Lamar Jackson is having a ball. The Ravens quarterback passed his biggest test on Christmas Day by beating the 49ers, his team is rolling into the playoffs as the best unit in the AFC, Baltimore finally got him enough weapons to win with, defensively the Ravens are one of the best in the league, and to cap it all off: Jackson is now the favorite to win MVP honors this season.
Lamar Jackson’s free agency was a sham, and NFL owners got exactly what they wanted
Why are we pretending collusion didn’t happen?
Neville E. Guard-USA TODAY Sports
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
The wildest part about Lamar Jackson’s ride in 2023 is that any team in the NFL could have had him — but chose to be worse at football to uphold the time-honored tradition of collusion. It was clear for anyone who saw the Jackson saga unfold — so why are we pretending it didn’t happen?
There are two separate points being made by Eisen and Schefter here, but both ignore the elephant in the room. Signing Lamar Jackson to an offer sheet wasn’t a pointless pursuit, as Eisen is suggesting — nor was it a “lost opportunity” as Schefty asserts. Teams around the league knew exactly what they were doing in not negotiating with Jackson, and that was the whole point.
Who should have tried to sign Lamar?
Everyone in the NFL knew the Ravens were over a barrel when it came to Lamar. They were not just going to let him walk, because the offense had been built around him. Furthermore, if a team outside the top-5 of the draft signed Jackson to an offer sheet there was no way Baltimore was going to find another quarterback, at least for the foreseeable future.
The logical landing spot was Atlanta. It would have been a brilliant fit. Sure, you’d have to remove Bijan Robinson from the equation — but Drake London and Kyle Pitts’ deep threat potential would have THRIVED with Jackson at QB, with Tyler Allgeier being the perfect short-yardage back.
The Falcons never called. They were never going to call.
There are a smattering of other teams that also made a lot of sense. The Jets before they signed Aaron Rodgers, the Colts before they took Anthony Richardson, even as Schefter points out above, the Panthers before moving up for Bryce Young. If you were a team in need of a quarterback then nobody was better than Lamar Jackson — but owners around the league instructed their GMs not to make contact. It was the handshake deal behind closed doors to not only help out the Ravens, but suppress contracts around the league.
This was about more than helping Baltimore
The situation around Lamar Jackson had little to do with him, but more about another quarterback in the AFC North: Deshaun Watson.
Owners around the league were still reeling at the Browns giving Watson a fully-guaranteed contract in 2022, and were terrified this was going to become the norm. Players began to ask for more and more guaranteed money in their deals, and Jackson became the marquee poster child for the next QB wanting their money locked in.
This was routinely cited as the sticking point in a contract extension for Jackson. He reportedly wanted the majority of his contract guaranteed, the Ravens didn’t — and regardless of the outcome (Jackson got a lot of his deal guaranteed), the collusion ensured there wasn’t an arms race for another team to fully guarantee the offer.
So by working together the owners achieved the goal of suppressing quarterback salaries. Jackson got a big deal, but nothing that wrecked the market for the future like the Watson deal did in Cleveland. It ensured that Watson’s deal was the exception, not the rule — when a fair bidding war over Lamar Jackson would have resulted in a new mark being set that owners had to accept.
Money > Winning
That’s what this all comes down to in the end. Nobody “dropped the ball,” nobody “made a mistake” — because the idea that NFL owners want to win more than anything else is a fallacy.
From a football perspective it was monumentally stupid to need a quarterback and not even reach out to Jackson to see if he would be interested in signing an offer sheet. It’s stupidity to the point of maleficence. What it achieved, however, is ensure that quarterback salaries didn’t go past where owners were comfortable — and that was the goal.
Collusion is a beautiful thing if you’re an owner, and terrible for everyone else.
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