The Future of Fully Guaranteed NFL Contracts Is at Stake With Lamar Jackson, Other Star QBs
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Lamar Jackson’s request to be traded from the Ravens, now over a month old, has been met with apathy from either the Ravens or the NFL’s other 31 teams or both. Many onlookers are incredulous this is happening to Jackson, and that teams are not taking advantage of the chance to trade for this one-time MVP and game-changing player. They blame the other teams, the Ravens and Jackson for his insistence on not having an agent. The real culprits, however, are not any of those things. They are 1) the Deshaun Watson contract, which has been “a thing” for a year now, although NFL teams refuse to recognize it as such, and 2) the franchise tag, collectively bargained between the NFL and the NFLPA.
Let’s examine five things I think about Lamar Jackson.
Jackson’s contract status has been one of the most talked about issues of the NFL offseason
Mitch Stringer/USA TODAY Sports
1. The Ravens have weaponized every year of Jackson’s contract in the NFL, and my sense is that is what they want to continue to do in 2023. Jackson played out all five years of his highly undervalued rookie contract, giving the team incredible value at the quarterback position. Jackson finally reached the purported hallowed ground of free agency, only to find that for him, there was no free agency. The Ravens not only applied the tag but used the lower-level one, knowing other teams would be unwilling to match Jackson’s contract demands. They now expect Jackson will play a sixth season for them without having any free-agency rights. Quarterbacks of Jackson’s ilk make $45 million a year and above; Jackson will—without an extension—make $32 million, to give the team yet another year of great value from this player.
2. It has been a year now since the Browns’ lavished a fully secured five-year deal, at $46 million a year, to Watson. Top quarterback contracts since—Kyler Murray’s and Russell Wilson’s among them—have reverted to the “traditional” NFL contract model of only early years being secured before shifting all risk to the player. Interestingly, it has been the player without an agent, not the players with agents, pushing the envelope on trying to make the Watson contract a precedent and not an aberration, albeit without success thus far. Could Jackson have signed by now with an agent? Sure, and probably made some good money. But that agent would have had to agree to a contract with at least a few nonguaranteed years that, ironically, Jackson can get for himself at any time.
3. NFL owners, including the Ravens’ Steve Bisciotti, are clearly not going there to allow Watson’s contract to become precedent. This will become more apparent in coming negotiations with Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert and Jalen Hurts, which we’ll discuss more below. Is this collusion? Legally, probably not; there are probably no smoking gun communications out there. Is it punitive? Clearly, yes. NFL owners are dead set on having the Watson contract be an outlier rather than a precedent, cursing Browns’ owner Jimmy Haslam along the way.
4. As for Jackson’s not having a traditional agent, many have debated the value of an agent in finding an alternate solution or spinning things to the media. But an agent would hear the same thing from the Ravens that the Broncos told Wilson’s agent and that teams are telling other agents: “We’re not doing what the Browns did!” As for dealing with players without agents, I did so a few times when I worked for the Packers, and I have a keen understanding of how the Ravens-Jackson relationship has gone south. Player contract negotiations are raw. They are emotional. Players see things very simply: A similar player got X; they deserve more than X. As for nuance about different structures and team policies, they do not want to hear that. I lost a couple of friendships with players in dealing with them directly in contract negotiations.
5. As for teams not wanting to trade for Jackson, I don’t get as excited as others about that. Teams have made their quarterback plans. Heck, there is only one team interested in Aaron Rodgers. And—news flash—money is a factor. The Panthers, who traded multiple assets for the top pick, will pay their incoming rookie quarterback less over four years than they would pay Jackson over one year. But ultimately, we are back to where we started above: the franchise tag. Were Jackson an unrestricted free agent March 15 like other “real” free agents and not tagged, we would not be having any of this conversation.
I have written here that were I advising Jackson and he were offered what was reported to be $133 million guaranteed for the first three years of a longer contract, I would say to the Ravens: “We accept: $133 million over the next three years, period, end of contract.” The Ravens could be comfortable they are guaranteeing only three years—as done by the Vikings and Kirk Cousins five years ago—and not five years as Watson got. Jackson would make market value for three years and be a free agent again at age 29, when he would get another big contract to exceed earnings of other top QBs who were locked into long-term contracts. Would Jackson do that? I would think so. Would the Ravens do that? Probably not.
My sense is there will be no trade, and there will be no contract extension. Jackson will have to decide whether, come September, he is willing to walk away from almost $2 million per week. I think not.
The Ravens have used the CBA gifts of the rookie contract system and the franchise tag to their extreme advantage with Jackson. That is the story here more than anything else.
The next wave
With the backdrop above, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert and Jalen Hurts will now step up to the plate. These young faces of their franchises, having completed three NFL seasons, are now eligible to negotiate extensions that will answer the question I have been posing for more than a year: Will the Deshaun Watson contract become precedent or aberration?
This, in my opinion, will be the key story of the 2023 NFL offseason. Will these players “take the money and run” without regard to future guarantees, or will they press the issue, even if they have to wait a year, to leverage a fully secured contract?
I know what the Bengals, Chargers and Eagles will do (besides call the Watson contract an outlier). They will entice the agents and players—who are scheduled to make $5 million or less in 2023—with signing bonuses of, say, $30 million or $40 million or even $50 million. Once the player and agent are hooked with those amounts, the team will lure them in with several nonguaranteed years on the back end of the contract.
Perhaps the agents and players will acquiesce to this familiar team strategy. However, if the Watson contract is going to have any meaning … they must fight it. The agents for these players must push management on the guarantee issue, for the good of NFL players now and in the future. And while teams cannot work together and collude, players and agents certainly can and, in this case, absolutely should (although the agent business is notoriously untrustworthy).
So many ask people me: “Andrew, why don’t NFL players have fully guaranteed contracts?” My answer has always reflected the lack of precedent by which to negotiate from. But that has changed. We have the Watson contract as precedent, which should open the door for top quarterbacks—all without the off-field baggage of Watson—to break through. And from there, the guarantee precedent could extend to another position, and then another, and so on and so on. The door has been cracked by Watson; will Burrow, Herbert and Hurts break through?
It is now up to this new wave. If they do not secure full guarantees, we know what will happen. In a few years, and perhaps for decades to come, we will look back on the Watson contract as a one-off that no other quarterback—let alone any other player—was able to replicate.
Unless you tilt heavily to the management side of the NFL, that will be a sad thing for NFL players for generations to come.
