Lamar Jackson

The Ravens made no secret about their desire to work out a new Lamar Jackson extension this offseason. No agreement has been reached yet, but a mutual interest still exists for a deal to be struck.

An extension would have helped lower Jackson’s 2026 cap charge, one which was on track to spike ever since his second Ravens contract was worked out in 2023. With no new agreement being reached in time for the start of free agency in March, Baltimore proceeded with a restructure to free up immediate cap space. That has left Jackson with a scheduled 2027 cap hit of $84.34MM.

As such, an extension will need to be in place by next spring to avoid a repeat of this year’s situation. Jackson made his first appearance at OTAs yesterday, and the status of contract talks was to no surprise a key talking point. During his remarks to reporters, the two-time MVP declined to get into specifics regarding the nature of where things stand on the extension front. He did, however, reiterate his intention of remaining with the Ravens well beyond 2026.

“Absolutely. I love the Ravens. I love this organization. I love this city,” Jackson said (via ESPN’s Jamison Hensley). “This is the team that drafted me. I love Baltimore. Everyone should know that by now.”

During the long-running negotiation process last time around, Jackson sought a fully guaranteed extension. He ultimately agreed to a five-year deal including $185MM guaranteed and provisions such as no-trade and no-tag clauses. The 29-year-old operated without an agent during his first round of contract talks, and that remains the case now. Jackson was asked about the possibility of again attempting to land fully locked-in money on his next extension but replied he and the Ravens will “leave that conversation in 2022.”

Little progress was made during contract talks this winter, and Baltimore’s decision to execute a max restructure has left Jackson with considerable leverage. Ian Rapoport of NFL Network notes (video link) the three-time All-Pro could elect to play out the coming season — the first with a new coaching staff led by Jesse Minter leading the way — before re-engaging in negotiations. Multiple general managers and agents who spoke with SportsBoom’s Jason La Canfora predict Jackson will turn down any offers which are not fully guaranteed, an indication of how strong his bargaining position currently is.

Injuries were a common thread for Jackson in 2025. He said (via Hensley) the hamstring injury which led to three missed games occurred in Week 3 and lingered through much of the season. A healthier campaign would go a long way in avoiding another year spent outside the playoffs for the Ravens. It would also place him further in position to command a third contract at or near the top of the quarterback market.

Lamar Jackson surfaced at Ravens OTAs Tuesday, ending another notable offseason hiatus. Considering the Ravens are implementing a new scheme — under OC Declan Doyle — Jackson showing up for offseason work is a bit more important than it has been in recent years.

New HC Jesse Minter said he and Jackson, who has frequently missed voluntary portions of offseason workouts in the past, had held discussions on when the two-time MVP would show up. With that having taken place, Jackson noise will naturally shift back to his contract. As it stands, the Ravens are in a bind on the latter front.

The Ravens restructured Jackson’s contract in March, doing so shortly after Trey Hendrickson‘s commitment to the team. Baltimore cleared nearly $40MM in 2026 cap space but moved a substantial chunk of money onto its 2027 balance sheet. While Jackson’s 2026 cap hit dropped to $34.39MM, his 2027 number ballooned to $84.34MM. With Jackson carrying no-trade and no-tag clauses, this situation looks a lot like where the Cowboys were with Dak Prescott before his record-smashing extension.

Dallas was facing a doomsday scenario in which Prescott left as a 2025 free agent and dropped a punitive dead money sum — stemming from multiple restructures — on the team’s payroll upon doing so. With the Cowboys giving Prescott a favorable extension at the March 2021 franchise tag application deadline, the player held historic leverage and used it.

The Cowboys reached a four-year, $240MM extension with Prescott hours before their season opener in 2024. That contract remains unapproached, from an AAV standpoint, nearly two years later. Among QBs signed for more than one year (excluding rookie deals), only Deshaun Watson saw a greater percentage of his contract guaranteed; Prescott received $231MM of his $240MM guaranteed in total.

Jackson is a far more accomplished player than Prescott, having soared to two MVP awards and delivered his best statistical season — in 2024 — in a year that brought a second-place MVP finish (but a first-team All-Pro nod). The Bills took care of the player who finished first in that historic MVP race (Josh Allen) with a six-year, $330MM extension, doing so despite their franchise QB having four seasons left on his previous deal. The Ravens’ efforts to extend Jackson — a stated goal ahead of free agency — did not produce a resolution, leaving the team in a time crunch with two seasons remaining on his five-year, $260MM contract.

The Ravens made an attempt to extend Jackson in February, according to Sportsboom.com’s Jason La Canfora, but those efforts went “nowhere.” A recent PFR mailbag delved into this topic, with our Adam La Rose indicating the ideal time to extend Jackson came before free agency this year. A new deal would have reduced Jackson’s 2026 cap hit without creating that bloated $84.34MM 2027 figure. Jackson’s contract would also create a $42.47MM dead money bill for the Ravens if they do not extend him before the 2028 league year. With the no-trade and no-tag clauses in place, Jackson holds Prescott-like leverage.

