Tag: Lamar Jackson contract

Seahawks players and legends cry foul over Lamar Jackson situation

At the very least, several current and former Seahawks players found it suspicious.

The NFL tends to get away with it, but they’re not very clever about hiding their intentions when it comes to tipping the scales at the negotiating table. Yesterday the league showed their entire hand after the Ravens placed the non-exclusive franchise tag on quarterback Lamar Jackson. Within an hour, at least five other teams leaked to the media that they were not interested, including the Falcons, Panthers, Raiders, Commanders and Dolphins.

An extremely normal thing to do – NFL teams leaking that they are not pursuing a specific asset – especially a 26-year old former league MVP who’s arguably done more with less than any other quarterback in the league the last five years.

The timing of the statements smells bad enough. What makes it worse is that these are exactly the teams that should be in the market for Jackson. With the lone exception of Miami they all missed the playoffs this past season and don’t have an established starter at quarterback going into 2023.

While the term may be difficult to prove in a court of law, many fans, analysts, beat reporters, players and agents were quick to point out the obvious: this looks, smells and sounds an awful lot like collusion.

At the very least, several current and former Seahawks players found it suspicious. Here’s what they’re tweeting about the situation.

The NFL is Lamar Jackson’s world, and everybody else is just paying rent

Lamar Jackson is dissecting the NFL in ways we’ve never before. The tape doesn’t lie — in this case, it screams.

At the end of the 2019 NFL season, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson became the second player to win the league’s Most Valuable Player award unanimously, joining Tom Brady, who did it after the 2010 season.

“Make those people eat their words,” Jackson said at that time, a sentiment clearly directed at those who thought he should become a receiver and whatnot. “It feels good when you can make those people eat their words because they’re so negative. How are you going to wake up and be so negative about somebody who’s not negative toward you or don’t do anything wrong? Don’t worry about what they say. Do you.”

Jackson has been “doing him” ever since. He developed exponentially as a pocket passer, though pundits were slow on the uptake. Jackson regressed a bit there last year, but between left tackle Ronnie Stanley’s injuries and right tackle Orlando Brown’s defection to Kansas City last season… well, it’s tough to be a pocket passer when you have no pocket. Defenses blitzed Jackson at the NFL’s highest rate in 2021, and the more defenders came after him, the more his performance suffered.

Whatever his previous travails, Jackson has come out of the gate in 2022 at an entirely different level. I did a bit of research after Jackson ate the Patriots’ collective lunch in a 37-26 Ravens win, and the numbers are… astonishing.

But wait — there’s more!

Based on the stats and the tape, the 2022 version of Lamar Jackson is the version the believers always dreamed could happen, and the naysayers never wanted to accept was possible. You can throw whatever “fluke” talk attached to his name out the window with the velocity and efficiency of one of Jackson’s 40-yard wrist-flicks.

“No, I’m kind of getting used to it,” Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said after the Patriots win, when asked if anything Jackson does surprises him anymore. “It’s a good thing. But you never do get used to it because he plays his way, and he’s kind of determined to play his way, but he plays — it’s not — his way is winning football. It’s fundamentally sound quarterback play. He’s running the show out there. He’s making the checks. He’s managing the clock. All the things that you would say an operator or a manager does, he’s doing all those things, too. He’s doing those things, and he’s making plays sometimes when the play doesn’t make itself. And the receivers have such confidence.

“You’ve got to give those guys credit. They keep running routes, they keep getting open. The offensive line, to continue to pass protect when Lamar is holding the ball the way he does and moves around the pocket not have holding calls – that’s great technique. That’s great discipline by those guys. [offensive line coach] Joe [D’Alessandris] does a great job with those guys, too.”

So, it’s all come together for the 2-1 Ravens, who are only 2-1 because Jackson was out-dueled in Week 2 by Tua Tagovailoa and the Dolphins, who were able to exploit Baltimore coverage busts that Jackson was not.

