BALTIMORE — The Ravens on Tuesday applied the nonexclusive franchise tag to Lamar Jackson, keeping their quarterback off the open market but giving him an opportunity to pursue a contract with another team.
Baltimore has five days to match any offer sheet Jackson signs, or they could let him walk and receive two first-round draft picks in exchange.
“Having not yet reached a long-term deal with Lamar Jackson, we will use the franchise tag,” Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta said in a statement. “There have been many instances across the league and in Baltimore when a player has been designated with the franchise tag and signed a long-term deal that same year. We will continue to negotiate in good faith with Lamar, and we are hopeful that we can strike a long-term deal that is fair to both Lamar and the Ravens. Our ultimate goal is to build a championship team with Lamar Jackson leading the way for many years to come.”
DeCosta could have used the exclusive franchise tag, projected to cost about $45 million, to keep Jackson off the market entirely. He instead opted for the roughly $32.4 million nonexclusive tag, a decision he said he had weighed every day for months.
The move does not preclude the Ravens from signing Jackson to an extension before the 2023 season and seems to indicate they are confident they could match any offer he receives from another team.
After more than a year of stalled negotiations, the issue could come to a head quickly if a team meets Jackson’s asking price. The Ravens could be forced to pay more guaranteed money than they had hoped to keep Jackson, or they could say goodbye to the player who was supposed to be central to their plans for years to come. Or perhaps Jackson, who represents himself, will not find the deal he wants on the open market and will return to his financial standoff with the Ravens.
Most teams that use the franchise tag go the exclusive route; DeCosta is gambling that his decision will prompt a long-term deal with Jackson and/or leave the Ravens in a stronger financial position to build their team for next season.
When he spoke with reporters last week at the NFL scouting combine, the Ravens general manager acknowledged the difficulty of building for the 2023 season with so much uncertainty hovering around Jackson.
“It is a wrench,” he said “We don’t know, and so, yeah, it slows you up a little bit. It does kind of create a little bit of a haze as to what the future’s going to look like with your roster.”
At their season-ending news conference in January, DeCosta and Ravens coach John Harbaugh acknowledged the complexity of ongoing negotiations with Jackson but said they remain determined to build the franchise’s future around the 2019 NFL Most Valuable Player.
“Everything we’ve done in terms of building our offense and building our team, how we think in terms of [bringing in] people and putting people around him is based on this incredible young man, his talent, his ability and his competitiveness,” Harbaugh said. “I’ll have my fingers crossed, and my toes crossed, and I’ll be saying prayers. I have every faith that it’s going to get done, and we have the best people in the world doing it. Eric DeCosta, there’s nobody better. Eric wants him here, I want him here, [Ravens owner] Steve [Bisciotti] wants him here, and Lamar wants to be here. So, it’s going to work out.”
DeCosta said in January that the choice between an exclusive or nonexclusive franchise tag would not be easy, adding, “I’ve thought about it every day.”
He has maintained all along that the Ravens can afford to fit the price of Jackson’s tag into their salary cap if it’s their best option. But they could be forced to cut key players such as defensive end Calais Campbell or running back Gus Edwards to make the math work.
“Any deal with Lamar is going to affect the salary cap, whether we get a long-term deal done or we do an exclusive franchise [tag] or the traditional franchise [tag], it’s going to affect the cap,” DeCosta said. “Those are big, big numbers. We’re fortunate I think that we have a better salary cap [situation] than most. We have a lot more room than most teams do, which was by design three or four years ago.”
At the same time, he said the Ravens would have to be “really creative” to add quality players at positions such as wide receiver and cornerback while paying a hefty sum to keep Jackson in place.
Jackson is the eighth player in Ravens history to be franchise tagged, and several of his predecessors, most recently outside linebacker Matthew Judon in 2020, have played full seasons under the tag. But the Ravens have never been in this position with a quarterback.
Teammates have been clear about what they want.
“You can’t let a guy like him go,” veteran defensive end Calais Campbell said. “I know it’s football and there’s always some new exciting toy, a new exciting kid that has potential to go out there and be great, but this is a for sure, a known. You know Lamar Jackson is an incredible player. I think it’s in the best interest of the Ravens organization to give him a long-term contract and make him our guy.”
Tight end Mark Andrews joked at the Pro Bowl that he would donate his paycheck to keep Jackson in town.
The one key party who has said little is Jackson, who has not spoken to reporters since the Friday before he suffered a season-ending knee injury on the first weekend of December. The Ravens made the playoffs and pushed the Cincinnati Bengals to the limit in the wild-card round with Tyler Huntley at quarterback. But the uncertainty around Jackson’s next step loomed over every game he did not play.
He last addressed his contract situation in September, when he and the Ravens did not reach an extension agreement before the season opener.
“I don’t know,” he said when asked if a deal was close. “I don’t know.”
If an extension remains elusive — four of the eight players tagged last season reached long-term deals — the superstar quarterback will have decisions to make. He could hold out at the start of training camp, as other players have done under similar circumstances. Or he could take the more extreme step of refusing to sign the tag and sitting out the season, as running back Le’Veon Bell did in a standoff with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2018.
The Ravens answered one question by placing the franchise tag on Jackson but opened the door to many more.
