The Ravens have become the rare team to go four seasons with a star quarterback tied to a rookie contract. Lamar Jackson played the 2021 season for $1.8M and is going into his fifth-year option season still tied to his 2018 rookie pact.
Ravens GM Eric DeCosta indicated the young quarterback has not been especially aggressive in pursuing an extension, one the team is ready to discuss.
“I think it takes two sides to actively put their heads together and get a deal worked out,” DeCosta said, via ESPN.com’s Jamison Hensley. “We are ready to be there for Lamar at any point when he decides that he really wants to work on it, we will be.”
Last month, DeCosta labeled these as unusual extension talks due to Jackson being without an agent. DeCosta has spoken with Jackson via text just once over the past month. The Ravens have gone from treating this extension as a formality in 2021 to being less certain here, Hensley adds, due to the lack of progress. While Baker Mayfield joins Jackson as an un-extended 2018 first-round QB, Jackson resides on a different tier. Josh Allen landed his extension before the start of his fourth season, following many recent young QBs on that timetable.
By virtue of his accomplishments, Jackson’s cap number will spike from $3M in 2021 to $23.1M in 2022. The sides began negotiations in April of last year, and Jackson said last May he wanted to be a Raven for the rest of his career. He is positioned to approach Patrick Mahomes‘ $45M-per-year accord, but this is rather an interesting negotiation due to Jackson’s skillset. Although other mobile quarterbacks have signed big-ticket extensions since Mahomes’ contract came to pass, none resides in Jackson’s league regarding run-game usage. That adds a key wrinkle here regarding the potential length of Jackson’s prime.
The 2019 MVP has established himself as one of the NFL’s top quarterbacks, but the Ravens were able to win only one playoff game during one of the best bargain periods in modern NFL history. Jackson will no longer reside as a bargain in 2022, and the Ravens will have the franchise tag at their disposal in 2023.
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