You don't want the Seahawks to trade for Lamar Jackson
Seaside Joe 1184: The NFL is caught in a vice under the weight of rising player salaries
Seaside Joe 1184 was meant to be an article about why Lamar Jackson is too risky in style and underwhelming as a passer to be given a contract on par with some of his peers. But then it became too hard to ignore the fact that these types of conversations are awkward, unsettling, and a little ugly. Before I knew it, I was writing about the effects of extreme wealth, the psychological impact of having $100 million hanging over your head on every play, and an unsolvable problem that will probably continue to lead to more holdouts, more trades, more upset fans, and more time spent criticizing really good players who don’t deserve harsh criticism… unless you’re talking about the decision to pay that player $136,986.30 PER DAY.
Aaron Rodgers makes $1 million per week on his football contract alone.
The consideration of writing about facts like that one are that I must immediately add that this post is NOT a criticism of how much NFL players get paid because we know that their share of the wealth is actually lower than it probably should be. Every time a player signs a record-sized contract, what you should really be thinking about is not necessarily “Wow, he got $27 million per year?” It’s more interesting to me is that if a player is getting $27 million, that means that someone much higher up the totem pole than him is getting A LOT more than that.
Roger Goodell gets $64 million per year to do a job that could seemingly be handled by a competent professional making, I don’t know, $500,000 per year? Which I still think is a lot of money! Like a “Wow, you’re rich” kind of salary.
In 1983, John Elway signed a five-year, $5 million contract and back then it was considered a lot of money. Now consider that 40 years later, the highest-paid quarterbacks are making 50 times that amount. Think about what you do for a living and ask yourself, “Am I making 50 times the amount of salary that someone doing my job was earning in 1983?”
This was 12 years ago:
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There was nobody doing exactly the type of “job” that I have now in 1983, but I am certainly not making more than four times the amount that a bottom rung sports writer was earning 40 years ago. I might be lucky to be making twice that amount. When my dad was my age, about 40 years ago, he was making more money per year than I am making now—and I live in LOS ANGELES.
So if the top-paid players can make 50 times the amount today that they were making four decades ago, what does that mean for how much richer the owners are today than they were in the 80s? And an even bigger difference between the owners and the NFLPA is that the owners are largely the same families that they were in the 80s, while the players are constantly being rotated in and out of the league.
It is EASY for a person to write out the debate teams and agents are having over whether or not Jackson and quarterbacks like him are “worth” $50 million per season. “Well, he does this thing well…” “But he doesn’t do that thing well.”
I’m sure that you get it by now. Jackson has the ceiling to be Cam Newton 2011-2015, but the floor to be Cam Newton 2016-2021. You don’t really need me to tell you that.
What’s more interesting to me is asking and answering the question, “How the fuck did we get here?” and “Is this going to destroy the league?”
As corny as this phrase is… have we taken it seriously enough yet?
That’s how an article intended to be about Jackson’s blend of phenomenal arm talent, rushing abilities, with erratic accuracy and poor decision making skills and the true “value” of that under the salary cap instead turned into a discussion of wealth and the inevitable standoffs that we’re seeing from players like Jackson and Kyler Murray. The same situation that led to the Seahawks trading Russell Wilson, the Packers giving Aaron Rodgers a raise, and the Browns guaranteeing Deshaun Watson so much money that some teams literally can’t afford a franchise QB.
If you’ve chosen to read today’s article, know that I only have questions, not answers. This isn’t anti-player, anti-owner, or anti-capitalism. It is not me saying that players should be paid less or that Lamar Jackson “isn’t worth” some amount, when we all know that there are quarterbacks who do less and make more.
It is only the beginning of a discussion that I think we need to have: What happens to athletes when they accumulate more wealth than they can spend in five lifetimes? What happens to the many players around the richest players—the ones who will be broke within five years of their careers ending—when they see what they’re not making? What sort of resentment builds up in fans when the highest-paid players fall short of expectations, which the majority of them will?
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Think about those questions and then let me know in the comments where you currently stand on these issues—try not to fall into the trap of debating what Lamar Jackson or another player “is worth” based on stats. Money is not a comfortable topic for most of us, but as Kristjan Sokoli told me on the Seaside Joe podcast, it is too important to ignore. Which is a good time for me to say that your subscriptions to this free daily Seahawks newsletter are greatly appreciated.
