Lying, tampering and compromis...

That was one of the first thoughts that a seasoned NFL agent had on Wednesday when asked to walk through a scenario: If Lamar Jackson had hired you the day after Deshaun Watson signed his fully guaranteed deal with the Cleveland Browns in March of 2022, how would you have handled the final year of negotiations between the Baltimore Ravens and their quarterback? And, more specifically, how would you have handled this month after the Ravens applied the non-exclusive franchise tag to Jackson, allowing him to seek a contract offer from another team?

We presented the scenario to three top-tier NFL agents. All have tremendous experience negotiating large starting quarterback contracts or representing elite players who have been franchised. All three have prior knowledge of both. All have strong feelings about Jackson's stalled extension talks with the Ravens, which have been going on for two years and may now be in the hands of whichever club (if any) decides to issue him a contract offer in the coming days.

The Deshaun Watson contract and an ensuing value disparity

All three agents agreed that one piece of information that has been repeatedly flagged as an issue in the negotiation is unquestionably true: The Deshaun Watson deal is the wedge between the two parties.

Unlike most elite quarterback deals that reset negotiating expectations in relatively expected increments, Watson’s deal with the Browns was an outlier like nothing the league had seen, shattering norms in guarantees and structure. For elite quarterbacks moving forward, it would be a measuring stick in future deals. For teams, it would be pegged as an absurd outlier from a desperate franchise. By September, when the Ravens reportedly had advanced a $250 million deal with $133 million guaranteed, it would already be seen as a potentially insurmountable hurdle.

How an agent would have been helpful with the franchise tag

At some point, an agent recognizes a gap that can’t be bridged. The difference between $250 million guaranteed and $133 million guaranteed is a wide enough margin that it’s unlikely to be overcome. All of the agents agreed that once it became apparent that the two sides hadn’t made significant strides by February, it should have triggered preparations for each potential franchise tag. Most especially the non-exclusive tag because that would have represented an opportunity to dial in Jackson’s market by gauging outside interest.

This is an important point in the process when the agents all pointed out the obvious: Their services and experience would have been extremely helpful to Jackson at the NFL scouting combine because that’s when they would have discreetly engaged with other teams to sort out his potential options.

Is there collusion against Lamar Jackson?

When the Browns traded for Watson and finalized his fully guaranteed five-year, $230.5 million extension, it didn’t take long for critics to hammer the moment as an act of desperation. Oddly, some of those same critics pointed at Lamar Jackson and alleged that it must be an act of collusion when teams didn’t immediately state their intentions to lavish him with a fully guaranteed deal — or preemptively suggested they wouldn’t be pursuing him at all. It’s curious to bash the Watson deal but then also bash the teams that don’t follow in the footsteps of it.

All three agents had varying opinions about the league and whether there is overt collusion taking place in the wake of Watson’s deal. But all three agreed on a few points that are tied to Jackson’s viability when it comes to a fully guaranteed deal. Among them: Some of the teams that preemptively bowed out of interest in Jackson are likely lying; other teams aren’t interested in Jackson because of the risk of guaranteeing a massive sum to a quarterback with an injury history; and Jackson doesn’t have the leverage or freedom that helped pave the way to the league’s previous fully guaranteed quarterback deals (established by Kirk Cousins and Watson).

What would an agent suggest now?

Unless a massive and somehow unmatchable offer sheet is extended for Jackson, he will have to contemplate playing out the 2023 season under the $32.4 million tag. If that’s the case, all three agents said they would consider some avenues to compromising. Each one, (in simplified terms):

Agent 1: “We fight for a fully guaranteed contract, or we can fight for it and settle on a contract that is practically guaranteed. Let’s just say it’s a four-year deal for $200 million. For the sake of making the math easy, let’s just say the salary is 50, 50, 50, 50 over the four years. The first $50 million will be fully guaranteed at signing. The second $50 million will also be fully guaranteed at signing. The third $50 million will be guaranteed for injury at signing, but convert to fully guaranteed in the waiver system at the beginning of Year 2. So, if they cut you after one year, you walk with $100 million. If they cut you after two years, you walk with $150 million. In other words, they aren’t cutting you. That’s a practically guaranteed deal.”

Agent 2: “Compromise by saying, ‘We don’t need five years fully guaranteed. We get your issues with it. He’s had injury history. Give us the three years fully guaranteed deal that Kirk Cousins got [in 2018] at $50 million per year and we’re done. Three years for $150 million fully guaranteed. You want to hedge your risk, we’re willing to gamble on ourselves.”

Agent 3: “I would ask Lamar about which approach he’s most willing to take between the Deshaun Watson or Kirk Cousins route for a fully guaranteed deal. Then I would go to the Ravens and say, ‘This is what we are preparing to do. We’re going to employ one of these two approaches and neither one is going to be good for you. So give us your best deal that gets as close as you’re willing to go. Then once that is done, depending on how close it is, I would suggest a compromise that gives everyone a win: Pay Lamar $250 million over five years — which would put him $7 million a year ahead of Watson [in average per year] — and then put the second-biggest guarantees [in league] history on the table in terms of guarantees at signing and practical guarantees. If both sides can meet at that point, Lamar walks away with what amounts to the second-biggest guarantees in history and the Ravens managed some of their risk by not guaranteeing the entire thing.