he\u2019s played the trade card already once before<\/a>. <\/p>\nGoing with a remarkably younger coaching staff, letting core players walk at key positions on offense and failing to extend rising talents to extensions certainly did not go unnoticed by the quarterback, and all carry risks.<\/p>\n
Gambling markets \u2013 woefully wrong about Baltimore\u2019s win total in 2025 \u2013 imply the Ravens have a strong chance to compete for a title. But they are walking a dangerous tight-rope with the greatest offensive talent in the history of the organization \u2013 a generational player at the most important position in professional sports \u2013 and it threatens to undermine any other gains they might make from a transactional standpoint between now and Week 1. <\/p>\n
The fact they basically got nowhere with Jackson between January and April was quite telling, and once again the way this franchise has operated with this All-Pro quarterback is anything but the norm.<\/p>\n
\u201cForget about the Crosby trade at this point; I think they did better with (signing Trey) Hendrickson, anyway,\u201d said one NFL general manager. \u201cThe thing they should be getting killed for is pushing $40M of Lamar\u2019s cap into future voidable years. The cap number for 2027 \u2013 his last real year \u2013 is $85M and the only way to get that lower is to get a real extension done. But what motivation does he have now, unless you give him whatever he wants? And if you were going to give him what he wants, why didn\u2019t you do that by now?<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the no-trade clause, and the no-franchise-or-transition clause, they\u2019ve given away every ounce of leverage possible to get him extended. What they\u2019ve done really takes away any bit of leverage they might have had, and it actually makes him easier to trade.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lamar keeps a truly close circle; after negotiating a tremendous contract last time around that\u2019s not going to change. For what it\u2019s worth, chatter around the scouting combine was that Jackson didn\u2019t seem motivated to engage much with Baltimore (strategy worked well in the past!), and, well, he knew as well as everyone once what the Ravens would have to do if he didn\u2019t agree to a new deal \u2013 push that $85M into 2027 and put the franchise even more under the gun to get him extended in the next 11 months (before the start of the 2027 League Year).<\/p>\n
He had to play for peanuts way longer than ever made sense on his rookie deal, he was plenty willing to stick to his stance and wait out the Ravens before he had even made generation NFL money. Now that he\u2019s made it, he\u2019s continued to post MVP campaigns under two offensive coordinators. <\/p>\n
So there\u2019s no reason to think he is sweating any of this. And, quite possibly, not sweating these upcoming fake football practices, either. Whether he is there or not, failure to maximize the time before the draft \u2013 and thus before the window to get 2026 assets for Jackson just in case he requests another trade \u2013 to secure a new deal would be yet another considerable misstep. The riskiest of all to this point.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure you can say it\u2019s unprecedented, but quarterbacks of this stature, at this stage of their career, don\u2019t usually reach the penultimate year on their contract without a new deal already in place,\u201d said one longtime NFL contract negotiator who executed several massive QB extensions. \u201cMaybe they\u2019ll get it done with him before the season, but after this restructure, with the new guarantees, Lamar has even less motivation to do anything and even more leverage than he had before they redid the deal and pushed the ($84M) cap to 2027.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Jackson makes it to Week 1 without a new deal, there isn\u2019t anyone in the industry who seems convinced he would still be in Baltimore by Week 1 of 2027. When the sides agreed to this deal in 2023, agents and execs who studied the contract anticipated a major alteration prior to the 2025 season, with how fluid and soaring the QB market is. <\/p>\n
The Ravens have perpetually held back from getting Jackson\u2019s deals done on the expected timeline. And they only cost themselves for it. And it\u2019s already happening again. Time keeps wasting and the costs keep soaring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ravens\u2019 inability to get Lamar Jackson extended to a new contract between last spring and this spring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2052],"tags":[184,117,2282,7,6,169],"class_list":{"0":"post-859104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baltimore-ravens","8":"tag-baltimore","9":"tag-baltimore-ravens","10":"tag-baltimoreravens","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-ravens"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116363958877459667","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}