Lamar Jackson and the weight of $23 million being an insult
Lamar Jackson and the Ravens are in an unusual standoff, but not one that is entirely unfamiliar to Baltimore—and the last time it happened, the result paid off handsomely for the quarterback and not so well for the Ravens.
As a mid-first round pick in 2008, Joe Flacco signed a five-year, $23.8 million contract with only $8.3 million of it fully guaranteed, as opposed to the fully-guaranteed first round rookie contracts that started in 2011. Though he was never controversial for off-field reasons, Flacco was the most hotly-debated “Is he good or is he bad?” quarterback in the NFL over his first four seasons.
In that time, Flacco led the Ravens to a 44-20 record, four playoff appearances, five playoff wins, and had fringe top-10 passing stats. But many doubted that Flacco was the main reason for that success and understandably questioned his accuracy, decision making, and mechanics, bringing to life the “Is Joe Flacco elite?” memes.
10 years before it became acceptable for a quarterback to holdout for more money (it may not even be acceptable now), Flacco honored his contract and returned in 2012 without reaching an agreement on an extension; the two sides were reportedly only $1 million apart before the season, but Flacco decided to bet on himself instead of taking a six-year contract with a $35 million guarantee.
Despite a near catastrophic collapse in December, the Ravens fell backwards into the 2012 playoffs at 10-6 and then Flacco played the best football of his career, throwing 11 touchdowns and no interceptions during a Super Bowl-winning postseason run.
Having doubted Flacco’s ability to take them to the Super Bowl before, Baltimore suffered the consequences of then making him the highest-paid player in NFL history after he won Super Bowl MVP. The Ravens signed Flacco to a six-year, $120.6 million with $52 million guaranteed in 2013.
One could then argue that the Baltimore Ravens would be stupid to make the same mistake twice, calling Jackson’s bluff (if he’s even holding out, which is unclear, he’s just not showing up for voluntary football practices) and then eventually owing him considerably more if he has a bounce-back campaign in 2022.
However, the contract offer to Flacco felt like an emotional decision at the time, and Baltimore seemed to make an exception for the quarterback that typically would seem to go against the organizational philosophy. The Ravens were stuck between being the team that either had to overpay a mediocre quarterback or be the team that let a 28-year-old Super Bowl champion go to another franchise without knowing if maybe his postseason performance was only the beginning.
Baltimore did go 11-5, 9-7, 12-4, 12-4, and 10-6 during Flacco’s first five seasons, setting a record for wins to start a career that was later broken by Russell Wilson.
But they absolutely should not have re-signed Joe Flacco in 2013.
Flacco threw a franchise-record 22 interceptions in the first year of his new deal, setting career-lows in TD% rate, Y/A, passer rating, and adjusted yards per attempt as the Ravens finished 8-8 and out of the playoffs. He was a little better in 2014, winning another playoff game that year, but then suffered his first career injury in 2015 and progressively got worse over the next three seasons… resulting in Baltimore trading up to draft Lamar Jackson in 2018.
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Flacco was no better as a quarterback at the conclusion of the 2012 season than he was at the beginning of it—the only difference is that this time the Ravens got luckier in January than the previous four years, including an insane 70-yard touchdown pass to Jacoby Jones against the Broncos that should have never happened. I’m not taking anything away from Baltimore’s Super Bowl championship—luck is ALWAYS part of the equation—I am only saying that Flacco was clearly still Joe Flacco at the time he signed his contract.
So why did the Ravens do the illogical thing by paying him way more than their offer less than a year earlier?
Now it is 2022 and Baltimore again must decide whether the current quarterback of the franchise is a franchise quarterback. The biggest difference is that Flacco made $23.8 million for his entire five-year contract.
Jackson is currently missing OTAs and he’s due to make $23 million next season alone.
I’m not sure what the Ravens will decide to do, but this situation seems more complicated than the last one. The biggest similarities are that the team is winning, Baltimore is 37-12 when Jackson starts and they were 1-4 last season when he was out, and that there are questions about Jackson’s ability to extend his part in that success for another four or five more years.
On one hand, Jackson was the 2019 MVP and he’s clearly talented in ways that Flacco could only imagine. He not only has impressive arm talent, Jackson is also one of the best players in the NFL with the ball in his hands at any position. On the other, it doesn’t really matter how many ways you attempt to spin his 2021 season with cherry picked statistics, Jackson is attempting to get paid after his worst career campaign.
