OWINGS MILLS, MD. — Lamar Jackson and Eric DeCosta were all smiles as they met with the media on May 4 fresh off Jackson signing his new five-year contract extension, and both appeared eager to move on from a negotiation that dragged on for more than a year and grew testy at times.
Last week, just hours before the NFL Draft began, Jackson agreed to a five-year extension with the Ravens worth $260 million, with $185 million guaranteed. The average annual value of $52 million is the highest in NFL history.
“They say the best things come to those who wait,” DeCosta said. “We waited for a while, and here we are.”
DeCosta acknowledged that there were some “dark days” in the process, though he and head coach John Harbaugh never wavered in their pronouncements that they hoped and expected Jackson would return as the Ravens quarterback.
Jackson, meanwhile, made known last month that he had asked to be traded in early March, saying that the team “has not been interested in meeting my value.”
Jackson, flanked by DeCosta and Harbaugh in the team auditorium packed with Ravens staffers not long after putting ink to paper on the new contract, made clear he had no interest in revisiting that trade request.
“Today, we’re going to keep it about the future,” he said. “I’m not really worried about what happened in the past. We’re going to keep it about these next five years. … It’s a great day. A great day. I just signed with the guys up here. That’s all I’m focused on right now.”
A few days after Jackson made his trade request, the Ravens applied the nonexclusive franchise tag to Jackson, which allowed other teams to negotiate with him. If any team signed Jackson to an offer sheet, the Ravens would have had five days to match, but no such offers materialized.
Jackson said that he wanted to stay with Baltimore all along.
“I really didn’t care for other teams, really,” he said. “I just really wanted to get something done here. I wanted to be here.”
Jackson has no agent, and he said that the business side of the game was tough, but that he felt validated that he was able to land this megadeal.
“I had to prove myself right, like I know what I’m doing,” he said, “and I feel I did the right thing.”
Earlier in the process, it was believed that Jackson was looking for a deal in the neighborhood of the five-year, $230 million fully guaranteed contract the Cleveland Browns gave Deshaun Watson. NFL owners roundly criticized that deal and have been loathe to give out fully guaranteed deals, and more recent quarterback contracts have not been fully guaranteed.
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts signed a five-year, $255 million deal just two weeks before Jackson agreed to his extension. Asked whether Hurts’ deal accelerated the talks between Jackson and the Ravens, Jackson said, “I didn’t worry about Jalen’s deal. It was like we came to terms. We came to something that both of us mutually agreed on.”
Jackson, like DeCosta, acknowledged that the process had taken a toll.
“I was just tired of going back and forth about it,” he said. “We’ve been doing it for years, but the time had come, and the numbers were right, and we were all satisfied.”
According to Spotrac, which tracks player contracts, Jackson will carry a $22 million cap hit this season, essentially freeing up $10 million cap space compared with the $32 million nonexclusive franchise tag. His cap numbers rise to $33 million and then $43.5 million in the next two seasons before ballooning to $74.5 million in 2026, meaning the contract is likely to be revisited then.
Jackson’s deal also reportedly has no-trade and no-tag provisions.
New Offense In Place
With the deal done, Jackson now can focus on the Ravens offense, which is expected to look markedly different this season. Todd Monken has replaced Greg Roman as the offensive coordinator, and the Ravens made good on Harbaugh’s pledge to rebuild the receiver room by signing Odell Beckham Jr. and Nelson Agholor and then drafting Zay Flowers from Boston College in the first round.
They join Rashod Bateman and Devin Duvernay, and All-Pro tight end Mark Andrews, to give the Ravens the most explosive passing arsenal in Jackson’s six seasons in Baltimore.
Jackson didn’t specify when he would report for offseason workouts now that his contract is signed — the first on-field OTA practice is May 22 — but he said the knee injury that sidelined him for the final month of the season is fully healed and that he is “very eager” to work with this new-look offense.
“I think I told someone, ‘I want to throw for like 6,000 yards with the weapons we have,'” he said.
Still, Jackson also has a potent running back group led by J.K. Dobbins and Gus Edwards, and he remains the only quarterback in NFL history to record back-to-back 1,000-yard rushing seasons.
Will this new offense veer away from that dynamic, singular talent of Jackson’s?
“There really is no conscious decision along those lines in the sense that Lamar is a unique player,” Harbaugh said, adding that they sometimes call his style “Lamar ball.”
But Harbaugh said he trusts Jackson, his vision and his decision-making.
“You encourage him to play the way he plays,” Harbaugh said. “So I think he’s going to throw when it’s time to throw, and he’s going to run when it’s time to run. We’re going to play that kind of football, and it’s going to be great.”
With Jackson, the next big hurdle, the one that has proved elusive in his first five seasons, is a deep playoff run. He is 45-16 as a regular-season starter and has a unanimous league MVP award to his name, but he is just 1-3 in the postseason.
This past season, the Ravens finished 10-7 and earned a wild-card berth but lost to Cincinnati in the opening round of the playoffs. Jackson missed that game with his knee injury.
Now Jackson is healthy again, he’s signed again, and there is palpable buzz in the building after months of tension and uncertainty.
“We’re going to go out there and fight, and work to be the best team we can be,” Harbaugh said. “Now we have our quarterback locked up. We always knew we would, but now it’s official, and it’s time to get to work.”
Photo Credit: Bo Smolka/PressBox