Beyond the record, here’s why Lamar Jackson has been the NFL’s best player in the young season by an almost fictional margin.

Why Lamar Jackson is in for a long wait with the contract he wants

Using Deshaun Watson’s $230 million, fully-guaranteed contract is a dangerous exercise for other players. Lamar Jackson is learning this.

When the Cleveland Browns gave Deshaun Watson a five-year, $230 million contract with every dollar of it guaranteed, reports came out quickly that several other team owners were aghast at Jimmy and Dee Haslam, owners of the Browns, for doing such a thing.

And it had absolutely nothing to do with Watson’s multiple alleged incidents of sexual assault.

The real reason other owners were so upset was — in their minds — the dangerous precedent the contract set. In a high-revenue decade when broadcast deals are going through the roof, and the players’ share of that revenue via the salary cap will rise accordingly, the standard NFL contract with escape clauses all over the place represents one of the last vestiges of financial control. Just because the Haslams did that for Watson doesn’t mean any other team is going to do it for any other player.

Which brings us to the case of one Lamar Jackson.

Per reports from ESPN and NFL.com, Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens were unable to come to terms on a new contract for the star quarterback, leaving Jackson to play on the final year of his rookie deal, with $23,016 million fully guaranteed.

Per ESPN’s Chris Mortensen and Adam Schefter, Jackson turned down a contract that would have given him over $230 million with more than $130 million guaranteed. That would have given Jackson more overall and guaranteed money than Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson and Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray, but with the standard clauses in effect.

Jackson, on the other hand, was holding out for a guaranteed deal similar to the one Watson got. Per ESPN”s report:

Jackson acted as his own agent in the negotiations while leaning on the help of his mother and the NFL Players Association, whose job it is to offer stats, information, guidance and to be a sounding board, which it was during this process.

The union advised Jackson, 25, that based on his performance and age, he was justified to demand a fully guaranteed contract, sources said.

Justified? Sure. But in what universe would that actually happen? What Watson got was the outlier, not the norm.

The NFL.com report from Ian Rapoport reminds us of this quote from Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti in the spring, after Watson got his deal.

I don’t know that [Watson] should’ve been the first guy to get a fully guaranteed contract. To me, that’s something that is groundbreaking, and it’ll make negotiations harder with others.

So, yeah. Jackson and his group may have misread the room here.

Watson and Kirk Cousins of the Vikings are the only NFL quarterbacks playing on entirely guaranteed deals (even Tom Brady’s has incentives in it, and he’s Tom Freaking Brady), and Cousins had to play through several years on the franchise tag to make that happen. The Redskins franchised Cousins in both 2016 and 2017, and then the Vikings gave Cousins a three-year, $84 million, fully-guaranteed deal in 2018 as an unrestricted free agent. Cousins signed a two-year, $66 million extension in 2020 of which $61 million was guaranteed. Because Cousins was on the Vikings’ roster on the third day of the 2021 league year, the final year of that deal — 2022 — gave would be fully guaranteed. Cousins then signed a one-year, $35 million, fully-guaranteed extension in 2022.

That’s nowhere near what the Browns gave Watson, and nowhere near what Jackson wants. Cousins’ deals were kick-the-can-down-the-road agreements that allowed the Vikings to manage the salary cap on a short-term basis by avoiding too much front-loaded money over multiple years, whole still giving Cousins the illusion of putting one over on the rest of the league with so much guaranteed money.

What Watson got, and what Jackson wants, are in an entirely different stratosphere.

If you look at the Watson deal — he’s already suspended for the first 11 games of the 2022 season, which makes this year a wash from a performance perspective. The first-year cap number is $9,395,500, which seems manageable. But Watson has identical cap hits of $54,993 million in 2023 through 2026, and there is absolutely no way to get out of any of this. Watson’s dead money — what the Browns would owe on the salary cap for him even if he wasn’t on the team — is $229,367,500 in 2022, $219,972 million in 2023, $164,979 million in 2024, $109,986 million in 2025, and $54,993 million in 2026. We have no idea whether Watson will fulfill that contract. We have no idea if there are other traps in Watson’s personal life that could make this contract even more onerous. And there’s nothing the Browns can do about it — they are in a purgatory of their own volition.