But again, I caution you to fight the urge to debate Jackson’s skills as a football player or his value—I only bring these points up to highlight the larger issue that has led the NFL to being a league of unhappy millionaires vs. stingy billionaires.
There is a brewing problem with team-player loyalty right now that has been ignored, and that is that the risks are becoming too great for either side because of the perpetual raise in player salaries. How can this annual series of “record contract for X position” go on forever? Does it really never end? Will we get to the point where a quarterback signs a one-year, $300 million contract, and then promptly retires after the season?
It’s not that the teams can’t afford the current generation of $100 million guarantees. They can and if anything, they continue to lowball the players. NFL teams have gone from an average valuation of $423,000,000 in 2000 to $3,045,000,000 in 2020, according to statista.com:
To most owners, the last 20 years has been like, “I used to be worth $1.5 billion and now I’m worth $7.4 billion. Neat.” Most players are going from, “I used to walk two miles to the grocery store because I didn’t want to waste gasoline” to “I’m online shopping for a custom Bentley.” That’s more than a “neat” feeling.
The reason that owners are hesitant to pay out online Bentley shopping money is not a lack of funds, it’s that most of the league has recognized the value of cost savings at quarterback (ex: Matthew Stafford and Joe Burrow were the 9th and 19th-highest paid QBs in 2021, Patrick Mahomes was one of the lowest-paid starters from 2018-2020) and all quarterbacks have recognized what they’re being paid, what their peers are being paid, and what they’re worth.
Did you know that Ryan Tannehill, Kirk Cousins, Jared Goff, Carson Wentz, and Jimmy Garoppolo are the first, third, fourth, sixth, and seventh-highest paid QBs of 2022, respectively? Now maybe it’s easier to see where Jackson and Murray are coming from.
Now consider the incredible difference in pay gap from Flacco’s situation 10 years ago to Jackson’s in 2022.
Going into 2012, Joe Flacco was set to be paid $8 million, which was the same as TOM BRADY that year. And Peyton Manning, the highest-paid QB of 2012 right after signing with the Broncos in free agency, was making $18 million that year. How can Flacco complain when he’s being paid the same as Brady and only $5 million shy of being a top-five paid QB?
Jackson’s fifth-year option is set to pay him $23 million this year and Deshaun Watson signed a contract worth 10 times that amount in guaranteed money. Kirk Cousins will get $40 MILLION in cash this year and he will make $70 MILLION over the next two seasons!
Flacco was making $10 million less than Manning in 2012. Jackson is making $47 million less than Kirk Cousins over the next two years, based on their current contracts. Goff, Wentz, and Tannehill are being paid more than Jackson in 2022. And because of how the draft works, Josh Rosen has been paid more than Lamar Jackson over the last four years.
“But Lamar could get $47 million next year!” Yes, and that’s why he isn’t at OTAs. Based on his style of play, his underwhelming 2021 season, missing games due to injury, Jackson is taking a risk worth over $100 million guaranteed by playing football. He takes the same risk by not playing football. And teams risk falling into the basement by paying that amount, then assume the same risk if they don’t.
Ideally, football players would just play football and owners would just pay football players what they’re worth. There are just no simple answers to what a football player is worth because there are only abstract avenues towards assessing the value of each position and it is impossible for franchise’s to predict the future when they’re making those gambles.
I just don’t know how anybody could concentrate when they have these unfathomable paychecks dangling over their heads—Have we gone too far?
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Is this the ideal scenario for players to be in? If Jackson and Murray play out their 2022 seasons on their current contracts, should those respective teams want their quarterbacks to have a $200 million lottery ticket constantly just outside of their reach during every practice? On every play? With every on-field decision and every off-field decision?
The result of this has been a much more consistent separation of teams and franchise players over the last few years, including Wilson and Watson in 2022, as well as receivers Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill, and A.J. Brown, almost all of them exclusively because of monetary reasons.
It has also meant that even players at the caliber of Aaron Rodgers will send cryptic threats of wanting to move on (and then the Packers ponied up the cash), while players not yet at the caliber of Rodgers, like Jackson and Murray, are threatening to hold out.
