five years or more) closer to $35M a year.
Oh. Well, that would be a good reason for Jackson to be willing to ride this thing out.
But as I was reminded this weekend by a friend who previously worked in an NFL front office, not all $35 million annual contract offers are created equal. (Don’t I know it!) An offer like this might well be nothing more than a step in the process. ORRRR it might just be what the Ravens are willing to offer, perhaps a reflection of the “prove it” concept so many of you have suggested the Ravens implement with their star quarterback after he dealt with injuries and some struggles against the blitz in 2021.
And the difference is significant. Because if it is the former, Jackson’s apparent willingness to play under two tags could be more about speeding up the process. “Look, we know how much you’d be willing to pay us under the tag. So why don’t we skip ahead to that number and get this squared away?”
But if that number is more legitimately what the Ravens are willing to offer, the idea of Jackson simply smiling and playing along until a post-seventh-season free agency makes no sense at all. As I’ve said before, the smarter play would be to demand a trade to a team that IS prepared to skip ahead to that number given the current dearth of quality quarterbacks around the league.
(Honestly, how many teams in the league feel VERY good about their quarterback situation in 2022? The Chiefs, Bills, Bengals, Rams, Chargers and Cowboys? The Packers, Seahawks and Cardinals all could too … if they hang on to their quarterbacks. Is that the list? The Patriots, Browns, Raiders and Titans have to feel at least pretty good but, you know, still. It has to be about as bleak as we’ve seen in a decade and a half, right?)
There have been suggestions that Jackson is doing some bigger-picture thinking here. We’ve seen him hanging out with LeBron James and talking about wanting to be a billionaire. Perhaps he wants to break the system altogether. The top NBA players can essentially rip up their deals and do new ones every year or two to get a bigger share of the league’s revenue split. At some point we’re bound to see an NFL player consider something similar.
Jackson has no obligation to concern himself with what his cap figure means to what else a team can do. While it is nice to envision a quarterback choosing to take less money to help build a more complete roster, it is absurdly unfair to suggest the onus on building a roster falls more on the shoulders of Jackson than it does a front office making better decisions after identifying its quarterback.
But back to the point, there’s no reason to think Jackson couldn’t get those types of deals in Baltimore. While maxing out his earnings potential may well be a priority, there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t want to max it out here. Either the Ravens believe he’s a top guy or they don’t. If they do, it’s time to skip ahead in the process. You have to give him ridiculous amounts of money. There is no getting around it. That’s how it works with quarterbacks in the NFL.
If they don’t (and I personally disagree), the Cousins route is illogical. While there is an argument to go “all-in” for the next couple of years, the cap figures for Jackson start to become untenable. Not only should Jackson want a trade, the Ravens would likely have to do it.
We’re not yet at the point where such a decision has to be made, but there is real reason why both sides should want to speed the process up.
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