With massive contract, Lamar Jackson demonstrated another type of winning
Lamar Jackson struck a deal with the Baltimore Ravens that makes him the NFL’s highest-paid player with an average salary of $52 million on a five-year, $260 million contract.
Jackson secured his pact without an agent.
Thus, a fresh, pertinent question: Any NFL players want to hire Jackson as their new agent?
For all of the heat that Jackson absorbed for bucking conventional wisdom and representing himself during the extended negotiations with the Ravens, he can have the last laugh now.
Sure, with an agent, perhaps this would have been done months, if not more than a year ago. With an agent, maybe Jackson would have received offers from other NFL teams after the Ravens placed the franchise tag on the electric quarterback a few weeks ago. Or maybe not.
None that, though, seemed to matter on Thursday as Jackson officially signed his contract and joined GM Eric DeCosta and coach John Harbaugh a new conference at the Ravens headquarters.
At last, weeks after Jackson shocked the NFL universe and revealed in a letter to fans posted on social media that he had requested a trade, there was finally peace at The Castle.
“To be honest with you, I really didn’t care for other teams,” Jackson maintained. “I just really wanted to get something done here. I wanted to be here. It was like, ‘Okay, other teams (are) cool, but I want to be a Raven.’“
Translation: You can disregard what Jackson posted in late March about the Ravens had “not been interested in meeting my value.” They have kissed and made up, which is what can happen when the new contract contains a whopping $72.5 million signing bonus.
Hey, we’ve seen this before. All is fair in love and NFL contract negotiations. Bad blood, mixed messages and sensitivity tends to go by the wayside when the final numbers are agreed on.
There was a time during the negotiating in recent weeks when Jackson, for the most part negotiating directly with DeCosta, didn’t respond to text-messages. He explained part of that was Lamar the Quarterback “grinding” through rehab from the knee injury that short-circuited his 2022 season. And part of it was that Lamar the Agent is a businessman who realized that he needed to put his emotions on the shelf during the process.
“It’s a business at the end of the day,” Jackson said. “If you’re going to represent yourself, you have to have a strong mind. I wouldn’t say you get out there and put your feelings in it because it’s not about feelings.”
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With the ink dried on the pact, it was largely a win-win scenario for the Ravens and Jackson, now bound together through the 2027 season.
No, Jackson didn’t get the fully guaranteed contract like Deshaun Watson received from the Cleveland Browns in 2022 (5 years, $230 million) that prompted such a strong reaction of opposition from Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti.
Yet Jackson, whose deal guarantees $185 million after two years, according to figures reported by Pro Football Talk, won with an average salary that tops the averages for the Philadelphia Eagles' Jalen Hurts ($51 million) and New York Jets’ Aaron Rodgers ($50.271 million). And the three-year payout of $156 million exceeds the $150.8 million for Rodgers.
And Jackson wins, too, in that he perhaps saved close to $8 million in agent fees, if he had paid out the standard 3% to an agent for a $260 million deal.
The Ravens, meanwhile, won by not fully guaranteeing the deal at signing. In a bigger picture, other NFL teams – aka the NFL System – scored a major victory in that the line was held against fully guaranteed contracts.
Sure, Watson received fully guaranteed dollars, as was the case previously with Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins. According to Spotrac.com, Rodgers, Los Angeles Rams D-tackle Aaron Donald and Arizona Cardinals receiver DeAndre Hopkins also have fully guaranteed contracts. But those are aberrations.
Jackson wasn’t able to break the dam with a guaranteed deal that might have shifted the paradigm moving forward and put NFL stars on the guaranteed footing that counterparts in the NBA and Major League Baseball have had for years. It will remain a frontier for the NFL Players Association to keep pursuing.
Will it happen with the looming contracts for the Cincinnati Bengals’ Joe Burrow or the Los Angeles Chargers’ Justin Herbert? Or maybe with the next contract for Kansas City Chiefs megastar Patrick Mahomes?
Jackson’s deal suggests that it wouldn’t be wise for anyone to hold their breath on it. Yet that’s hardly a loss for Jackson. Remember, Hurts, Denver’s Russell Wilson, Dallas’ Dak Prescott or Arizona’s Kyler Murray didn’t change the game, either, with their big deals.
As it stands now, Jackson has merely raised the bar to be targeted by the next QB Payday.
Did Jackson ever wonder that his contract would not be resolved with the Ravens?
“I thought we would get the process done,” Jackson said. “I didn’t have a doubt in my mind because – like they said – they love me, I love being here, I love my teammates and I love the fan base … so I didn’t have a doubt, really.”
That’s easy enough to say now, although it’s probably also a good bet that had Jackson received an offer on the free-agent market while carrying the franchise tag, the Ravens would have matched it.
The Ravens have been fully invested in Jackson in building their offense around his multiple dimensions as a thrower and runner. It certainly helped that the team added free agent Odell Beckham, Jr. – Jackson revealed that he asked the Ravens if it would be possible to add Beckham and Hopkins – as a conduit to closing a deal with Jackson.
Baltimore also added veteran wideout Nelson Agholor and drafted receiver Zay Flowers for a unit that is now coordinated by Todd Monken, who came from Georgia’s back-to-back national championship program.
“Having Odell and those guys reach out to me like, ‘Man, we need you here,’ it was like, ‘I want to be there,’“ Jackson said. “It’s not like I wanted to leave, anyways. It was business.”
That’s what it sounds like when the deal is done and the sides are made up. Jackson glowed while talking about the new weapons and the potential of the new offensive system. The former unanimous NFL MVP even maintained that he can envision setting a league record by becoming the first player to pass for 6,000 yards.
That yardage mark might seem to be a stretch, coming from a quarterback who is good for 1,000-yard rushing seasons. Yet Jackson has proven to be one who can turn conventional thinking on its heels.
It wasn’t too long ago when people thought that Jackson, the fifth quarterback drafted in 2018, would never succeed as an NFL quarterback. Look at him now. He’s the highest-paid player in the NFL for average salary – and he did it against the grain of criticism for not hiring an agent.
Talk about proving a point.
“I didn’t really do this to prove anyone wrong,” Jackson said.
No, he didn’t care what you or I thought about it.
“If anything,” he added. “I had to prove myself right – like I know what I’m doing – and I feel I did the right thing … It’s about believing in yourself at the end of the day, keeping God first. No matter what, when people were doubting me more than before, even more than ever, I just kept my faith with him. And now we’re here.”
Amen.