What’s likely for Lamar Jackson next?

Good time to talk to Will Brinson, Picsics Podcast Moderator, Senior NFL Writer, CBSSports.com, who once a year, I guess, writes something.

All right, let's start with the shiniest object. What's going to happen with Lamar Jackson? It's a good question. We were just doing our podcast, we were like, who needs the most help in each division?

Right. And the AFC North was really hard because putting aside what is happening off the field stuff, obviously, I just asked the question, I think we all agreed the answer is Lamar, but would you, Deshaun or Lamar? Deshaun Watson has been an all-pro player, and he's signed under contract for a lengthy amount of time, granted a terrible contract that will be very expensive. But Lamar, you just don't know, you can franchise tag him, but even if you franchise tag somebody, you don't force them to come in. It's not like where someone is being paid on their contract and they don't come in, you can start fighting and stuff like that. He has to sign that tender before you can be forced to come in.

So, I don't know, there's some unknowns there. I would assume that they will franchise tag him and try to work something out. I would guess they go the non-exclusive franchise tag. But the non-exclusive franchise tag is less expensive than by a little bit more than $10 million. And you and I have talked about it before, I can't find the figures anywhere, but isn't it like $45 million for the exclusive franchise tag, but $32 or $33 million for the non-exclusive?

Roughly. And it can, I believe, change after... So Free Agency could change this because it's the top five cap hits at the quarterback position, which means that you could see people restructure, you could see people be released. For instance, Ryan Tannehill, I think, is involved in the top five cap hits for this season at $36.6 million. These are the fifth one, but the Titans can save $17.6 million, I think, if they release him. Right. Or if you're like, hey, look, we're not gonna, we don't want, we need some cap space, we're gonna give you a W. There's a lot of stuff that can happen that can change that number, but roughly there about you.

All right. So certainly it would be better financially for the Ravens to do that. But if you do that and Lamar finds somebody out there, let's just say a sucker to give him the Deshaun Watson contract, then you could lose him if you're not willing to meet that for just two first round picks. And to me, Lamar Jackson, wouldn't you say is worth more than two first round picks?

Yeah, in a vacuum, but not if you have to pay Lamar too. So you're, I mean, the reason you do the non-exclusive is that you're allowing the market to set the market. You're allowing the teams who need a quarterback with the market to set the market.

It sounds kind of stupid, but I think it actually kind of makes sense. You're allowing whoever else is out there that may be interested in a quarterback like Lamar Jackson, and he might not be a fit for every team. For instance, the Carolina Panthers, and again, in a vacuum makes you like, Lamar Jackson, but is he what, you know, Frank Wright wants to run his offense. So if you're Baltimore, it's a very tricky little dance. You have to examine the market, figure out what the market is and decide, do we want to risk putting him out there to save $13 million in cap space with the possibility of, you know, if he doesn't get an offer he likes, I don't think he has to sign it. But if somebody, if the top offer he gets is like, you know, 75% of the Deshaun Watson deal from the Jets and the Ravens decide to match it, you know, I mean, if he signs it, then the Ravens match it. There's a whole different like bunch of ways that this could go. It's very, very convoluted. Yeah, look, him not having representation matters here.

Yeah, absolutely. And he doesn't have representation. That makes it more difficult to hammer out a deal. When you have an agent, that agent is intrinsically inclined to say, you need to get this deal done because one, it's not a good look if your agent can't get a deal done. Two, it's just bad luck for the agent. Two, the agent wants to get paid and you can't get paid until that contract is signed. So you're always more likely to figure out a way to get a deal done if you have that agent. You know, we saw with Dak Prescott, you know, he had to deal with the Cowboys pushing it out as long as possible too.

So it's not that different of a scenario. It's just what is Lamar's tolerance for playing under the franchise tag on a, you know, is he willing to do a two-year, single-year deals with the franchise tag and then try to hit free agency? As well.

