Why Lamar Jackson’s trade re...

PHOENIX (AP) — The title was inevitable because of the second tweet's 11th through 14th words: "I requested a trade."

After all, it's not every day that an NFL player, let alone an NFL quarterback, and even more unusually, a former NFL MVP, announces that he has asked his team to move him. And it wasn't just any day or moment when Lamar Jackson made public his desire to be traded by the Baltimore Ravens.

Jackson's four-tweet thread went up at 10:48 a.m. ET, or 7:48 a.m. Arizona time, three minutes into the AFC coaches' 30-minute media session during the NFL's annual owners meetings. The thread broke when NFL club owners, personnel executives, and head coaches descended on the posh Biltmore hotel for days of meetings... and maybe even personnel chats, with important decision-makers all under one roof.

Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh began his press conference with a request for comment on Jackson's tweets, which he indicated he hadn't read. It took thirteen and a half minutes before any non-Jackson-related inquiries were asked.

While the timing of Jackson's tweets was fascinating, and the trade-request revelation was a cocktail of the impressively assertive and perilously transparent, Jackson's opening phrase to that trade request may say more about the likelihood of his request being granted than the request itself.

Because, as we wait to see how the Ravens will answer to a request that feels new and fresh to us, it's likely that they and the NFL as a whole have already done so. And it's feasible that Jackson's tweets will reveal more about the previous month than the next.

Lamar Jackson reveals curious order of events

The Ravens officially placed a non-exclusive franchise tag on Jackson at the March 7 deadline. That decision spurred a wave of questions.

Should Jackson be offended by the $32.4 million he’ll earn on the non-exclusive tag rather than the roughly $45 million the exclusive tag would have awarded him? Are the Ravens playing with fire allowing teams to negotiate — albeit with a two first-round draft pick floor — for the services of a 26-year-old former MVP? Why, the question soon became, did so many team sources confirm so quickly and so unusually transparently, that their club was not planning to negotiate for Jackson?

Were NFL owners colluding against the trend of fully guaranteed megadeals a year after the Cleveland Browns acquired Deshaun Watson and signed him to a fully guaranteed five-year deal worth $230 million a year ago?

Jackson’s tweets introduce another scenario: Had those trade conversations, and back-channel discussions of value and availability, already taken place?

“As of March 2nd,” Jackson tweeted, “I requested a trade from the Ravens organization for which the Ravens has [sic] not been interested in meeting my value.”

His March 2 request thus landed five days before the team’s deadline to place a tag on him and five days before the rush of teams insisting “we’re not going for him.”

It was after Jackson’s apparent trade request that the Ravens eschewed the exclusive tag that NFL bylaws define as “not free to sign with another club” in favor of the tag for which a “player shall be permitted to negotiate a player contract with any club, except that draft-choice compensation of two first-round draft selections shall be made in the event he signs with a new club.”

What Harbaugh’s strategy means for Ravens’ next step with Lamar

None of this is to suggest the Ravens and Jackson don’t have serious discontent. The franchise shouldn't underestimate the complications of Jackson’s desire to play elsewhere. And Jackson should be concerned what the Ravens' willingness to let him test the market says about his ability to earn the value he wants and the lengths he may need to go to to achieve them.

Watson sat out a season before earning a fully guaranteed contract. Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins played out two franchise tags in Washington before his next team guaranteed him the full value of his deal.

The Ravens similarly used a counterculture mindset selecting Jackson with the final pick of the first round of the 2018 NFL Draft after no other team had pounced.

Now, Harbaugh insists a Baltimore offense tweaked to more up-tempo and no-huddle concepts is again being designed to favor Jackson’s skills. So trade request or not, Jackson’s path staying put in Baltimore is clearly visible.

“Lamar’s under contract and of course that’s the guy I want to see be our quarterback. That’s my guy,” Harbaugh said. “I’m excited, thinking about Lamar all the time, thinking about him as our quarterback. We’re building our offense around that idea. I'm just looking forward to getting back to football.

“And confident that’s going to happen.”