So, the issue is not what Lamar Jackson is worth, or what he’s earned. The issue is what the NFL’s owners are willing to allow with the contracts they give.

And in that case, today and five years from now, you’ll have to pry that financial flexibility out of their hands with extreme force.

Is it time for the Ravens to let Lamar Jackson ‘graduate?’

It sounds like madness, but there’s a scenario in which the Ravens moving on from Lamar Jackson might just make sense.

In March, 2013, the Baltimore Ravens rewarded Joe Flacco for a 2012 postseason in which he threw 11 touchdown passes and no interceptions with a six-year, $120.6 million contract that was, at the time, the richest in NFL history. Flacco, who had never thrown more than 25 touchdown passes in a regular season before his 2012 postseason hot streak that ended with the Ravens winning Super Bowl XLVII, never threw more than 27 touchdown passes in a season after signing his massive contract. In his final four years with the Ravens, he was one of the least effective quarterbacks in the NFL.

The Ravens selected Lamar Jackson in the first round of the 2018 draft as Flacco’s successor, a process of succession that took half a season. But what if the Ravens had held off on Flacco’s deal with the potential understanding that his 2012 postseason was an outlier, and his 2013 seasons and beyond would be primarily worse than before? What if they had selected one of the quarterbacks in the 2012 draft — say, Robert Griffin III, Ryan Tannehill or Russell Wilson — and rolled Flacco’s rookie contract into another rookie contract? What if the Ravens had realized that they could only go so far with Flacco, and prepared for a future without him, adding three to four more years of inexpensive quarterback play as a roster-building advantage?

The Ravens obviously didn’t do that, but they have an opportunity now to do what NFL teams don’t usually do — they have the opportunity to be aggressive with their draft picks, and potentially select and develop their franchise quarterback’s successor without giving their current franchise quarterback a contract that will affect their roster-building potential for a number of years.

NFL.com’s Bucky Brooks recently suggested one solution to such a scenario.

Yes, it sounds nuts for the Ravens to move on from the 2019 unanimous NFL MVP, but I don’t completely disagree with Mr. Brooks. When the Rams signed Jared Goff to a four-year, $134 million contract extension in September, 2019, they did so because they were betting on Goff’s ultimate potential. Two seasons later, after Goff had (unfortunately) shown his ultimate potential, the Rams traded Goff and a ton of draft capital to the Lions for the services of Matthew Stafford. The Rams got much better at quarterback as a result, but what if they had simply moved on gradually from Goff and selected his successor as part of a roster-friendly plan? Even in the Rams’ Super Bowl season of 2018, Goff showed enough dings to make the practice of paying him as a top-tier quarterback fishy at best.

There are all kinds of examples of teams overpaying quarterbacks on second deals because they don’t want to get caught behind the eight-ball at the game’s most important position. But that doesn’t mean it’s always sound financial and team-building practice. And as great as Jackson has been in certain instances and certain ways, the Ravens are now thinking of giving a massive contract to their franchise quarterback, despite the fact that Jackson clearly regressed (or, at least, didn’t show the development you’d like) in 2020 when it came to field-reading and efficiency.

How Lamar Jackson can end his postseason curse — and become a complete quarterback

That’s not to say that Jackson isn’t capable of more, but how much more, and how much will that be worth? That’s what the Ravens have to weigh as Jackson goes into his fourth NFL season. They can exercise the fifth-year option on his contract by May 3, which they will certainly do, which pushes the necessity of that massive hypothetical deal further on down the road. Baltimore general manager Eric DeCosta has certainly debated the advantages of keeping Jackson on that second contract versus what that will do to his ability to construct a complete roster year after year.

