I once purchased full-price tickets to see Charlie Sheen on his Tiger Blood tour, which disqualifies me from giving people advice on how they should spend or acquire their money for the rest of eternity.
But that won’t stop me, and all of us, from wondering what might happen to Lamar Jackson in the coming weeks and months as he tries to finesse a fully guaranteed contract out of Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti’s bank account (something I do think will eventually happen, by the way). It also won’t stop me from wondering whether the three impending contract negotiations that are set to absolutely shatter the quarterback financial world—Joe Burrow’s, Justin Herbert’s and, eventually, Trevor Lawrence’s—will mirror Jackson’s, with requests for fully guaranteed dollars that eclipse, in average annual value, the deal Deshaun Watson signed with the Browns last offseason.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a renaissance of the old QB Club days, when those guys wielded more power than an Old Western sheriff’s department? Burrow, Herbert and Lawrence may ultimately have different goals from Jackson’s, but their value to their respective franchises is infinite. Their momentary grip on the wheel is stronger. If any of the Bengals, Chargers or Jaguars lost any of those players due to a contractual standoff over the ability to back out of the deal at some point, ultimately to save a few million dollars, they would be lampooned forever—relegated into the pit of unserious teams content to operate as cute little football outposts never again to be seen in the Super Bowl conversation. For the first time in history, sensible folks would be lining up begging for the thing they love and depend on to be purchased by some hedge fund goon.
