No teams want an MVP QB in his prime, but how did we get here?
Lamar Jackson is a top 5 Quarterback in the NFL and nobody wants him. In this article I investigate what went wrong.
NFL players and owners are having an impressively long Mexican Standoff, and former MVP Quarterback Lamar Jackson is caught in the crossfire.
You may wonder who Lamar Jackson even is, so I will give a quick profile for those reading who may not watch football as closely as I do, so feel free to skip this paragraph. Lamar Jackson (26) is the Quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens, who won the Most Valuable Player award in 2019 and has been absolutely dominant as a passer and runner throughout his first five seasons in the NFL when he’s on the field, which is a notable caveat given his noticeable but not massive injury history and immune system worse than those of many toddlers. He is currently open for any team to sign him to a contract that the Ravens could choose to sign him to themselves or let him go for the compensation of two round 1 picks, and nobody has even talked to the superstar with over a month into his free agency. He wants a fully guaranteed deal, which in the NFL’s case means that barring suspension, the player will receive all of the money in the contract. Non-guaranteed money in contracts can not get paid out if the team decides to release the player, and non-guaranteed contracts are mostly a thing in football.
For nearly a year, Jackson has pushed for a fully guaranteed contract at signing, a rarity in the NFL. When searching for a new contract, he has persisted in arguing for a fully guaranteed deal in large part due to the fact that Deshaun Watson had just gotten one worth over 200 million dollars. If Watson, who had accusations of sexual misconduct from 20+ women and was still a worse player than he is, got a fully guaranteed deal, then why shouldn’t he? If it were that simple, he wouldn’t remain on the open market. But, here we are, with Lamar fighting without any representation just to get his deal, encountering a group of owners who view his contract status as a major turning point for the future of NFL football. How did this happen?
Why is this so controversial?
Let’s backtrack a bit. Arguably the catalyst of this drama is the Deshaun Watson contract. As I mentioned earlier, the Browns gave QB Deshaun Watson a $220M+ fully guaranteed deal. Basically every other owner was pissed at the Haslem family (Browns owners), not because they gave all of that money to a credibly alleged sexual predator, but because he got a contract that other quarterbacks had the right to ask for and a contract that NFL owners so badly didn’t want to hand out, as more guaranteed money makes their finances tighter.
To the fans, this was a player trying to reset the market. To Lamar, he is trying to get financial security for life. To owners, however, this is a contract that will determine whether or not superstars like Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Jalen Hurts, and many more to come will get a fully guaranteed deal. Oddly enough, this isn’t even the owners’ first crack at this fight, as Kirk Cousins got a fully guaranteed contract from Minnesota in 2018, but other quarterbacks couldn’t follow. The owners want history to repeat itself, while players want it to be changed forever.
So now, Lamar wants a contract that NFL owners are trying so hard to never introduce to the league, and it’s to the point where you have to ask yourself whether or not the owners are trying to compete. The Ravens signed Lamar to a non-exclusive franchise tag, which essentially makes him a free agent but the Ravens will have the opportunity to match the deal and bring him back to Baltimore. So, they get other teams to do all of the negotiating with Lamar, who has no agent, and get all of the blame in case of a potential fully guaranteed contract. This would’ve worked if anyone bit the bait.
Not only does nobody want to sign a former MVP quarterback, but several teams have gone out and flat out said that they will not pursue him. Atlanta, Detroit, and other potential suitors have gone out and said that they will not pursue him, because their owners don’t want to be the ones to hand out the contract that Lamar wants. The Falcons in specific have some pretty wild excuses that I can’t help but share in this piece, as they cited Lamar’s lack of availability as a cause for concern. For the record, they pursued Deshaun Watson, who had missed an entire season and could have missed many more due to over 20 sexual misconduct allegations, and even before those rose to the surface he already had torn the same ACL twice. Pretty clear to me that teams like the Falcons are fighting a different battle than one to sign a former MVP.
Lamar’s side of the story
But why hasn’t Lamar given up? I think not having an agent is why he’s still on the market, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for him. The biggest names of NFL media are intertwined with agents and team executives, who all want players to sign agents, so while it’s unsurprising that the big fish in the industry criticize Lamar for not getting an agent, I recommend looking past their criticism and looking at the situation more objectively.