“It’s great to have a quarterback,” DeCosta said on April 19, during the Ravens’ pre-draft press conference. “It’s great to have a quarterback who wants to win badly. He prepares to win, and he cares. He’s a part of this community. That’s a really important thing; we don’t take that for granted. We try to be as strategic as possible in the short term, but also in the long term. I think [senior vice president of football operations] Pat Moriarty and [director of football administration] Nick Matteo do an awesome job looking at the salary cap and the implications of deals that we make. We try to be responsible in the short term. We try to be aggressive as well. We’ve tried to be proactive, as I think you’ve seen in the last few years with contracts with veteran players [and] with guys that we’ve drafted and developed. We’ve tried to keep as many of those guys as possible.

“We understand that if we do sign a long-term deal with Lamar Jackson, that’s going to change the way we’ve operated the last couple of years. We certainly understand that, and we look at that as a great problem to have. We aspire to [have] that type of problem. We want to have the franchise quarterback. We want to have the quarterback that cares as much as we do, and he’s a leader, and he’s the face of the team, and he represents the team as well as he does, and he gives us a chance to win every game. So, that’s a positive. It will change the way that we do contracts, potentially. We will have to be probably a little bit more careful about which players we sign and which players we don’t sign. We may lose some good, young players. That’s unfortunately just the salary cap age that we’re in, and it happens to every single team. So, we’ll be aggressive, if possible. I think the draft will continue and will always remain the lifeblood of this organization when it comes to building this team and building the roster, and draft picks will be more important than ever.”

On Friday, the Ravens traded offensive tackle Orlando Brown to the Chiefs for Kansas City’s 2021 first-round pick (No. 31 overall), their 2021 third-round pick (No. 94), their 2021 fourth-round pick (No. 136), and a 2022 fifth-round pick to the Ravens in exchange for Brown, Baltimore’s 2021 second-round pick (No. 58 overall), and a 2022 sixth-round pick. That gives Baltimore the 27th and 31st overall picks in the 2021 draft, which would allow them to move up in the first round (perhaps with additional future draft capital thrown in) if they wanted to.

Why the Chiefs may have hit the jackpot in the Orlando Brown trade

We don’t know if they want to, and we don’t know if they’ve thought about putting Lamar Jackson on a “graduation plan,” but don’t be completely gobsmacked if it works out that way — with Jackson, or with another first-contract quarterback who isn’t an obvious bust, and may not be an obvious second-contract guy.

At some point, some NFL team is going to go Full Metal Moneyball and fold their franchise quarterback’s rookie contract into another franchise quarterback’s rookie contract, leaving the team open to the rookie quarterback pay rate, and the rookie quarterback roster flexibility. It will take a total commitment from the organization, because the blowback if the first franchise quarterback goes elsewhere and is transcendent, and the second franchise quarterback doesn’t live up to it all, would be severe. You could be talking about an entire front office and coaching staff of people losing their jobs.

But if it was to work out… well, it’s a copycat league, and the first time wouldn’t be the last. You could see a wave of quarterbacks “graduating” in ways you’ve never seen before.

Fifth-year option projections for every first-round player in the 2018 draft class

NFL teams must decide by May 3 which of their first-rounders from 2018 will get fifth-year options. Here’s how we think that should go.

After free agency, and just after the NFL draft closes up shop on May 1, there’s one more way teams can solidify their rosters: The decision to exercise the fifth-year option on first-round draft picks from four years before. The decisions have to be made before May 3, and if the team declines the option on the player, that player becomes a free agent a year earlier, unless a longer-term deal happens.

At this time, none of the first-rounders in the 2018 class have signed second contracts; that’s more likely to happen in the 2022 league year. Teams have those players on relatively cheap deals based on slotted contracts; even 2018 first-overall pick Baker Mayfield will make just $920,000 in base salary, and a $4,936,770 roster bonus. His prorated bonus of $5,462,360 will also count against the 2021 cap, so Mayfield represents a 2021 cap hit of $10,569,130. His fifth-year option as a player who’s reached the playtime minimum but hasn’t made a Pro Bowl is $18,858 million, and at that point, it might make more sense from a salary cap perspective to lock him up on that second contract.

