By failing to extend Lamar Jackson’s contract, the Baltimore Ravens have put themselves in an impossible position from which they must finally break free before it’s too late – a commentary.

It does seem a bit strange what’s going on in Baltimore right now. On the one hand, there’s the solid draft and the strong offseason with the key signing of Trey Hendrickson; on the other hand, there’s the murky situation surrounding arguably the best player in the league.

At 29, Lamar Jackson is in his prime, was named MVP two years ago, and is heading into the new season fully healthy after his injury-plagued 2025 campaign. At the same time, following his five-year, $260 million extension in 2023, he is only under contract through the end of the 2027 season.

However, because the Ravens have completely overplayed the gray area of contract restructuring in Jackson’s case, they effectively have to make a decision about their superstar’s future as early as this season.

NFL: Ravens have converted Lamar Jackson’s entire salary

The reason for this is financial: In March, the Ravens converted Jackson’s base salary of $51.25 million entirely into a signing bonus and reduced his salary for this season to the veteran minimum of $1.3 million.

This gave them the flexibility this season to sign Hendrickson and top draft pick Olaivavega Ioane, but they’ve seriously compromised their future in the process.

After all, the money doesn’t just disappear; it’s simply spread out over the coming contract years, leading to a massive cap hit. Specifically, this amounts to $84.9 million for the upcoming season, which corresponds to roughly 27 percent of the total cap space.

If you factor in that the Ravens have already restructured contracts for other players—and the contracts of Roquan Smith, Nnamdi Madubuike, Kyle Hamilton, Mark Andrews, Derrick Henry, and Travis Jones together cost another $145 million—they have roughly $100 million left for the remaining 47 (!) roster spots.

A ticking time bomb.

And the worst part: The Ravens have brought this situation upon themselves. By restructuring to the maximum extent, they unnecessarily exhausted all available contract years to stretch out Jackson’s salary. A second restructuring in 2027 to free up cap space would still be theoretically possible, but it would yield significantly less cap space than the first, simply because there are no more years left to spread the burden across. So the toolbox is already nearly empty.

Baltimore Ravens have three options with Jackson

Looking at the situation objectively, the Ravens now have three options:

They agree to a new contract with Jackson as soon as possible.

They look for a trade partner for their franchise player.

They do nothing and lose Jackson in 2028 without compensation.

Since options 2 and 3 don’t seem particularly desirable, let’s take a closer look at option 1.

What’s unique about Jackson is that he doesn’t have an agent and negotiates his own contracts. From his perspective, this already worked out exceptionally well in 2023, when he finally secured his desired deal after lengthy negotiations, having demanded a trade.

Strangely enough, however, the status of the current negotiations is unclear. Owner Steve Bisciotti made it clear in January that the team wanted to extend Jackson’s contract on the same terms as three years ago, but with an even higher salary. “Plug in your number and move on” was his specific request.

Not much has happened since then, though. GM Eric DeCosta explained in March that they had “no time left” for an extension before free agency, which is why the restructuring was the contingency plan.

What does Lamar Jackson want?

It is therefore likely that the two sides are far apart in salary negotiations. Jackson will demand more than Dak Prescott (4 years/$240 million)—and the price could rise even further.

If the Ravens fail to extend his contract before the end of the season, the pressure would steadily increase. In addition to the looming cap hit ($85 million) starting in March 2027, Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye, and Bo Nix will all be eligible for extensions in 2027.

Since quarterbacks are reluctant to earn less than their peers, these extensions are likely to drive Jackson’s salary demands even higher.

On top of that, Jackson has included both a no-tag clause and a no-trade clause in his current contract. So even if the Ravens wanted to, they couldn’t send him to another team without his consent.