Why is Lamar having such an issue?

Even though he's in Hawaii, he would talk with us on the radio. How are you, sir? Good, Adam. What's going on, buddy?

Oh, man. There's a lot going on. I spent a lot of time talking about Lamar Jackson today.

So, let me start with that. Is there another reason beyond the contract and what he wants that Lamar Jackson hasn't already signed with Baltimore or an offer sheet with another team? Well, I mean, he told the Ravens what on March 2 that he wanted to be traded.

So, listen, there has to be because I find it comical and laughable that teams like the commanders and their quarterback options and Arthur Blank and his quarterback options are going so far out of their way to say whatever they can think of that will not only keep Lamar Jackson from being signed but also, quite frankly, do the bidding of the Baltimore Ravens. You know, Lamar Jackson is 26 years old. He's in his prime. He's had an MVP season before. He's led the team to the playoffs multiple times. He's won a playoff game. Yet, every other quarterback in the NFL in his situation, whether it's Dak Prescott or anybody you want to talk about who has had injuries and has had failures in the postseason, has had no problems getting a contract. Yet, in a quarterback starved league, you have someone at 26 and the Tampa Bay Bucks are willing to go down the Baker Mayfield route over Lamar Jackson.

Okay, Sam Darnold is going to compete for the starting job in San Francisco according to the front office. Give me a break. Give me a break. You can't pretend like you think we can believe this. Here's where I am, because the contract he's demanding is... Well, hold on.

Here's the other thing, though, real quickly, right? To have a contract demand, someone's actually going to have to talk to Lamar. No one's even talking to him.

They're not even having a conversation. So, how can you even make some sort of observation about a contract demand if you're not talking to the dude? First of all, I believe that Lamar Jackson wants the Deshaun Watson contract because it's already out there. So, if that's the starting point, I understand why the rest of the league, because nobody's friends with Jimmy Haslam now, I understand why the rest of the league doesn't want to do this. Do they hide behind, well, we want to win, we want to win, but you have this guy out there who's available for two first-round picks if you are willing to do that. Is there anybody that you think would cross that Rubicon and become that team, that owner that will sign him to that contract?

And if so, why haven't they? Well, listen, it only takes one. And we've seen it happen time and time again. And it only took one team, Jimmy Haslam and the Browns, to offer up everything that Deshaun Watson wanted. But I do find it really interesting that when the Deshaun Watson contract came into fruition about this time last year, it was at the NFL owners meetings, the first person to say how terrible that contract was for the NFL was Ravens owner, Steve Pashati.

He was the first one. And I would also like to know, how were the Ravens so sure about what the market was going to be for Lamar Jackson? How are they so confident that they knew that no one would be taking a flyer on this guy? Look, no one likes to talk about the C-word collusion. And it's very hard to prove.

But are you kidding me? When there's a bidding war for almost everybody else, including a guy who had 25 allegations of sexual assault, 25, not one, not two, not five, 20 plus five. And somebody was willing to go all in on him.

And this guy who's had a demonstrably better career. And I don't want to hear the injury thing either, by the way. The injury thing is so bogus. Joe Burrow got injured, missed a lot of time. He's not having any issues.

Well, he runs around a lot. Dak Prescott has missed significant time twice in his career, once with the ankle. And then this past season, he missed five games.

He had no problem securing the bag and they're gonna have to rework his deal again. So that argument is completely BS to me. And if we're being honest with it, if the Ravens and Lamar were on better standing at the end of this past season, he might've come back and played, but he was protecting himself. So you can't say, oh, look at all this time he's missed. That does not wash at all. I agree a hundred percent, by the way, Deshaun Watson, the guy who got the contract also missed time with the torn ACL.

And if I'm not mistaken, didn't play a game for two years. There's not an argument. There's not an argument the NFL owners are putting out there that makes any sense.

All right. So here's where I want to go with Trey Wingo on this particular, and this will end our Lamar, the Lamar Jackson portion of the conversation. If whatever team let's just say, it's the jets who are dealing with their own quarterback issues, and we're going to go there next. If the jets decided, you know what, we're going to give that contract to Lamar Jackson. So here's five years, $240 million fully guaranteed.

How fast would Steve Basciotti match that contract? Well, that's, I think that's the other thing here, right? I think a lot of teams feel like all we're doing is matching, doing the work for the Ravens. And that's the thing that is problematic here. And oh, by the way, we can talk about the jets because there's no chance they're doing that.

There's zero chance. But I do think that's an underlying issue that I think is fair, but then come out and say it, like don't hide behind all this other crap. You know what I mean? Just say, look, if we make this offer, there's the chance that it doesn't matter anyway, because the Ravens are just going to match it.

So why are we doing the work for them? That I would respect. That I could say, oh, okay, that makes sense to me. I understand that.

But to hide behind all this other garbage is just nonsense. I would love to have an owner say, look, nobody wants to give this contract. Nobody wants to be the owner that does what Jimmy Haslam did. But I say that, right. But nobody will. But I firmly believe that Baltimore is hoping that somebody else does. So they're not the impetus for them because they have built their entire franchise around Lamar Jackson as the Jets have built their entire off season around trading for Aaron Rodgers, who became the first person ever to publicly say into the universe that I want to be traded to the Jets. I don't believe anybody has ever said that before.

