The Ravens just won their twenty-second consecutive preseason game. But that history is on the back burner while contract negotiations with star quarterback Lamar Jackson have been simmering for a while. It’s late August, yet the Ravens and Jackson haven’t come close to reaching an agreement. Why haven’t the Ravens re-signed Lamar Jackson yet?
Full disclaimer: I’m a massive, diehard Baltimore Ravens fan. But much to the chagrin of my parents, extended family, teachers, coaches, and friends, I was not a fan of my local football team as a kid. Young Alex had read too much about the historic success of another team far away from Charm City—coupled with how boring the Ravens were during that era, I adopted the Dallas Cowboys as my first favorite football team.
My first ever jersey was Tony Romo. (I wore it to soccer practice once—my coach threatened to permanently bench me if he ever saw me in Cowboys colors again.) Even out-of-market, the Cowboys were on television a ton, so I got to watch a top quarterback in the league sling it for Dallas for a decade. Unlike Aikman, he didn’t win any Super Bowls, but he kept his team as a contender for as long as he started for the Cowboys. At the same time, Brian Billick’s Baltimore Ravens had a revolving door at QB—their strategy was hoping a run game, quality special teams, and a historic defense would push the Ravens far.
After Super Bowl XXXV, it almost worked until it didn’t.
The Ravens fired Billick after a disastrous 2007 campaign, in which one of their twelve losses was the Miami Dolphins’ only win of the year. They hired a special teams coordinator to replace him, and his first-ever draft pick was a quarterback from some FCS school, which, after a Heisman winner flamed out at QB in Baltimore the year prior, could’ve been another player lost to the purgatory the Ravens had under center.
Five years later, John Harbaugh had a Super Bowl ring—with his quarterback Joe Flacco rightfully earning Super Bowl MVP.
Romo and Flacco are two quarterbacks who belong squarely in the Hall of Very Good. During their peaks, their play unquestionably elevated the teams they were on. However, QBs with last names like Manning and Brady and Roethlisberger overshadowed them their entire careers. Replacing them was never going to be an easy task.
Both Dallas and Baltimore found their franchise QBs’ successors by accident. Dak Prescott and Lamar Jackson were both flyers—drafted to start as backup quarterbacks and learn from the starters, with the hopes that they might get playing time a few years down the line. Instead, injuries forced them into starting lineups prematurely—and they both played so unbelievably well that Romo and Flacco never got their jobs back.
Recent history is an important backdrop for my question from the top of this piece: why haven’t the Ravens paid Lamar Jackson yet?
Jackson is a consensus top twelve quarterback in the NFL. (I have him as my number eight, but I’d probably get called a homer for that take.) In the four years since the Ravens drafted him off of Louisville, he’s had great regular season success. Injuries coupled with poor offensive line and wide receiver play have hampered him at times—especially in the playoffs—but it’s difficult to deny his otherworldly talent on the field. Not everyone wins unanimous MVP! Moreover, when Lamar has missed games for illness or injury, his team’s offense has ground to a halt, losing tight games that the healthy star quarterback likely would have flipped the outcome of.
Baltimore, in games started by Lamar Jackson (Week 11 of 2018-present): | Baltimore, in games started by quarterbacks other than Lamar Jackson (Week 11 of 2018–present): |
38 wins, 14 losses (.731 winning percentage) | 2 wins, 5 losses (.286 winning percentage) |
27.6 points per game, 200.2 passing yards per game | 21.6 points per game, 178.4 passing yards per game |
data c/o Pro Football Reference.
Nonetheless, the Baltimore Ravens have yet to sign him to a long-term contract. Perhaps their trepidation has come from the aftermath of Joe Flacco, who signed a then-record six-year, $120.6 million contract after winning the Super Bowl on the last year of his rookie deal. His large cap hit prevented the Ravens from keeping many key pieces, offloading wide receiver Anquan Boldin as well as seeing the departures of defensive legends Ed Reed and Ray Lewis. The Ravens struggled to replace that talent as the team sputtered in mediocrity—only making the playoffs once in the next five years as they averaged eight wins a season. They then drafted Jackson, and the rest is history.
Romo was also consistently a top twelve quarterback in his decade as a starter. After signing to Dallas as an undrafted free agent, he served as a backup QB and placekick holder for a couple of seasons before earning the starting role from veteran quarterback Drew Bledsoe. Like the Ravens, the Cowboys of his era paired an awesome run game with their young QB. The cap hit from Romo’s first big contract as a starting quarterback meant the Cowboys had to let Hall of Famer Terrell Owens and former defensive Pro Bowlers Roy Williams and Greg Ellis walk in free agency—the team struggled afterward, only making the playoffs twice after Romo began making NFL starting QB money.
It’s no secret that NFL teams try to succeed while their star quarterbacks are on team-friendly rookie contracts. The Los Angeles Chargers, for example, have signed several of their stars to hefty contracts while QB Justin Herbert is on his rookie deal. After Patrick Mahomes signed his ten-year, nearly half-a-billion-dollar contract in 2020, the price of a star quarterback in the league skyrocketed. The Ravens have already started saving for a potential Jackson deal, flipping starters Orlando Brown Jr. and Marquise Brown for draft picks before having to pay them more money. But as they’ve dragged their feet on re-signing the former MVP, other quarterbacks like Deshaun Watson and Kyler Murray have signed even larger deals, raising Jackson’s asking price. Now, a new deal will certainly require around $47 million a year at the bare minimum—only Aaron Rodgers is making more a year.
data c/o Over The Cap.
All hope is not lost for the Ravens, however. Just last season, the Rams won while paying $20 million to Matthew Stafford to play for them—and Jared $24.7 million to not play for them—and they still won a Super Bowl! In recent years, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning have also won championships with high cap hits (although not nearly as expensive as Los Angeles’s QB room last year). Matt Ryan and Aaron Rodgers have eaten up even more cap than Brady and Manning during their deep postseason runs, but they barely missed out on lifting up the Lombardi. A few bounces their way, and they’d both be shining examples of ultimate success despite having an expensive quarterback under center. Plus, a few conference championship berths would be nothing to sneeze at for a Baltimore team that hasn’t made the game since Flacco took them there a decade ago.
Jackson gave Baltimore an ultimatum of a deadline—the Ravens’ week one game against Elite Joe Flacco’s New York Jets to agree to a long-term deal. The Ravens don’t have very many other options. The NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement offers the Ravens an option to automatically extend Jackson’s deal via the franchise tag—but doing so will cost Baltimore at least $45 million guaranteed against the cap anyway. And letting him walk via trade or free agency is not a viable option. Their QB2, Tyler Huntley, is a serviceable backup quarterback; however, when Huntley was thrust into the starting lineup this past December after Jackson went down with an ankle injury, the Ravens’ offense faltered, and the team failed to win another game, dropping from best in the AFC to Baltimore’s first losing record since 2015–the season right after the Ravens let star wideout, Maryland graduate, and Super Bowl champion Torrey Smith leave the team in free agency in the wake of Flacco’s massive contract.
Jackson has reiterated time and time again that he wants to stay in Baltimore his whole career. Without him, the Ravens’ offense falls apart. Arguing over a few million dollars or guaranteed money makes no sense when it comes to the most important Ravens draft pick since Flacco fourteen years ago. Whatever his asking price, Eric DeCosta and the Baltimore front office must re-sign their homegrown superstar—or else, they might as well pack the team up and move them back to Cleveland.
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