Tom Pelissero of the NFL Network has the full fifth-year numbers.

Lamar Jackson is a very interesting case study regarding the fiscal prudence of the fifth-year extension versus a new contract. As a one-time Pro Bowler, Jackson’s fifth-year option number is $23,106 million, a massive upgrade from his 2021 base salary of $1,771,590, and his cap number of $3,013,708. While every quarterback’s future deals will be affected by Patrick Mahomes’ massive 10-year, $450 million deal, Mahomes’ cap hits don’t start to get ridiculous until 2022, when his base salary kicks up from $990,000 to $29,450 million, and 2023, when he starts getting annual roster bonuses the approximate size of the gross national product of France. The Ravens and Jackson could come to terms on a similar deal and save in the short term.

The Bills and Josh Allen are in exactly the same boat, by the way. Allen’s fifth-year option would cost the Bills that same $23,106 million, while his 2021 cap hit is just $6,910,056, based on his status as the seventh overall pick.

So, if you see a lot of action around Jackson and Allen as the 2021 season comes to a close, that’s why.

Here’s the best explainer of the different fifth-year option tiers, from our friends at OverTheCap.com:

Basic: Players who do not meet any of the requirements below will be eligible for a fifth year base salary calculated from the average of the 3rd to 25th highest salaries at their position over the past five seasons.Here’s the best explainer of the different tiers, per our friends at OverTheCap.com:

  • Playtime: These players will be eligible for a fifth year base salary calculated from the average of the 3rd to 20th highest salaries at their position over the past five seasons, provided that their snap counts over their first three seasons meet one of the following three criteria:
    • 75% or greater in two of their first three seasons
    • an average of 75% or greater over all three seasons
    • 50% or greater over all three seasons
  • One Pro Bowl: Players who are named to exactly one Pro Bowl on the original ballot (not as an alternate) will be eligible for a fifth year base salary equal to the transition tender at their position.
  • Multiple Pro Bowls: Players who are named to two or three Pro Bowls on the original ballot (not as an alternate) will be eligible for a fifth year base salary equal to the franchise tender at their position.

In 2020, 13 of the top 32 selections from the 2017 draft class saw their fifth-year options declined, including four of the top five picks: Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky, 49ers defensive lineman Solomon Thomas, Jaguars running back Leonard Fournette, and Titans receiver Corey Davis.

In 2019, the retention rate for the 2016 first-round class was much better at the top — the first nine picks saw fifth-year options, through there were still 12 team refusals overall.

In 2018, the 2015 class also saw 12 players who didn’t receive first-year options, but only three of the top 10 picks: Jaguars edge-rusher Dante Fowler Jr., Bears receiver Kevin White, and Giants offensive lineman Ereck Flowers.

The odds are good that as much of 40% of the 2017 class will not see fifth-year options. Here’s how we see the process going in 2021. In this instance, we have 13 players without fifth-year options, including two of the top three picks.

Ravens are ‘confident and committed’ to signing QB Lamar Jackson to a contract extension

Baltimore Ravens GM Eric DeCosta said he’s confident and committed to working out a contract extension with QB Lamar Jackson at some point.

Beyond the players the Baltimore Ravens could potentially sign in free agency or who they’ll take in the 2021 NFL draft, one of the hottest topics this offseason has been quarterback Lamar Jackson’s contract status. So when Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta got in front of reporters for the first time since the end of last season, the first question was about Baltimore’s franchise quarterback and his contract.

While DeCosta said he and Jackson had gotten together and talked a few weeks prior, he noted that they didn’t discuss contract proposals. Instead, the focus was on the team and how Jackson’s first negotiation in the NFL would go.

