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Lamar Jackson’s odd contract situation came to a head this week as owner Steve Bisciotti bemoaned the player’s unwillingness to take the team’s money and Jackson responded to speculation he hopes to find a way out of Baltimore.
Throughout all of this, neither Jackson nor anyone else indicated that he would decide to engage the Ravens in contract talks. The team is ready, willing and able to pay him. But he won’t even start making offers or requesting them.
At the beginning of the season it was said that he was too focused on football. After the season, the story was that he was too focused on getting healthy. According to a source with knowledge of the situation, Jackson has told the Ravens he’s too focused on having his best year right now and doesn’t want to make a deal until the 2022 season is over.
This aligns with Bisciotti’s spit on the possibility that Jackson doesn’t think he deserves a new deal until he wins a Super Bowl. Of course, a deal that puts the Ravens in a better cap situation in the near term could hamper efforts to assemble a championship team, especially in 2023 when Jackson enters the franchise-tag years of his career.
There it goes. Fifth year option in 2022. Franchise tag in 2023. For example, if the salary cap increases by 15 percent this year, the 2023 quarterback franchise tag will be in the $34 million range. If so, he’d be making $40.8 million in 2024. Combine that with the $23 million he’ll make this year, and that’s a three-year payout of $97.8 million. Given the current quarterback market, that’s not a bad deal for Baltimore.
The problem comes in 2025, when his salary would increase by 44 percent in 2024, making a third day highly unlikely. That’s when it hit the open market.
For any other quarterback, seven years of unrestricted hands wouldn’t be a bad thing. But Jackson plays the position with a unique physicality. Even if he were to suffer and recover from a Dak Prescott-style fractured ankle (which Dak evidently did), Jackson’s approach to the position puts him at risk of developing a critical mass of minor ailments that combine to result in him this extra loses little that sets it apart. By not including the Ravens in talks aimed at signing him on a long-term contract, he bears the full breadth of risks posed by all sorts of injuries, both acute and chronic, that could keep him from playing in 2025 as to be looked at by someone who should get market – worth money.
The possibility that Jackson will not engage the Ravens at any point in the next three seasons is a key guess that may not come to fruition. What if the Ravens eventually decide to move on? That they need security at the most important position in the game? That there is another team that might try to trade for him sooner or later or somewhere in between?
It’s uncertain how the Ravens will handle the situation as it is truly unprecedented. While the Ravens are indeed benefiting from being able to average less than $33 million over the next three years as the market moves toward $50 million and beyond, the larger goal will eventually be a quarterback to have for years to come.
They thought they did. And maybe they have Jackson for seven full seasons. Or maybe after his fifth season, they’ll decide it’s time to maximize the potential return on Jackson’s contractual rights, as the Chief did with Tyreek Hill, the Packers with Davante Adams, and the Seahawks with Russell Wilson.