So that's the next question I have for you. And I want to ask about a couple of other quarterbacks. Will Brinson is here. If the Ravens tag him regardless franchise or, you know, exclusive or non-exclusive, if the Ravens tag him, do you think Lamar Jackson will play on a franchise tag this year? I think that he will play on a franchise tag because it is really difficult to get, it's not really difficult. It's just hard to get a deal done in the time. So you have until usually it's around July 15th.

Right. When you sign somebody to the franchise tag to work out a long-term deal with them. And after that deadline passes like 4 p.m. on Monday, whatever, you know, around that time, I took a look. But after that deadline passes, you can not sign them until after the upcoming season. Like you can't even negotiate with them during the season.

It's against CBA rules. So you have this really short compressed window to sign somebody to a long-term deal. And when you get the franchise tag as a player, inherently, you were just, you know, you were, you feel like you're, you know, it's like, it's like, you know, the old adage of, you know, it's like, you know, it was like, I'd love to date, but I don't want to get, don't get hit. Right. You feel insulted as a player. And so you're, you're less likely to sign that deal. You understand that the team has pressure now on them.

And that's also easier to under, also easier to work through those machinations when you have an agent. But I would think that if he gets tagged, it is probably 75, 25. He plays on the tag 25. He, well, not exclusive.

I think he's gone. If he, if he, if they tag him and he gets to the start of the season, I think ultimately he's going to be with another organization either this year or next year. I just, there are no, are there any examples of signing somebody with a franchise tag, especially a quarterback and that quarterback staying with you for, uh, for the long haul, Kirk cousin stayed for two years and he left, uh, we saw one franchise tag, right? Yeah. Right. But they always, but they were the second, I think he did the second tag.

They would, they use the second tag on him and then signed him and then signed him before that deadline. And we've seen drew, drew breeze. And we see, we see how that's worked out. I'm just kidding.

No, no, no, no. But I mean like drew breeze has been drew. In fact, drew breeze is the reason why in the new CBA, they change it where you can only tag like, cause drew breeze got tagged by the chargers once. And then he got tagged by the, the, the, uh, the saints twice.

And he had a deal that they, they banged out before that deadline too. Um, so those are the two examples. Like, okay.

It happens a little more regular than what I said. So let me ask you about, uh, two other quarterbacks here, will Brinson. Uh, cause I think these are more fast. We've been talking about Lamar Jackson for two years. Uh, I think Daniel Jones and Geno Smith are more fascinating to me because I think they both come, the, the risks with Lamar Jackson are obvious, but the Daniel Jones and Geno Smith contracts that they sign like these guys are at this point, they are one hit wonders.

You know, uh, Daniel Jones is looking glass with the song Brandy and, uh, uh, Geno Smith is safety dance, uh, men without hats, I believe. Right. That that's what they are. We don't know. Are they going to put up another, they going to put out another good song? Um, I didn't see, I didn't see that those analogies coming, but I, well, what about the crash bus dummies?

99 left balloons with, uh, what, Naina? Uh, yeah, the, um, I apologize for all of that. It's fine. Uh, so Jones switched agents this week moving from dropping CAA, which is pretty crazy and signing with athletes first, both are, both are pretty, uh, you know, I mean, pretty, you know, high, high profile agencies deal. Um, it does seem like he wants quite a bit of money. Mike for you, a pro football talk reported that he wants as much as $45 million per year on his next contract, which I mean, obviously is, you know, quite a bit more than I think people, I think people sort of believe that at least this is sort of how I kind of thought, honestly, it's like Daniel Jones was going to say, okay, right.

Able fixed me. I'm I played well last year. I don't want to risk going where you go into another place where I don't know what the future is, you know, with the coaching staff.

I don't know what the, how the offensive system will work for me, et cetera, et cetera. However, if you look at the contracts out there and we think about what we always say about quarterbacks, like, would it make any sense for Daniel Jones to take $2 million less per year than what Carson Wentz signed for? No.

