After stalling in contract negotiations this offseason, star quarterback Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens reached an agreement in principle on a five-year contract extension on Thursday, Jackson announced. video posted on the team’s Twitter account.
“It’s been a lot of ‘he said, she said,’ a lot of nail-biting and head-scratching over the last few months,” Jackson, 26, said before announcing he would “light up” the Ravens’ home stadium for the next five years.
The deal is worth $260 million, according to a person with knowledge of the terms of the deal who spoke on condition of anonymity because the team had not disclosed financial details.
Jackson won the league’s MVP award in 2019 and entered the 2022 NFL season with one year remaining on his rookie contract. Uncertainty had engulfed Jackson’s future in Baltimore after he and the team were unable to agree on the terms of an extension, and contract talks were put on hold until the offseason. In March, still unable to come to an agreement with Jackson, the team granted him a non-exclusive franchise tag worth about $32 million a year and allowed him to negotiate with other teams.
Jackson said on Twitter Last month, he requested a trade in early March because the Ravens “were not interested in meeting my value.”
Other players in the league signed new deals or found new teams through trade, including Jalen Hurts, who agreed to a contract extension with the Philadelphia Eagles last week, and Aaron Rodgers, who moved from Green Bay to the Jets earlier this week. Jackson’s situation with the Ravens appeared to be at an impasse until the team’s announcement Thursday, hours before the NFL draft began. According to multiple reports, Jackson is now in the league in average annual earnings, ahead of Hurts, whose five-year contract is worth $255 million.
The Ravens selected Jackson with the last pick of the first round in the 2018 NFL Draft. He took over as the team’s starting quarterback midway through his rookie season after Joe Flacco was injured. He led the Ravens to the playoffs in four of the last five seasons, though he sat out the team’s wild-card game in January after suffering a season-ending knee injury.
Jackson has reimagined how the quarterback position is played at the sport’s highest level, challenging opponents with both his arm and his legs with greater success than ever before. He is the first running back to rush for more than 1,000 yards in multiple seasons in 2019 and 2020. Jackson surpassed both 4,000 career rushing yards and 100 touchdowns last season, faster than any player in league history.
Like many dual-threat quarterbacks before him, especially black quarterbacks, when Jackson turned pro, he faced questions from NFL teams about his staying power and shrugged off suggestions that he might be better suited for another position. A lasting image from the 2018 draft is Jackson and his mother sitting in the green room late into the night waiting for his name to be called.
However, the Ravens have embraced rather than stifled Jackson’s unique abilities, building an offense around him that has looked unlike any other in the league. In 2019, Jackson’s MVP year, the Ravens broke the 41-year-old record for most rushing yards in a season, and from 2018 to 2021, set a league record with 43 consecutive games of at least 100 yards.
While in Baltimore, Jackson will continue to duel with the talented young quarterbacks in the AFC, which includes two-time Super Bowl champion Patrick Mahomes of Kansas City; Joe Burrows of Cincinnati; Josh Allen of Buffalo; Justin Herbert of the Los Angeles Chargers; and Trevor Lawrence of Jacksonville. He will have at least one new offensive lineman, tight end Odell Beckham Jr., who signed with the Ravens this month after sitting out the 2022 season while recovering from a torn ACL he suffered with the Los Angeles Rams. wins Super Bowl LVI.
Even as talks between Jackson and the Ravens stalled, coach John Harbaugh said the two sides value each other and that he expects Jackson to be his starter this season. “You can make up the numbers,” Harbaugh said last month.
The Ravens figured out what numbers they needed to offer to keep Jackson, and now they’ll have five more years with him.
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