I can say that as a recovering Jets fan, Trey Wingo. How does this play out? Will it wait until June when the dead cap it is lower? No, it's going to happen because usually you can designate someone for that way before then. That happens all the time.

It's going to happen sooner than people think. You know, you mentioned Joe Douglas and he was asked about at the NFL owner's meetings when he considered Lamar Jackson. And his answer was very telling.

He said, no, we're far, we're far too far down the road with Aaron Rodgers to even consider that Aaron Rodgers is going to be the Jets starting quarterback. And a lot of people say that the Packers have all this leverage. Really? Do they?

I don't think so either. Do they really? Do they really have all this leverage? I mean, they could, you're right.

Technically they could hold that until September if they wanted. How does that help them? How does that help them in any way, shape or form when every day, every question to every player and every coach and the president, what's going on with Aaron Rodgers? What's going on with Aaron Rodgers?

What's going on with Aaron Rodgers? And then you're really going to risk the idea of the Jets saying, well, screw it then. And then you've got a 60 million, a dead cap hit the following year.

No, you need to mitigate this now and you need to mitigate it so you can get potential with the draft. It's going to happen. Yeah, but this will be the year. If the Packers drag it out, this will be the year that Rodgers shows up to all the off season activities just to make it a real problem for Green Bay. And he would do that.

Oh, sure. Aaron, Aaron has become, I don't think people understand just how much he's become like Brett, like Brett. I mean, this following, not just following the obvious pattern of going to the Jets, although Favre didn't really want to go to the Jets. He just had to go there first.

To get back to where he wanted to go. But it's following the same pattern. I use the joke all the time.

There is a Crocs store in Times Square, just in case anybody's curious. So you could use that. Feel free to work that in.

I will. Is Rodgers still a top, I don't know, five, seven quarterback in the league that can take the Jets where they want to be? Well, first of all, you know, last year there was a lot of things that went against him.

Obviously he lost a lot of his weapons. Devante Adams was gone. It took a while for Watson to find his form, but Aaron Rodgers can still play. There's no question about it, but let's take it one step further. Let's assume that this thing gets done very, it's going to get done.

So when it gets done, let's forget. Is he a top five quarterback in the NFL? Is he a top five quarterback in the AFC?

Good point. I mean, here's the way I read the top quarterbacks in the AFC, Patrick Mahomes, Patrick Mahomes on one leg, Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Justin Herbert, Trevor Lawrence. I mean like Aaron might be the fifth best quarterback in the AFC, the fifth best quarterback in the AFC, and maybe the second best quarterback in his own division. How about Russell Wilson with Sean Payton in Denver? Yeah, I love what Sean said at the NFL owners meetings about last year's film.

He said it was hard to watch. Sean, if anyone can fix it, Sean can fix it, but Russell needs to fix himself, okay? Like the thing about Russell in the sacks, that goes back to Seattle. That was a problem they had when he was in Seattle, but you know, it was working back then and he had receivers that he knew and trusted. That never came to fruition this season in Denver. So, you know, they can bring in all the offensive line help that they have, but unless Russell modifies the way he plays, those things are still going to be persistent.

Trey Wingo, before we let you go, a couple of very quick things. First of all, about Russell, how much of that off the field drama, have my own office on a separate floor, how much of that matters to this situation? It matters so much that that was the first thing Sean Payton addressed when he took the job and I think that that's all you can say. He said, yeah, we're not doing that anymore. That's not happening anymore. Like those were the one of the first things he said when he took the job and he was asked about it and he could have said, well, we'll talk about it or we'll see what happens. No, he put it out there publicly. So Russell Wilson basically knew there's a new sheriff in town and his name is Sean Payton.

All right, final thing. And this goes back a couple of years. Sometimes you don't realize when your window is open and when it might be closing. The Buffalo Bills were this close to winning the game in Kansas City and getting, actually would have only been to the conference finals because that was a quarterfinal game. And to me, Sean McDermott blew it at the end.

Allow 13 seconds. There's no way you can lose that game and they lost that game. I understand it's Patrick Mahomes, but how much pressure are they under as an organization to do it this year because it's hard to keep recycling this with the nature of the salary cap in the league?

I think you're onto something. In fact, I'm talking about that later today with the folks at Pro Football Network. They're losing parts now and they still have Josh Allen and Staphon Diggs is still there. Although I think some of the shine has come off Gabe Davis a little bit.

He's come back to earth a little bit. But yeah, walking into this season, I adamantly believe the Kansas City Chiefs and the Cincinnati Bengals are superior football teams in that conference. And for as good as they've been for this run, they literally have one AFC Championship game appearance to show for it. One appearance, not a win, one appearance. Divisional round losses all around that.

So you have to wonder, have they missed the mark? I think that's a fair question. Trey Wingo, I only ask fair questions and I appreciate your time. Give me a master's pick and then we'll say goodbye until another time. I like Tony Finau this year. He's finally got some wins under his belt and he's a birdie machine and I would love to see Tony break through it and take the green jacket. He makes everybody smile. Tony, you can't help but smile when you watch Tony Finau. Trey Wingo, at Wingo's, 33rd team, pro football network, Caesar's sports book, half forgotten history.

Did I leave anything out? No, PGA Tour Live. There you go, PGA Tour Live. Trey, enjoy Hawaii. I'll talk to you soon. Cheers, my friend. You got it.