Ravens Are ‘Optimistic’ About Lamar Jackson Extension

“We would love to get a deal done as soon as possible,” DeCosta added (via ESPN’s Jamison Hensley).

Jackson, 29, is entering the fourth year of a five-year extension signed after a drawn-out negotiation process in 2023. The Ravens attempted to sign him to a new deal earlier this offseason, but made little progress and instead restructured his contract to reduce his massive cap hit. That freed up the money to sign All-Pro edge rusher Trey Hendrickson and starting left guard John Simpson in free agency, but Jackson’s 2027 cap charge is now set to be $84.3MM. An extension would allow the Ravens to push a substantial portion of that money – and keep their two-time MVP under center – into the future.

DeCosta declined to provide any details regarding the status of negotiations with Jackson, as has been the policy from team and player for years. But getting a deal done before the regular season will be difficult for a number of reasons.

The first is cap space, but Baltimore has less than $16MM in cap room at the moment (via OverTheCap). DeCosta has other players contracts’ that he can restructure, but he will still want to preserve some money for in-season operating expenses. Alternatively, the Ravens could structure a deal that has minimal impact on their 2026 cap and instead offers Jackson a bigger bonus payout early in the 2027 league year.

But even Jackson himself represents an even bigger obstacle. Despite criticism over his lack of formal representation, he has been praised by DeCosta as a shrewd negotiator, as evidenced by their last set of negotiations. It took over 18 months – a period that included a franchise tag and a public trade request – for the Ravens to finally get Jackson to sign an extension the first time around. That contract prevents another tag or trade situation next offseason, which should force Jackson to the negotiating table eventually, but he may be waiting on the third factor: the quarterback market.

Quarterback pay has barely risen since Dak Prescott last reset the market with his $60MM AAV deal with the Cowboys in 2024. Patrick Mahomes’ $64MM per-year agreement with the Chiefs set a new high-water mark, but an increase of $4MM in two years is meager relative to explosions in other positional markets as well as the overall salary cap. This is largely due to the weak quarterback classes in the 2022 and 2023 drafts, as those players would have typically received massive extensions this year. But the market will instead have to wait for 2024 draftees Caleb Williams, Drake Maye, and Jayden Daniels to reach extension eligibility next offseason.

Jackson may be waiting, too. A few months after he signed for $52MM per year in 2023, the Bengals gave Joe Burrow $55MM per year on his extension. This time, he could see how much Williams, Maye, and/or Daniels are able to squeeze out of their teams in the spring – perhaps $70MM or more annually – and then demand a slightly bigger deal from the Ravens that he is unlikely to receive now.