I found Lamar Jackson’s negotiation with the Ravens, which did not result in an agreement, to be the most interesting player-contract negotiation in the NFL this offseason.
As Jackson and the Ravens now retreat to their respective corners for the 2022 season, we can look back and examine the issues in play that, I believe, prevented the two sides from reaching common ground.
Jeff Lange/USA TODAY Network
The elephant in the room: Deshaun Watson
At the moment Watson signed his five-year, fully guaranteed $230 million contract with the Browns, Jackson’s negotiation became much more difficult and, as it turned out, impossible.
Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti foreshadowed the ripple effect of the Watson contract at the NFL owners’ meetings in March, a week after it was signed, criticizing the deal with a public rebuke of Browns owner Jimmy Haslam for the potential leverage he gave all top-level quarterbacks, especially Jackson. Bisciotti’s remarks, evidently, had some weight.
Now six months removed, the Watson contract has not been the game-changer that some, including this writer, thought it would be. Subsequent contract extensions for Derek Carr, Kyler Murray and Russell Wilson reverted to the traditional team-friendly structure for top quarterbacks: two or three years guaranteed and the rest at the behest of the team. In interviewing Wilson’s agent Mark Rodgers on my podcast, it became clear that the new Broncos ownership was parroting the owners’ line in shouting “Outlier!” at any mention of the Watson contract.
With other quarterbacks “settling” for the traditional structure, Jackson became the true test case for whether Watson would turn out to be an outlier or have some precedent. As I wrote on this subject in July, if the Ravens had offered Jackson a Watson-like deal, it was on Jackson to take it. Alternatively, had the Ravens had offered Jackson a Murray/Wilson type of deal, it was on the Ravens to explain why they were treating Jackson as a lesser player than Watson.
Thus, the Jackson negotiation became the inflection point for whether there would be a change in player contract leverage for top quarterbacks going forward.
I am constantly asked this question: Why don’t NFL players have fully guaranteed contracts as NBA and MLB players do? Well, the way to get to that status is to start at the top, with elite quarterbacks, and work down from there. Watson teed it up for to players to change the way NFL teams do business, to change the leverage equation from team to player.
While the other quarterbacks demurred to management, Jackson was the last player hope to make the Watson deal a true precedent rather than an aberration. We will continue to wait and see.
Vincent Carchietta/USA TODAY Sports
The lack of agent
Much was made of Jackson’s operating without a traditional agent, although he was reportedly being advised by senior members of the NFLPA. While I know as well as anyone the value of agents, I am not buying the notion that this was the problem here.
According to ESPN, Jackson was offered $133 million guaranteed, more than the players above but almost $100 million less guaranteed than Watson. Were Jackson using an agent, would he have taken that deal? Perhaps, but as suggested with the contracts above, Jackson is, well, “tougher” than those agents. The agents for Carr, Murray and Wilson all backed down from trying to make the Watson deal more than an outlier. And those players all had agents. Jackson, representing himself, did not.
Were I representing Jackson and had I received that offer of $133 million guaranteed—it was for five extension years, making it a six-year offer—I would have replied with the following: “We accept the $133 million guarantee. Let’s just make it three years and no franchise tag after that. You [the Ravens] can win the Watson debate and look good to your fellow owners, as you have done only a three-year guarantee, as the Vikings did years ago with Kirk Cousins.”
Accepting the $133 million guaranteed over three years would give the Ravens a win on the length of guarantee, as well as an average per year ($44.3 million) under the new money of recent deals. As for Jackson, it would give him the win of another bite at the free-agency apple before age 30.
Would the Ravens do that deal? Probably not, but that certainly would have challenged the Ravens on their Watson “outlier” argument.
Betting on himself? The CBA prevents that
Jackson will play out this year on his $23 million option-year salary and, as the saying goes, “bet on himself.”
The problem for Jackson, however, is the management-tilted CBA gives teams like the Ravens the right to apply the franchise tag, taking players like Jackson off of the market completely, as applying a franchise tag locks them into their team for another year.
Come January, the Ravens will have had their starting quarterback, one of the best players in the NFL, under contract on a fixed and reasonable rate for five years. And they have the right to have him under contract, albeit at a higher rate, next year. And the next year. And even the next year. That would amount to eight years before Jackson could even sniff free agency.
The NFLPA has never prioritized the franchise tag in CBA negotiations because it affects only a few players a year. Well, no. It affects 1) elite players, who set the market for all players below that level, and 2) all negotiations for top players, as clubs have that ultimate weapon in their back pocket to negotiate with, even if they have no intention of using it.
Jackson can bet on himself, but the Ravens can hedge that bet.
Injury risk overblown
The “Jackson should have taken the deal because he might get hurt” narrative is a management-driven one. I used this argument when negotiating player contracts for the Packers for 10 years (it is Negotiations 101 for team management).
But the injury-risk argument went out the window with one contract last year when
Dak Prescott scored, in my opinion, the best contract for a young quarterback in NFL history (save Watson) months after a gruesome ankle injury. That ended the injury-risk argument for top players.
Ironically, the only way Jackson may get to the open market is if he is injured; otherwise, he is doomed to get the tag. And unless that injury were career threatening, Jackson will make a lot more on the open market than he was offered by the Ravens.
Thus, we wait and see if Jackson “betting on himself” works in the long run with the Ravens, unfortunately for Jackson, still holding the leverage thanks to the tag.
But Jackson, in representing himself, is giving hope to all future elite players that the Watson contract was not an aberration but rather a precedent, and that NFL players truly can get contracts like NBA and MLB players.
Stay tuned.