Can teams pay them more? Yes. Can they make it work under the salary cap? Yes. But teams also want to win and so the bar for “franchise quarterback” has gone up. It was one thing for Flacco and Andy Dalton to be making $20 million per season in the previous decade, when that was the going rate to not-lose your starting quarterback. It is another when the benchmark being eyed by Russell Wilson right now is $51 million per season and $200 million in guaranteed money.
It doesn’t matter if the salary cap has gone up. I’m not talking about the salary cap and affordability. I’m talking about making a quarter of a billion dollars for playing sports. I’m also not disparaging players for that number, the money is there to be spent—but even the greedy owners will eventually start to have those same internal discussions… “A quarter of a billion dollars for sports? Can’t we find someone else?”
Keeping Lamar Jackson in Baltimore and Kyler Murray in Arizona should be the EASIEST thing to do. As simple as Dan Marino playing 17 years with the Dolphins, John Elway’s 16 years with the Broncos, or Steve Young’s 13 years with the 49ers. But had they entered the NFL recently, Marino would’ve forced his way into a better situation, Elway would have asked Denver for a Wilson-like trade in the early-90s, and Young would’ve scoffed at backing up Joe Montana for all those years.
I’m not saying it is better or worse—I’m only acknowledging the differences.
(Yes, Elway forced a trade to the Broncos before his NFL career started and Young played two seasons with the Buccaneers prior to the Niners. That’s a different topic.)
Untenable situations have led to the Patriots losing Tom Brady, the Lions trading Matthew Stafford, the Seahawks trading Russell Wilson, and the Texans trading Deshaun Watson, transactions for franchise quarterbacks thought to be impossible only five years ago. Now you have franchise quarterbacks who are skipping (voluntary) practices, another situation that wouldn’t compute for Young, Marino, Elway, Warren Moon, Jim Kelly, and so on.
When will it end? What’s next? Because a year from now, Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert will be up for contract extensions (only three years after the 2019 draft), while Cousins and Tannehill could force their way (or be forced into) trades or being released.
If the Seahawks draft a quarterback in 2023, they would be extremely lucky to even find a player who plays two great seasons on his rookie deal before having to decide if he’s worth $250,000,000 fully guaranteed in 2026. Right now we’re talking about what Lamar and Kyler are worth, but don’t forget that Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud would have to be laser focused on football to set aside the fact that even if they’re finally making money on lucrative NIL deals, they have a nine-figure carrot dangling on a stick in front of them already.
One thing that we do not talk about is the impact that greed is having on the NFL right now and I’m not talking about the players. The players are merely following the line and doing the logical, though I have questions about the psychological and emotional impact that making $150 million has on people as opposed to “only” making $3 million or $10 million.
What about the psychological impact of making $800,000 (the high-paid players have gone way up, but the low-to-mid tier players haven’t seen as huge of a change in pay) and knowing that some of your teammates are making 10 times that amount, while a few could be making 20 to 30 times that amount? The quarterback could be making 50 times more than his receivers.
“When will that be me? Why isn’t it me?” And if you tear your ACL at the wrong time, the consequences go beyond the football field. “That was almost me.”
Studies have shown that wealth can cloud moral judgment, reduce empathy, increase addictive behaviors, and people of great affluence have higher rates of depression. You can call me dramatic for even raising the point if you want to, but let’s at least acknowledge that NOBODY IS EVEN TALKING ABOUT THIS AS A POSSIBILITY for being something that could be impacting all NFL players.
I’m talking about how we got to this point of there even being billions of dollars to spend on players and the cumulative effect that incomprehensible amounts of payment for being an entertainer has on the psyche of virtually everyone involved.
When does it end? Are we going to start seeing players making $100 million per season? What does “pressure” feel like when you have to play a sport knowing that you have an estate worth $1 billion? Are players becoming depressed by the idea of only making $5 million per year? Are fans resenting any of these discussions or are we now simply too desensitized to hearing figures like $15 million and thinking, “Well, that’s not that much.”
$41,000 per day is “not that much.”
Yet that is pretty much what I think about Cooper Kupp’s bargain contract of four years and $47 million.
Kirk Cousins is making an entire Cooper Kupp contract more than Lamar Jackson over the next year. So on those terms, I find it sensible that Jackson expects more compensation.
And yet under the comparison that Jackson will make more money in 2022 than what his predecessor made total over the first five years of his career, after 80 regular season starts (Jackson has made 49 starts), nine playoff wins, and a Super Bowl championship, I keep coming back to the same questions.