Agents, in general, argue in favor of collaborating with teams and signing sooner rather than later. Lamar has been offered deals by the Ravens, and we know this funnily enough because he has sometimes tweeted out what they offered him because he felt like it. Truthfully, with an agent, he would have signed a deal well below Watson’s guaranteed figure, maybe near his annual pay, because dragging contract negotiations out as long as Lamar has is what players hire agents specifically not to do, sacrificing a percentage of their pay and the persistence sometimes required to reset a market.
While I may have just come across as someone who argues in favor of getting an agent, there are many scenarios where Lamar looks smart by not being represented. Lamar is betting that he will eventually get a deal with a guaranteed figure similar to that of Deshaun Watson, and if he gets a lot above what an agent would have recommended he accept, he should feel good about himself, and maybe more players will follow in his footsteps.
What’s next?
Ok but seriously, I don’t think this ends anytime soon. No owner seems willing to pay Lamar, so what does he do? He could just take a weak offer, sign a 1-year deal, or just not play. What makes this even weirder is that there are lots of signs pointing to him wanting to go back to Baltimore and just as many arguing that he won’t put on a Ravens jersey ever again.
The main hints we have goes back to mid-March. Lamar announced that he requested a trade around March 1st, and that the Ravens hadn’t been responsive. Usually, you don’t see these kinds of tweets from players, but without an agent, he did the work himself. Not much moved until Baltimore signed big-name wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., a decision that Lamar was heavily involved in. Odell’s instagram story featured a screenshot of him and Lamar on a facetime, so the Ravens making a major financial investment into a receiver for the first time since Lamar was drafted could be indicative of how willing Lamar is to go back to Baltimore.
I feel like if I want to look forward to what could happen next, it would be best to imagine a few scenarios.
Scenario 1: He is pleased with Odell Beckham Jr.’s signing and signs a deal with the Ravens. This deal, as all others, could be big or small.
Scenario 2: He signs elsewhere and the Ravens match, allowing them to keep Lamar without having many owners of the NFL hate them.
Scenario 3: He signs elsewhere and is let go, giving Baltimore 2 first round picks. Washington, Atlanta, Detroit, and Indianapolis make the most sense to me.
Washington: The Commanders have a new owner who may not be scared of annoying the others, and have been stuck in QB purgatory for years.
Atlanta: Lamar’s style fits the Falcons offense perfectly, and Atlanta’s future franchise quarterback probably isn’t on their roster right now. However, it is important to keep in mind that they took about 15 minutes from the start of free agency to publish news on their own website that they are not interested in signing Lamar.
Detroit: The Lions have an ultra-creative offense with an average QB in Jared Goff who could hold them back from being a serious threat. Maybe Lamar pushes them to contention.
Indianapolis: Indy has the most cap space and are a logical fit with Head Coach Shane Steichen’s experience in QB rushing schemes, but as a Colts fan myself I do not expect this one to happen because Owner Jim Irsay seems dead set on drafting a rookie quarterback with the fourth overall pick in the draft as they have tried too many veteran quarterbacks in recent years.
Scenario 4: He waits until training camp to sign with another team. This offer gets matched and Lamar stays in Baltimore.
Scenario 5: He waits until training camp to sign with another team. This offer does not get matched, and he is on a new team. Washington and Atlanta (even given their comments) would be the most logical suitors in my eyes, as it wouldn’t make sense to throw Lamar into Detroit or Indianapolis.
Scenario 6: He sits out the whole season.
Now, if Lamar wants a contract structure similar to that of Jalen Hurts recently, I think that would be hard to get, but it’s been reported recently that Lamar and the Ravens are not too far off. So while this news came after I wrote the bulk of the article, it’s important to acknowledge how it will affect the situation at hand, and I think it could speed it up if both sides have a more achievable contract to base negotiations on.
I hope by reading this you were exposed to different perspectives of this abnormal NFL saga, and that you’ll share my confusion regarding what comes next. The fate of many quarterbacks lies in the hands of these contract negotiations. This is one of the craziest football stories I’ve followed due to how many complex layers it has, and maybe someday this will all be history, but Mexican Standoffs aren’t known for their quick endings.