Ravens Ready to Pivot Back to Lamar Jackson's Contract Situation
OWINGS MILLS, Md. — The Ravens are ready to revisit a contract extension for quarterback Lamar Jackson now that the 2021 draft is in the books, general manager Eric DeCosta confirmed.
"We’ve talked about this 100 times," DeCosta said. "Lamar is a guy that’s going to be here. We love him. He’s really the face of this team, right now, in many different ways. He’s a leader, he’s a good player, and he’s our quarterback. So, we will work tirelessly to get a deal done. I’m a guy that sort of likes to work with deadlines, and the Draft is almost over, so now we’ll kind of move on to the next big thing.
"So, this is behind us, almost – not quite, yet. We’ll finish up with free agency upstairs in probably three or four hours. But we’ve got other things now on our plate, and Lamar Jackson is one of those things.”
Jackson will be looking for a deal worth around $40 million per season. The Ravens picked up his fifth-year portion last week, which will cost the team $23.016 million.
Jackson, who was selected by the Ravens with the 32nd overall pick in the 2018 draft, has gone 30-7 as the starter in the regular season. He has thrown for 7,085 yards with 68 touchdowns and 18 interceptions over his young career. Jackson is also the only quarterback in NFL history to run for over 1,000 yards in two seasons and has 2,906 yards rushing and 19 scores overall.
However, the new contract will reverberate throughout the organization and affect the way the team conducts business, DeCosta said.
"It will change the way that we do contracts, potentially," DeCosta said earlier this offseason. "We will have to be probably a little bit more careful about which players we sign and which players we don’t sign. We may lose some good, young players.
"That’s unfortunately just the salary cap age that we’re in, and it happens to every single team. So, we’ll be aggressive, if possible. I think the Draft will continue and will always remain the lifeblood of this organization when it comes to building this team and building the roster, and Draft picks will be more important than ever.”
