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You’ve heard it from me, by now—whether Baltimore puts the exclusive or nonexclusive tag on Lamar Jackson, which will determine Jackson’s availability, will certainly have an impact on the quarterback market. And so one more time, here’s the way the decision on which tag to use will shape Jackson’s immediate future.
If the Ravens use the exclusive franchise tag, Jackson is effectively off the market. The price on it, as it stands right now (and this can fluctuate through the offseason because it’s based on 2023 numbers), is $45.46 million. If the Ravens intend to keep Jackson, that figure shouldn’t faze them. It’d put the cost of two tags at just over $100 million. And if we presume a new deal would be more than $50 million per year, anyway, well, the exclusive tag would simply frame the contract in that area. That said, it could also upset Jackson, and would make him harder to trade.
If the Ravens use the nonexclusive tag, things would get interesting. The price under that tag would be $32.42 million, but, if you presume someone would sign him to an offer sheet, that’s not that relevant. Remember, the one commonality between the fully guaranteed contracts quarterbacks have signed—Kirk Cousins (in 2018) and Deshaun Watson (last year)—was that they happened in large part because there were multiple bidders, as there would be in this scenario. The Ravens could do this to get another team to write the contract for them. And that’s where the element of a fully guaranteed deal comes in—it would be the way you’d try to make sure the Ravens wouldn’t match. Letting Jackson go would bring two first-round picks back to Baltimore. The Ravens could also match, and then work out a trade with the team signing him. Or, of course, just match and keep him, with the other team having done the legwork.
So my gut, and this is just my gut, tells me that the Ravens will put the exclusive tag on Jackson, and from there try, again, to do a long-term deal. But I’m far from certain of it.
We’ll all know in less than 48 hours.
