It’s official: Lamar Jackson will stay with the Baltimore Ravens for the foreseeable future. Jalen Hurts’ reign as the NFL’s highest-paid player was shortlived, as Jackson has set a new mark.
It seems kind of incredible to realize that the Ravens agreed to give him that much guaranteed money, considering they could’ve saved all this drama by just doing that months ago, instead of waiting until the NFL Draft.
The Ravens placed him under the Non-Exclusive Franchise Tag, which led to some thinking that they didn’t respect him enough. However, Ravens’ GM Eric DeCosta claims it was just a ‘calculated gamble.’
Ravens GM Explains’ Calculated Gamble’ On Lamar Jackson’s Contract
“I think the franchise [tag] is a powerful tool,” DeCosta said. “I mean, anyone will say that, agents will say that, teams will say that, the union would say that. And so that’s exactly right. I think, you know, the fact is we were having a tough time getting a deal with Lamar. Again, we respected his position and his feelings, but we were still having a tougher time.”
“But in the end, we felt like our deal, that the deals that we had made, we felt they were credible deals, we felt they were strong deals, and we felt like we were in a position to, not that we could match every single deal, but we felt like we would be able to match most deals and that if a team were willing to do a deal that we couldn’t match would be very hard for that team to do that type of deal,” DeCosta added. “Not impossible, but very difficult. We already had the $32 million as a placeholder on our salary cap. Other teams didn’t. That’s problematic for other teams. So, in the end, it’s a calculated gamble, I would say. You know, is a team going to go after Lamar Jackson? And if they do, maybe, just maybe, the deal is something we can match which makes life easier for us.”
At the end of the day, the gamble paid off. They infuriated Jackson, who even requested a trade, but they did manage to get the job done and keep him for the future. Now, it’ll be up to him to prove why they needed to pay him.
