Baltimore Ravens’ “franchise player” Justin Madubuike has plenty of reasons to be extra motivated this year.
Coming off a breakout season in which he registered a career-high 13 sacks after tallying just 8.5 his first three years in the league, the club slapped the franchise tag on Madubuike.
Then, just three days later, he signed a four-year, $98 million contract extension.
This has led to a fair amount of articles, all across the internet, predicting that Madubuike will take a step back this season. Some observers, pundits, and prognosticators believe his 2023 campaign was a fluke.
If you enter his name into a search engine, you’ll quickly see headlines forecasting regression for the interior pass-rushing specialist. The theory goes that Madubuike broke out last season because it was his contract year.
And thus, now that he has his money, he won’t be as ambitious. It almost feels like the editorial staff at the Ravens’ official website has been reading these articles because they included the following sentence in their defensive line position group preview yesterday:
“He has even higher goals after signing a lucrative contract extension.”
Perhaps Madubuike has seen some of these articles predicting him to regress in 2024. If he has, he should use those words to fuel the fire.