It's Time to Say Goodbye
The Ravens cannot handcuff themselves to Lamar Jackson and his contract demands
There is no doubt that Lamar Jackson has been more than worth his keep since the Ravens drafted him with the 32nd pick in the 2018 NFL Draft. From his salary to the change in offense to the players ultimately used in trade to obtain the 32nd pick1 Lamar Jackson has been everything the Ravens could have asked for and more.
I was on the Lamar Jackson train well before the 2018 NFL Draft. 2
I wanted the Ravens to draft him with the 16th overall pick before they traded back to the 22nd. I wanted the Ravens to draft him with the 22nd overall pick before they traded back to the 25th. I wanted the Ravens to draft him with the 25th overall pick but they took……Hayden Hurst.
I was not pleased.
I was so annoyed, I went to bed after the Ravens picked Hurst. So I was elated that the Ravens had a. traded back into the 1st Round and b. Used that pick to take Jackson.
All of that is what makes it so hard to say that the Ravens need to part ways with Lamar Jackson. And there are three reasons why.
The Salary Cap
Keeping Jackson at this point is going to require the franchise tag. The non-exclusive franchise tag will run the Ravens $32.4 million for the 2023 season. If they use the exclusive tag, that balloons to around $45.2 million. The NFL Salary Cap for the 2023 season is $224.8 million, so keeping Jackson on the exclusive tag would mean Jackson would account for roughly 20 percent of the Ravens total salary allocation.
That’s too damn much for one guy under normal circumstances. But these are not normal circumstances.
First, Jackson wants in the neighborhood of DeShaun Watson money. Watson, inexplicably, got $230 million over 5 years from the Cleveland Browns. The Browns, nobody’s idea of a well-run franchise, full guaranteed Watson’s contract. Even more insane when you consider the extracurricular baggage Watson was bringing with him.
Jackson doesn’t have that baggage. But Decoder reported that Jackson turned down a five-year/$250 million offer from the Ravens with $133 million guaranteed. But Jackson wants that guaranteed money.
The problem with any contract of this magnitude is….
The Injuries
You can’t pretend that Jackson hasn’t missed significant time in the last two years. Jackson has never played a full 16-or-17 game schedule as a starter. He has played 15 games twice, and ten games each of the last two years. He missed the Ravens playoff game in Cincinnati.
That’s a lot of time missed for a guy who is only 26 years old.
Jackson plays an absolutely all-out brand of football. It is fun to watch, and it is breathtaking at times. But he has also shown to be injury prone, and not all of that can be attributable to the style of football he plays and the style of offense that the Ravens run.
If the Ravens guarantee that money and Jackson’s injuries continue through the life of the contract, that is a lot of dead weight the Ravens would have to carry. It would be an albatross in the same way that the Chris Davis contract was for the Orioles the last several seasons.
Replacability
If there is one thing that NFL teams have proven over the years it’s that big, prototypical NFL pocket passers are hard to come by. There are a lot of reasons for that. But one reason is that so many collegiate offenses run spread-based schemes that include a lot of RPO, play-action, and other similar concepts that don’t allow true “pocket passers” to develop.
You know, the offense that is very similar to what the Ravens have run the last few years.
Now I’m not saying that any collegiate quarterback can come in and run the Ravens offense as well as Jackson has. Tyler Huntley showed that he is good, but nowhere near Lamar Jackon’s level. But he also showed that the offense really doesn’t lose all that much either.
Bottom line: there are a lot of guys coming out of college who could run the Ravens offense at a consistent level.
A lot of armchair analysts have made multiple “offers” that the Ravens could receive on the open market. Many of them involve multiple first-round picks. A few of them have suggested Jackson be traded to Miami for Tua Tagovailoa and picks. Even more, suggest he be dealt to Atlanta for Desmond Riddler and a bunch of picks.
All of those trades are absolutely fine with me.
Will those picks completely replace Jackson’s value to the franchise? Of course not. But getting multiple picks will give the Ravens an opportunity to either draft high-impact players or swap those picks for other impact players, or more picks. All while saving tons of money.
Trading Jackson would give the Ravens a lot of options they don’t have right now.
“Right player, right price.”
That was always the Ravens mantra during the Ozzie Newsome years. It’s why Jamie Sharper become a Texan, Todd Heap, Duane Starks and Terrell Suggs became Cardinals, Edgerton Hartwell became a Falcon, and Haloti Ngata became a Lion. Ed Reed retired with the Jets. Even Ray Lewis was allowed to become a free agent after the 2008 season to test the market.
Ray Lewis came back. A lot of those guys got paid elsewhere but they weren’t ever the player that they were with the Ravens.
“Right player, right price.”
Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta learned at the learning tree of Ozzie Newsome. It is likely that the “Right-player, right-price” mantra was engrained in him over all of those years. Whether he will follow it, particularly relating to Jackson, remains to be seen.
There are three potentially positive outcomes for the Ravens here:
Trade Jackson, get a slew of players and picks back;
Place the non-exclusive tag on Jackson, he signs elsewhere and the Ravens receive two-first round draft picks as compensation;
Place the non-exclusive tag on Jackson and bring him back on a lower price, non-fully-guaranteed deal.
Any of these outcomes are preferable to giving Jackson a Watson-type fully guaranteed contract.
As I said, I’ve been a Lamar Jackson fan for a long time. But I am a Ravens fan first. It is in the best interest of this team to let Jackson walk out the door and see what he is truly worth.
The Ravens obtained the 32nd pick from Philadelphia AND a 2018 4th round pick (132nd overall, Jaleel Scott) for a 2018 2nd round pick (52nd overall subsequently traded, Kemoko Turay), a 2018 4th round pick (125th overall, Avonte Maddox) and a 2019 2nd round pick (53rd overall, Miles Sanders).
Pay no mind to me talking about three of those other guys.