Lamar Jackson Needs Renewed Commitment From Ravens, But It’s Complicated

The Ravens’ post-Harbaugh future depends on fully recommitting to Jackson, one of the NFL’s few elite quarterbacks, despite cap and roster challenges.

There was clearly a difference of opinion between Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, president Sashi Brown, general manager Eric DeCosta, and John Harbaugh over the short and long-term direction of the franchise, which led to the longtime, Super Bowl-winning head coach’s firing on Tuesday.

There should be no such difference of opinion on its current and future quarterback, Lamar Demeatrice Jackson Jr. If you’ve watched the NFL over the course of the 2025-26 season, you can understand why Merriam-Webster named slop as its 2025 word of the year. There aren’t enough quality starting quarterbacks to go around for all 32 teams, and when a number of those quality players get hurt, they’re generally replaced by QBs who aren’t good enough to consistently win their teams’ games.

If the average ESPN QBR rating is 50, only 13 eligible signal callers scored above a 60 this year during the 2025 regular season. Of those 13, Brock Purdy and Mac Jones split time for the 49ers, and Patrick Mahomes and Daniel Jones suffered significant injuries that put their ability to play at all next season in doubt. Being a really good quarterback in the NFL on a consistent basis is really, really hard. Only four quarterbacks have had QBRs of at least 60 during the last four regular seasons in a row: Mahomes, Josh Allen, Justin Herbert, and Jackson.

Lamar Jackson is still a player you build around, and the Ravens need a coach and a roster that continue to reflect that fact. Being able to build an offense that maximizes Jackson’s still-elite abilities makes the Baltimore job still quite attractive, despite an underachieving season in which the Ravens missed the playoffs on an errant field goal kick in the regular season’s final snap.

But this necessary renewed commitment to Lamar is complicated and won’t be easy for several reasons.

As I write this on Wednesday, Lamar is celebrating his 29th birthday. He missed three games early in the season with a hamstring injury and the Week 17 game against Green Bay with a back contusion. Jackson had the fewest rushing yards of his career in 2025, the fewest passing yards since his rookie season, and finished with a losing record as a starter for the first time in his career. But he still led the league in yards per pass completion, was third in yards per attempt, and second in percentage of passes that led to touchdowns.

But as Jackson enters his 30s in a year and inevitably becomes less mobile, he needs to protect himself better, and the Ravens need a better job of keeping him upright and out of pressure situations. According to Pro-Football Reference, Lamar was pressured on 23.6% of his dropbacks, the highest percentage since his rookie season. That could be, in part, because the Ravens spent just 10.87% of their salary cap on offensive linemen this past season, per Spotrac, the league’s sixth-lowest allocation at the position.

That math gets a lot more difficult, as Jackson’s cap number is set to balloon next season from $43.5 million in 2025 to $74.5 million in 2026 and 2027. Pro Bowl center Tyler Linderbaum and starting guard Daniel Faalele are set to be unrestricted free agents, along with starters Dre’Mont Jones, Alohi Gilman, and Kyle Van Noy. And as ancillary receiving target DeAndre Hopkins hits free agency, Lamar would love for Baltimore to increase the 5.33% of the cap spent on wide receivers, fifth-lowest in the NFL, though its percentage of the cap spent on tight ends was fourth in the league between Mark Andrews and upcoming free agent Isaiah Likely.

There’s also the question of whether Jackson even wants to stay in Baltimore long term. While he repeatedly said he “absolutely” wants to remain a Raven, an explosive Baltimore Sun column accusing Lamar of falling asleep during team meetings, playing video games late at night and not prioritizing maintaining his body, dictating that practices are in the afternoon instead of the morning, has special rules for himself instead of the rest of the team, and cannot handle criticism didn’t come from nowhere. Jackson has won two MVP awards despite little skill position support and could still ask for a trade, as he did in 2023 while negotiating a contract extension.

Would anyone really blame Lamar Jackson if he wanted to jump ship? Perhaps, but as long as he’s still playing at an elite level as an established superstar quarterback when so many teams lack sure things at sports’ most important position, the Ravens need to do everything in their power to build around Jackson as their best path forward in delivering Baltimore a championship as the franchise begins its post-Harbaugh era.