What did he say for him to take what Matt Ryan signed for? No. Would it make sense for him to say, I would like something in the range of, I mean, a Kyler Murray got $46 million and I'm not sure you definitely take Kyler Murray over Daniel Jones.

Like in this moment, right? No, I wouldn't. But that $46 million for Kyler Murray is moronic.

Yes. But now, and look, the other thing too is he floats out $45 million per year. What that means is he's probably willing to take less than $45 million per year. He's probably $40 million per year with a lot of guarantees. Um, or he's willing to take $45 million a year where you can get there with incentives or when you actually dig into the contract, you're like, Oh, this, this guy isn't making that much money because you look at Derek Carr's contract, the last one he signed before he was cut. And it's like, like no one ever reported how much guaranteed money he had, which is, was just insane because it was like out of politeness for Derek Carr. Nobody wanted to point out that he had like $4 million in guaranteed money in there.

Um, so you can get there a bunch of different ways in terms of what you need to get. And the agent, the agents care about is being able to say, this is the most guaranteed money for an average year on a new money basis in NFL history or whatever they want to do. Um, I would, I would think that, I mean, Josh Allen is making $43 million. Patrick Mahomes is making $45 million. It's, it's a tough sell to get him above, uh, those numbers. Having said that, it would, I don't know if I'm, if I'm Daniel Jones, I'm not taking less than Kirk Cousins or Dak Prescott.

And they're at $35 and $40 million respectively. Right. And that's probably where, where Daniel Jones should be. And I think the giants would jump at that, uh, because it doesn't completely hamstring you from doing other things.

So that would be good. Same thing for Geno Smith. I'm just fascinated because even at $35 million, based on track record, we have no idea what Geno Smith is going to be next year and the year after. And we have no idea what Daniel Jones is going to be next year and the year after. We could see a reverting to the mean so easily next year because the track record was one thing. Last year was another. Uh, let me ask you one more thing.

Uh, and this is about a quarter. It is a fascinating difference between Sam Darnold and how the Panthers quickly and unnecessarily picked up his fifth year option. First Daniel Jones, where the giants did not pick up his fifth year option. They could not be dealing with this at all. They didn't, they, they, again, they, I don't, I don't think anybody blamed it for not doing it, but they probably should have picked up the fifth year option and then said, we don't, we don't want Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley to be on the exact same timeline when it comes to free agency. That would have just been smarter. And they didn't.

Right. They, well, because the giants didn't really think they wanted Daniel Jones, which is why they didn't pick up the option. It's hysterical the way this has worked out.

Finally, and we had about a minute here. Why did David Carr say that Derek Carr's free agency was going to be a long process? It seems to me that who's waiting really on Derek Carr. David Carr said that because his brother wants the attention of being the top free agent quarterback out there. Right. And remember, David Carr is also the guy who routinely and without any sense of tongue and cheekness likes to put his brothers into like a top five breakout player, top five MVP candidate on his like NFL.com or NFL network list.

Like he's like, and of course, the number three, I've David Carr. And he like this, you're not even like kidding. Are you kidding me, bro? So I think, I think it's basically, it's using, using his brother who's in the media to help sort of like try to generate more interest for his brother. Yeah. Being a mouthpiece for his brother, which is what he's done.

And that's okay. Like I, you know, if my brother was a free agent quarterback, I'd probably do the same. I mean, I don't, is Jimmy Garoppolo, he's not a free agent yet, right? Or he is a free agent, Jimmy G. He is a free agent. I'd, I'd rather have Jimmy G because I think it'll be cheaper than David, than Derek Carr. If it comes down to, I can only have one or the other, I would rather have Garoppolo than Carr. And I think both of them are mid, mid-level NFL quarterbacks.

They're, you know, top 20 NFL starting quarterbacks, but that's basically all that is. All right, Will Brinson, we'll talk to you soon. Appreciate your time, especially on short notice on Fat Tuesday.

No, of course. As always, buddy. All right, man. I'll talk to you later. All right. Bye.