“We haven’t really gotten into the actual contract proposals, negotiations and things like that,” DeCosta said. “It was more of a general conversation about a lot of different things – the team, Lamar [and] just how we were going to go about a negotiation like this. There are definitely some different moving parts that make this different than a lot of other negotiations we’ve done.”

Don’t mistake the lack of contract negotiations thus far for a lack of interest, however. DeCosta made it clear they love Jackson and want to get something done.

“We’re confident and committed to trying to get a long-term deal done, and hopefully, we can get that done at some point in the near future,” DeCosta continued. “It may take a little time, but we’re willing to try.”

There are a few factors that could make a negotiation with Jackson a little more complicated. For starters, the Dallas Cowboys just handed quarterback Dak Prescott a massive new deal, paying him an average of $40 million a season with a whopping $126 million in guaranteed money. While DeCosta downplayed the potential impact, he did explain that the devil’s in the details.

“So, all of these contracts, there are bells and whistles, and they’re all different in some ways, and they’re all alike in some ways,” DeCosta noted. “There are a lot of different ways to look at these contracts. There’s average. There are guarantees. There’s money in the first three years, cash flow and all these different things, time length and all of that.”

Jackson has also been represented by his mother in the past, another potential hurdle both sides have to account for. While NFL agents and general managers have gone through hundreds of contract negotiations before, giving them a better foundation for what to expect, this will be just the first true deal Jackson has signed in the league. DeCosta wouldn’t discuss the details or if Jackson will be represented by his mother in this instance but stated they’ll “be as transparent as possible with Lamar.”

Regardless of what the eventual numbers end up being, Jackson isn’t going to come cheap. He’s quickly risen up the ranks in the NFL, shattering records, winning the NFL’s MVP award, and guiding the team to a 30-7 record as a starter with three trips to the playoffs.

Unlike most other positions, franchise quarterbacks tend to reset the market regardless of their individual statistics. It’s simply the cost of business and a result of the quarterback being the most important position on the field. Like it or not, Jackson is undoubtedly going to command a deal very much in line with what Prescott and Deshaun Watson recently signed, likely putting him around that $40 million a year average.

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Lamar Jackson: Contract negotiations can wait until after Super Bowl win

When asked if Patrick Mahomes’ massive contract crossed his mind, Baltimore Ravens QB Lamar Jackson said winning a Super Bowl comes first.

With the Kansas City Chiefs making quarterback Patrick Mahomes so rich he can become a part-owner of a baseball team, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson would be right to be drooling a bit. However, the reigning MVP says contract talks can wait until after he’s holding the Lombardi Trophy.

“My reaction – I’ve just got to win a Super Bowl,” Jackson said when asked about his reaction to Mahomes’ $500 million contract extension. “I don’t really focus on what he has going on, because I’ve still got to prove myself. When that time comes, then we can negotiate after the Super Bowl.”

The Ravens have been through this once before and might be wise to get a deal done before Jackson has purple and gold confetti falling on him. Baltimore waited to sign Joe Flacco until after his legendary Super Bowl XLVII run, losing all leverage in the process and making Flacco the highest-paid quarterback in the league at that time. With Mahomes and the Chiefs setting the bar significantly higher at a time when the salary cap could actually take a deep dive down, the Ravens have to be sweating the idea, at least a bit.

At the 2018 NFL Draft, Jackson said he was bringing a Super Bowl to Baltimore. Though he’s shown a far more humble side since that night, he’s not backed off the big game being his ultimate goal, even above personal accolades. Jackson continued with that logic, saying Mahomes’ massive contract hasn’t even crossed his mind and his attention is solely on winning games.

“But right now, I’ve got to focus on winning,” Jackson continued. “I can’t put that on my mind. You’ve got to win first. If you’re not winning, then you won’t be worried about no $500 million dollars either.”

Regardless of if Jackson wins a Super Bowl before his next contract, he’s surely going to be one of the highest-paid players at the position. But for now, his assertion he only cares about winning is a refreshing take.

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