How did we get here?
Is there any way out of this?
Where will we be in another ten years?
Should the Seahawks take the Lamar Jackson problem off of Baltimore’s hands?
Inevitably we’re going to get to this question, so let me address it first—but I’ll remind you that debating Jackson’s “value” is a trap that you do not want to fall into.
If the goal is to win a Super Bowl, then I’m not sure that any quarterback is truly worth a salary that eats into 15 percent of your salary cap. I think what really gets Rodgers, Mahomes, and Allen paid is the fact that fans actually want to watch them play football every week. Winning is a goal. Entertaining is often an even bigger goal.
Jackson is also a player worth watching play football. However, any team that acquires Jackson would have to do three things:
Trade multiple first round picks
Reduce their available spending in 2023-2025 by $40-$45 million annually
Change their offense
There are not many quarterbacks out there who would make me “excited” to execute those three to-dos. The allure of drafting your own Lamar Jackson or Josh Allen and getting the benefit of a rookie contract for a few years is too good for any team to pass up if they believe they could get that opportunity. And that is only further complicating Jackson’s situation in Baltimore:
Is there even a team in the entire NFL that would trade for the 2019 MVP?
The logical answer to that question should be a resounding “Yes.”
Somehow the amounts of money being funneled through a football league has unfortunately led us to a place where there are far too many reasons to say No.
Lamar Jackson is entertainment personified. Lamar Jackson should have been paid last off season, for sure this off season. You can spread his other worldly signing bonus over the length of the contract. Lamar Jackson should be paid in between the cracks "sounds bad" of Russell, Josh Allen, and Patrick Mahones. There is one major impediment, and that is Lamar Jackson. Lamar is playing what looks to be a crazy gamble, he will not sit down with Baltimore and negotiate a new deal. The Ravens have been waiting 18 months with pen in hand. The only way I can figure this is Lamar will get hit with the franchise tag next year and possibly the year after. He wants to get to free agency. This is the polar oppisite problem that the Ravens had with Flaco. Baltimore was forced to pay Flaco as their fan base would have come unglued if they didn't resign him. Jackson has no agent other than his mother.
There may be a breaking point at sometime on Quarterback salaries, but it will take a tremendous amount of courage, like Pete and John showed trading Russell in his later prime. Jackson has not reached his full potential yet and maybe that's another reason he is NOT negotiating a new deal. The polar oppisite is, mini Lamar, Kyler Murray. Kyler want his money NOW, but has not played anywhere near to the level Lamar has. Yes Baltimore missed the playoffs last year but they lost their top 3 runningbacks by game 2.
To add to the problem of what QBs make, wideouts are now making about what number 10 through fifteen Quarterbacks earn. The chicken and egg quandary.
NFL owners are so greedy that they have painted themselves Into a corner with their artificially low salary cap. They are also the only owners of the four major North American team sports, who do not usually garuntee a veterans contract past year two. How do they change this so they can keep the good players they scouted, drafted, and coached them into superstars. This discrepancy is most obvious when comparing between the QBs money and the second team runninback who plays on special teams as well. We all no runningbacks are a dime a dozen, that we can pick them up in round 7 or after the draft; because of this RB2 is making $800K and getting the absolute shit kicked out of them. Don't get me wrong if I had grown up playing football $800K is more money than I could make in a year unless I won the Lottery. Lastly speaking of the Lottery Jerry Jones has done better than winning a lottery every year of his life. He leveraged everything he had and bought the Cowboys for 2 and a third Aaron Roger seasons or $120 Million. The Denver Bronco's are going to sell for anywhere from $5 to $6 billion. The Bronco's are a fine franchise but that would makee Dallas worth 10 to 12 billion dollars. The salary cap has made it that its unlikely we see another dynasty until something changes. Sure tha Patriots were a dynasty but there Quarterback took 1/3 less money than what any team including the Pats would have gladly paid him. This decision was easy because his wife was earning $30 million a year. The Hawks had a chance with Russell on a round 3 rookie contract. Let's forget about the goal line
So much to unpack in that! Teams need to fill stadiums, so the hot shot players are a necessary part of that. Even the off-season drama of holding out enriches the top media outlets. The competition for who gets most is muddying up everything, but drama sells and equity doesn't.