Lamar Jackson Finishes Minicamp Excited About New Ravens Offense As QB Market Soars Once More

Lamar Jackson left Ownings Mills this week for the last time this offseason, excited about this new Ravens offense, but still without a contract extension that is more vital than ever as Patrick Mahomes celebrates shattering the NFL pay threshold once more in Kansas City.

It was another striking moment in time where the other quarterbacks in Jackson’s uber-elite stratosphere quietly and quickly secure monster deals over and over, while everything between the Ravens two-time MVP (shoulda been three) is a struggle and pronounced and, sometimes ugly.

The good news is that Jackson departed mandatory mini camp all smiles about the concepts rookie offensive coordinator Declan Doyle is establishing; the problem is a lengthy spring practice period went by with him largely in the building and there is not a sign of any movement toward a new pact. If anything, Jackson seemed beyond content to play it out in 2026, which would be suboptimal for those who want him to be a “Raven For Life.”

The reality is: Jackson is on a one-year, lame-duck deal, with a 2027 cap hit he will never play under and the cost of doing business with him just soared, again thanks to Mahomes. So let’s savor these heady days of Jackson, 29, reveling in the newness of a 30-year-old coordinator installing his offense and building a playbook for the first time with a background quite opposite the others Jackson has worked with (grizzled vets Todd Monken and Greg Roman).

"I believe I took a lot of strides in the right direction this past week,” Jackson said Wednesday. “It's a different system than what I'm accustomed to being in, and I feel like there's going to be a lot of explosiveness this year. The way Declan calls plays and his creativity with his mind — how detailed he is — it's mind-blowing. I'm excited."

We’ve detailed how differently Doyle is almost certain to approach first down to intensify the sorely-lacking explosiveness Jackson references. And how early-down, play-action deep-shots (a staple of the Sean Payton and Ben Johnson offenses Doyle has worked under)’will spike. And how much Doyle will ramp up the tempo for the 2026 Ravens offense. There will be more wide receivers on the field at the same time, replacing a fullback.

“A lot of space, and like I said, I feel like there are going to be a lot of big plays this year," Jackson said.

All of that would naturally be attractive to Jackson.

It’s also a more profound shift than what he experienced as a young QB when John Harbaugh tried to oversee a blending of Roman’s option-based run game, with Monken’s desire to spread the field more and attack different quadrants in the passing game). That was more of a hybrid; this is more of a brand-new start and a new offensive language and different overarching philosophies.

“I'd say I'm being challenged right now,” Jackson said. “It's a new system with a lot of terminology within the system. Nothing really transitioned over from the last system, because we had certain things when we were with Monk, we brought a lot of things over from G-Ro’s system that I was comfortable with, that a lot of guys were comfortable with.

“But in this system, it's different. It's all Dec, and I feel like everybody is hands on. We're dialed in.”

Early Growing Pains

Doyle has been with two notorious taskmasters who aren’t worried about biting their tongue in Payton and Johnson. And as they alter tempo and toy with cadence there is a higher probability of pre-snap issues or mental mistakes. Jackson is already experiencing some of that in these glorified walkthroughs, with Doyle painstakingly watching and correcting them on pace, footwork, how quickly they break the huddle, everything.

Jackson noted Doyle dropped an F-bomb on him at one session this week, which initially caught him by surprise:

“I was supposed to run a naked play, like a boot-action, and I tossed the ball instead. Dec was like, 'Lamar, what the F are you doing?' I was like, 'Damn, that's on me.' But, there was more to it — it wasn't like he cursed me out flat-out. He was like, 'What are you doing?' I laughed. I wasn't used to that. But, he was just being a coach — nothing more, nothing less."

Considering how much Doyle and Johnson were willing to throw at raw quarterback Caleb Williams in Chicago last year, rest assured Jackson will be pushed to absorb and master things quickly. Not having a proven center along with him, of course, has been an interesting choice.

“The biggest thing is we don't waste any of these reps from a correction standpoint,” Doyle said at the start of OTAs. “We come back off, we're able to watch the tape, and we're able to make these corrections because that's where all the growth happens on the other side of that.

“We're able to go in the film room, and I'm able to say, 'This is what your footwork is, this is your eyes, this is what I see.' And then he can counter that and say, 'OK, this is how I see the receiver, or this is the body demeanor I see from the defender.' So, that's just a constantly evolving relationship.”

As To Jackson's Evolving Financial Relationship With The Ravens …

The elephant in the room, of course, is that restructured salary-structure for 2026 – a simply paper transaction that isn’t a negotiation at all after the sides could make no headway on a new mega-deal on owner Steve Bisciotti’s desired timeline of March . All of which has ceded complete leverage to Jackson via that near $90M cap hit in 2027 coupled with a no-trade and no-tag provision.

And now, Mahomes is set to start making $64M a season in 2027 (leaping Dak Prescott’s threshold) and he gets $240M in new money in a record deal that on the whole would surpass $500M. It’s the third time in six years the Chiefs have easily and willingly torn up their quarterback’s contract and reset the market, because that’s how it goes with these rarest of commodities.

In Baltimore you get collusion case discovery evidence and trade demands and owners opining that their quarterback doesn't think he's "worthy," of a payday until he wins that owner a Lombardi Trophy. Yeah, one of these situations always has been not like than the others.

And the stakes just got higher if Bisciotti and team president Sashi Brown and general manager Eric DeCosta truly want to keep Jackson (for what that will cost) here through his remaining prime years. Their words are cheap when it comes to this stuff, and their actions have been consistently tardy and foolish, as the price just keeps going up.

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