Prescott had seen a 2020 ankle injury sideline him but had mostly stayed healthy between then and his September 2024 payday, though he suffered a significant hamstring injury weeks after the contract was finalized. Jackson does not have a major injury on his NFL resume but has dealt with a number of issues that have kept him off the field or limited him.

This includes last season, when a hamstring injury led to a three-game absence (and an injury reporting controversy). Jackson also missed Week 17 with a back issue, running his games-missed count (including a 2022 wild-card game) to 15 — not counting his Week 18 rest in 2023 — since the 2021 season.

It is worth wondering if the Ravens view Jackson as a sufficiently safe bet as his 30s near. The QB’s resume and negotiating leverage points him toward a deal well north of Prescott’s, and the ninth-year Baltimore passer (who remains without an agent) has been a shrewd negotiator in the past. He played out his rookie contract, breaking off 2022 negotiations, and requested a trade while on the franchise tag in 2023. The Ravens and Jackson came to a five-year, $260MM agreement in April 2023, after it became clear Baltimore would not complete a fully guaranteed contract like Cleveland did for Watson (though, three-year fully guaranteed proposals did emerge before the 2023 extension).

Entering his age-29 season, Jackson has 1,081 career rushing attempts. At the eight-season mark, that is 152 more than any other QB in NFL history. The run-game wear and tear on Jackson will factor into his second extension more than his first. For now, it should still be assumed the Ravens will hand Jackson a record-setting extension. But potential longevity concerns will be something to monitor when extension talks intensify. A new deal remains the organization’s goal.

It will be interesting to see if the new-look franchise makes an aggressive effort to have this deal done with with two years remaining on his previous contract. The Cowboys did not do that in 2023, and it proved costly. The Ravens’ upcoming effort will help illustrate how they believe their future Hall of Fame QB will age.

The Ravens have certainly had a busy offseason to start off the 2026 season so far, and some aspects of their offseason have been more successful than others. The franchise felt a need to reset their coaching staff and landed a promising, young defensive-minded coach much like the Super Bowl-winning one they let leave two years ago. The team saw holes on defense and the offensive line and added some strong options in free agency.

On the flip side of things, the expediency with which John Harbaugh found a new job set high expectations for the team that was willing to let him go. Additionally, a number of free agents priced themselves way out of Baltimore, while former staffers in both New York and Los Angeles poached away several other names that many expected to return. But the single biggest failure of the Ravens’ 2026 offseason so far, as laid out by Sports Illustrated’s Jason La Canfora, is the team’s inability to come to an agreement with star quarterback Lamar Jackson on a new, record-setting extension.

When the Ravens finally landed Jackson to his first record-setting extension in 2023, many expected that the star dual-threat passer would never even sniff the final years of his contract. With how quickly the quarterback market constantly readjusts with inflation, it was thought that it would be insulting if the Ravens didn’t see fit to make sure their best player remained in line with the rising market periodically. Especially when teams like the Chiefs and Bills had demonstrated some unique ways to accomplish this for everyone to see, Baltimore was sure to follow suit.

Instead, the issue has frequently been pushed by one party or the other to the back burner. What’s worse, this is not new for the Ravens, who similarly squeezed every ounce of value out of Jackson’s rookie deal even after seeing him win an MVP award in his second season with Marquise Brown, Willie Snead, Seth Roberts, and Miles Boykin leading his receivers room. According to La Canfora, “there isn’t anyone in the industry” who believes Jackson will be a Raven after this year if the team can’t extend him by the start of the season, and after the team restructured his deal, there’s belief that he holds more leverage than ever.

La Canfora also commented on the recent reports that Jackson was offered fully guaranteed three-year deals back when he was seeking his first extended contract. He asserted that not all fully guaranteed deals are equal, focusing on some of the language that was crucial to Jackson in those negotiations. Jackson was seeking a five-year, fully guaranteed deal, something the Ravens did not intend to offer. Instead, they made their three-year offers in the range of $50MM to $55MM per year.

While that still seems like a decent offer, La Canfora reports that it didn’t come with the “no trade” and “no future franchise tag” clauses that Jackson needed to see. He offers that teams only tend to include language like that when the contract guarantees long-term rights to the player’s services, and with Jackson’s insistence on a fully guaranteed deal, a long-term offer wasn’t coming. It became clear that those clauses were more important to him than the guarantees when he eventually agreed to his record-setting extension without full guarantees but with those clauses.

Those clauses essentially guaranteed that, no matter what, Jackson would be hitting the open market again just as he turned 30 — that is, unless he were to receive an extension before then. Jackson had some notion of where the big money would be and put himself in position to cash in at the best moments. The Ravens have had plenty of opportunities over the years to stretch a couple dollars now to avoid even bigger costs down the road, but they’ve continuously come up short, unable to meet Jackson’s demands. Now, they may be in a race against the clock to get a deal done before the start of the season or risk having to reset at quarterback just as they did at head coach. They saw how quickly Harbaugh went.

