Pro Football Rumors
The Ravens return 19 of 22 starters from the team they fielded in Buffalo six months ago. This is mostly good luck, as the team avoided too many expiring contracts to impact players, but that luck shifts pretty hard in the other direction in 2025 with Mark Andrews, Isaiah Likely, Tyler Linderbaum, Odafe Oweh, Travis Jones, Ar’Darius Washington, and many others heading into contract years. All-Pro safety Kyle Hamilton will be expecting a new deal sometime soon, as well. While the Ravens will surely be working towards extension offers for many of them, there’s one player they’ve already claimed is at the forefront of their priorities for an extension.
So many quarterbacks have gotten new deals in the last two years that Lamar Jackson‘s then-record-setting five-year, $260MM extension from 2023 feels like a distant memory. Thanks to recent new deals for Justin Herbert, Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, Jordan Love, Dak Prescott, Jared Goff, Tua Tagovailoa, Brock Purdy, and Josh Allen, Jackson’s once-league-leading $52MM annual average salary has sunk all the way down to 10th-highest in the NFL. Head coach John Harbaugh indicated at league meetings that Jackson could be back on top soon.
While it may seem counterintuitive to prioritize a Jackson extension when he still has three years remaining on his contract and the Ravens have so many players on contracts that expire sooner, getting Jackson on a new deal could serve a crucial role in helping to team to secure some of his talented teammates long-term. After this season, the final two years of Jackson’s contract have him sporting an untenable cap hit of $74.5MM. In order to help keep some of his teammates in Baltimore, Jackson and the Ravens could pursue an extension in the fashion of the man who beat him out for MVP last year.
Allen signed a six-year, $330MM extension in March despite the fact that his prior deal still had four years remaining. Instead of simply tacking on new years with more money to grant Allen his extension, the Bills exsentially scrapped the terms of his original contract, giving their MVP a raise while keeping some flexibility in the team’s salary cap for years to come.
Allen and Buffalo may have paved the way for Jackson and many quarterbacks to come. The Ravens could create $15.8MM of cap space in 2025 with an extension, and scrapping the terms of the original deal could help significantly lower Jackson’s cap hit in 2026-27, as well. The Ravens supposedly always planned to return to the negotiation table before reaching Jackson’s obscene cap hits, and the Bills may have provided them with the perfect solution.
One key point of difference could come with the cash and guarantee structures. Allen and the Bills chose an extremely straightforward method in which Allen’s cash receipts vary relatively little from year to year, ranging from $52.5MM to $58MM. In contrast, Jackson’s current contract saw him receive $80MM in Year 1 and $31.79MM in Year 2. In Allen’s deal, his full...
