The curious Lamar Jackson contract scenario reached semi-boil this week, with proprietor Steve Bisciotti lamenting the participant’s unwillingness to take the team’s money and Jackson responding to speculation that he’s hoping to engineer a path out of Baltimore.
By means of all of it, neither Jackson nor anybody else advised that he’ll resolve to have interaction the Ravens in contract talks. The group is prepared, prepared, and capable of pay him. However he gained’t even begin the method of constructing affords or requesting them.
At first of the season, the story was that he was too targeted on soccer. After the season, the story was that he was too targeted on getting wholesome. Per a supply with data of the scenario, Jackson has informed the Ravens that he’s presently too targeted on having his absolute best yr and that he doesn’t wish to do a deal till the 2022 season is over.
This meshes with Bisciotti’s spitballing on the chance that Jackson thinks he doesn’t deserve a brand new deal till he wins a Tremendous Bowl. In fact, not doing a deal that offers the Ravens a greater cap scenario within the brief time period may impede the efforts to place collectively a championship group, particularly in 2023, when Jackson will get into the franchise-tag years of his profession.
That’s the place it’s heading. Fifth-year choice in 2022. Franchise tag in 2023. If the wage cap will increase by, say, 15 p.c this yr, the franchise tag for quarterbacks will probably be within the vary of $34 million in 2023. In that case, he’d get $40.8 million in 2024. Mix that with the $23 million he’ll make this yr, and that’s a three-year payout of $97.8 million. Given the present quarterback market, that’s not a foul deal for Baltimore.
The issue arrives in 2025, when his 2024 wage would leap by 44 p.c, making a 3rd tag extremely unlikely. That’s when he’d hit the open market.
For every other quarterback, seven years to unrestricted free company wouldn’t be a foul factor. However Jackson performs the place with a singular physicality. Even when he have been to endure a Dak Prescott-style damaged ankle and get well from it (which Dak clearly did), Jackson’s method to the place places him prone to creating a vital mass of minor illnesses that mix to trigger him to lose that additional little bit that units him aside. By not partaking the Ravens on talks geared toward signing him to a long-term deal, he carries the complete vary of dangers arising from all potential accidents, acute and persistent, that might hold him from being regarded come 2025 as somebody who ought to get market-value cash.
The opportunity of Jackson by no means partaking the Ravens at any level over the following three seasons carries an vital presumption, one that will not come to fruition. What if the Ravens resolve in some unspecified time in the future to maneuver on? That they want certainty at an important place within the sport? That there’s another group that might maybe attempt to commerce for him, ultimately or someplace in between?
It’s unsure how the Ravens will deal with the scenario as a result of it’s actually unprecedented. Though the Ravens do certainly profit from probably paying out, on common, lower than $33 million over the following three years at a time when the market is creeping towards $50 million and past, the higher goal in some unspecified time in the future will grow to be having a quarterback in place for years to return.
They thought they did. And possibly they’ll have Jackson for seven full seasons. Or possibly they’ll resolve after his fifth season that, because the Chief did with Tyreek Hill, the Packers did with Davante Adams, and the Seahawks did with Russell Wilson, the time has come to maximise the potential return on Jackson’s contractual rights.
When will Lamar Jackson engage the Ravens in contract talks? initially appeared on Pro Football Talk
