Most Concerning Development From Ravens Minicamp

We don’t get caught up in spring football.

Doesn’t matter who stood out. Doesn’t really matter who looked bad.

These are two-hand touch sessions that aren’t going to reveal much and they especially are not going to reveal much about a Ravens ream that has some of its biggest questions reserved for the offensive and defensive lines; trying to assess what’s going on in the trenches when they aren’t really playing football is impossible.

Forget about it.

No overreactions. No freaking out about OTAs and minicamps.

However, that doesn’t mean that the time spent on the field in May and June aren’t still potentially impactful times on the NFL calendar. That doesn’t mean that some teams aren’t accomplishing significant things from a roster standpoint, and the largest reality for the Ravens organization is that their best player and one of the best quarterbacks ever left Owings Mills with the same one-year, lame-duck contract he came to town with.

And that is a potentially massive problem.

Time Wasting For A New Deal

Execs around the league believe Lamar Jackson is far from guaranteed to be in Baltimore in 2027, and the more time that goes by without an extension and the closer we get to Week 1, the more the stakes raise for the Ravens. No one could argue that general manager Eric DeCosta has any sort of leverage at this point and Jackson being as “cool” as he said he was and seemed to be with making $52M this season and letting everything else take care of itself is the biggest problem of all.

DeCosta has grumbled some publicly and all the time privately about the difficulty they have getting Jackson, who represents himself, on the phone and enegged in contract talks. So when he’s in your building for weeks on end, and you get nowhere with him at this incredibly pivotal time, and then he’s back to traveling and going to Miami and then reporting for camp in football mode (which could mean no more contract talks), then he just might be running out the clock and checkmating this front office again.

When Patrick Mahomes resets the QB market for the third time in six years without anyone even asking about his future in Kansas City, then things get even trickier and pricier. If they didn’t want to give Jackson roughly $250M guaranteed prior to all of this, and they didn’t love $60M a season, then negotiating off of Mahomes now making $64M a year from 2027 on isn’t going to help their cause.

Jackson didn’t want to talk about the contract, and he doesn’t have to. He doesn’t have to do anything at all except sign the right piece of paper, eventually, with the right numbers on it. Whether that’s presented by DeCosta or someone else.

He was patient and adroit at getting most of what he wanted last time around, and he has far greater wealth now than before and he also has a no trade and no tag provision, hammers he did not wield last time around when he demanded a trade before finally putting pen to paper in Baltimore.

The Ravens missed an essential window a year ago when Josh Allen got his long-term extension. DeCosta sloughed it off at the time and said he would have much more work to do the following offseason. Well, training camp is coming fast and this offseason is getting thin, and the best time to get an audience with Jackson – especially in person – ended last week without any major developments.

Might end up being the first loss of the 2026 season.

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