The Ravens made it clear their goal was to extend quarterback Lamar Jackson before the start of the new league year, and when that didn’t happen, they were forced to restructure his contract in order to avoid a massive $74.5MM cap hit. General manager Eric DeCosta informed the media this week that, even though the team ran out of time to get an extension done, “they are still hopeful to reach an agreement,” per Jeff Zrebiec of The Athletic.

This was always going to be the battle in Baltimore after they reached their first extension agreement with Jackson on a five-year, $260MM deal in 2023. While still substantial, Jackson’s cap hits in the first three years of the new deal were more manageable at $22.15MM in 2023, $32.4MM in 2024, and $43.5MM last year. The cap hits were then scheduled to jump to $74.5MM in the final two years of the deal, forcing the Ravens front office to either come back to the table for a potential extension or allow a single player to represent nearly a quarter of their cap space.

The first time the two parties underwent extension discussions, things got fairly dicey. The two-time MVP represented himself, as he still does to this day, and after Baltimore placed the non-exclusive franchise tag on him, in an effort to let the open market determine his value with an intention to match, Jackson requested a trade, intimating that the team was not interested in meeting the value he had placed on himself. For most of two months, it seemed a resolution was out of reach and the situation was irreconcilable, until an extension was announced on the first day of the 2023 NFL Draft, showing that the Ravens would be making Jackson the highest-paid player in NFL history with the highest signing bonus ($72.5MM) in NFL history at that time.

The biggest sticking point that prevented an agreement from being reached for so long was Jackson’s desire for a fully guaranteed contract. Previously seen done reasonably by the Vikings in 2018 for Kirk Cousins on a three-year, $84MM deal, the Browns seemingly ruined the party for everyone in 2022, when they did the same for Deshaun Watson on a record-setting five-year, $230MM contract. Knowing now that NFL owners were found by an arbitrator to have colluded to reduce the locked in compensation on player contracts and avoid fully guaranteed deals, there’s belief that this played a hand in the rocky negotiations between Jackson and Baltimore.

It’s unclear if Jackson will be pursuing another fully guaranteed deal as negotiations continue, but there was a sense that the Bills laid out the groundwork for the Ravens to follow when they extended their own MVP quarterback, Josh Allen, in the last offseason. Allen’s deal reflected a lot of what the Ravens ended up doing with Jackson’s first extension, in terms of backloading the bulk of the cap burden in later years to encourage renegotiation. The difference was that Buffalo timed the extension when Allen still had multiple years remaining on his previous deal. Knowing that their MVP was making less per year than less-accomplished passers, the deal simply brought Allen up to top of the market in annual average value and kicked the can down the road for them to do the same thing again in a couple years to keep up with the inflating market.

When Jackson’s restructure was originally reported, we covered most of the details in regard to dollar amounts getting affected. Yesterday, though, KPRC’s Aaron Wilson disclosed some new details of the reworked agreement. Per Wilson, the restructure added another voidable year in 2030 as well as a no-trade clause, including an agreement not to use the franchise tag on Jackson following the 2027 NFL league year. One expects the Ravens have no plans of getting to that point as their intentions to secure an extended agreement persist with the rest of the offseason in front of them.

With much of their coaching staff now in place, attention in the Ravens’ case will increasingly turn toward free agency. Several internal decisions will need to be made, and working out a new Lamar Jackson extension remains a priority.

Since Jackson’s 2023 extension was signed, this offseason has loomed as the logical point for a new pact to be worked out. 2026 is scheduled to include a $74.5MM cap charge in his case without an adjustment of some kind. A restructure could be an option, but flattening that cap figure by means of an extension prior to the start of free agency is still seen as Baltimore’s goal.

Any thoughts about a potential Jackson trade can be put to rest, NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo notes (video link). A swap would of course come as a major surprise with Jackson being on the books for another two years. The franchise once again illustrated how central the two-time MVP is in a number of areas of its operation during recent weeks. Jackson took part during the first (virtual) round of head coaching interviews, per Garafolo. He also confirms the Ravens’ offensive coordinator search included input from Jackson.

Baltimore took the route many expected by hiring Jesse Minter as head coach. The highly-acclaimed defensive mind will calls plays on that side of the ball, leaving much on the shoulders of his first OC. Declan Doyle departed Chicago after a one-year Bears stint. The 29-year-old did not call plays while working under Ben Johnson, and the ability to do so with the Ravens drove his decision to head to Baltimore. Needless to say, the connection between Doyle and Jackson will be something to watch closely as the 2026 season plays out.

Immediate success will be the expectation for Minter and the rest of his staff as Baltimore looks to return to the postseason next year. A clean slate on the health front will be a major goal for Jackson, who missed four games in 2025 and was limited in others while dealing with various injuries. By the time his age-29 campaign begins, another new contract at or near the top of the quarterback market could very well be in hand.