The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Watson deal impacting Ravens
Baltimore, Jackson in standoff over contract
The betrayal fans in Northeast Ohio still feel toward Baltimore for the Maryland city taking in the Browns when Art Modell moved the team from Cleveland in 1996 is now being felt by Ravens management toward Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam.
Lamar Jackson is the Ravens’ star quarterback who in 2022 completed a fifth-year option on his original four-year rookie contract ($32,487,648 total), and now he wants to cash in on a new deal. But not only does he want to be paid handsomely, he wants more guaranteed money than the unprecedented, five-year fully guaranteed $230 million contract the Haslams used to bribe Deshaun Watson to accept a trade to Cleveland last March, according to an ESPN report.
The Ravens have no plans to meet Jackson’s demands, and now time is running out for them to make the engine of their offense happy.
Teams have until March 7 (the window opened Feb. 21) to apply the franchise tag to a player not under contract for 2023. A team can use the franchise tag only once per free agency period.
The value of a franchise tag is based on a player’s position. The non-exclusive franchise tag for a quarterback is $32.4 million. If the Ravens use it on Jackson, a team could sign him to an offer sheet. The team would have to compensate Baltimore with two first-round picks if the Ravens don’t match the offer.
The Ravens could also use the exclusive franchise tag on Jackson at a cost of $45 million, in which case rival teams could not sign him to an offer sheet. That is a very expensive can they’d be kicking down the road and it still wouldn’t give Jackson what he’s asking.
It is unlikely, but the Ravens could end up trading Jackson if they conclude they will never be able to satisfy him. How this saga ends could have a bigger impact on the Browns in the AFC North race than any offseason move the Browns themselves make, especially since Cleveland traded its 2023 first-round draft pick to the Texans as partial payment in the Watson trade.
Jackson was the NFL’s 2019 MVP. He has a 63.7 percent career completion percentage (12,209 passing yards) with 101 touchdown passes and 38 interceptions, plus 4,437 rushing yards and 24 rushing touchdowns over five seasons. The blemish on Jackson’s resume is a 1-4 record in the playoffs.
The guaranteed money is the sticking point in the contract standoff. Remember, Watson had a no-trade contract in his rookie contract with the Houston Texans. He originally
turned down a trade to the Browns. The value of the original offer was never revealed.
The Browns, desperate for a quarterback that can win games, convinced Watson to change his mind with the largest fully guaranteed contract in NFL history. It should be noted Watson, at his introductory news conference, said he didn’t know the value of the contract when he ended up agreeing to the trade, but that is very, very difficult to believe. Who would willingly take a job in another city and as he’s unpacking his bags ask himself, “I wonder how much I’m gonna be paid?”
“I will say this on behalf of Deshaun,” Jimmy Haslam said last March 25 when asked if it took the record-setting contract to woo Watson. “I think maybe he struggled a little bit with the weather and how far it was away from home, and it took a period of time to get him comfortable with that.”
NFL owners are reluctant to follow the precedent the Haslams set. The Ravens offered a five-year, $250 million contract in September, but Jackson rejected it because only $133 million was guaranteed. Russell Wilson signed a five-year, $242 million contract with Denver after the Seahawks traded him to the Broncos last year, with $161 million guaranteed. Kyler Murray signed a five-year, $230.5 million deal with the Cardinals last year with $189.5 million guaranteed.
The Wilson and Murray contracts apparently haven’t impressed Jackson enough for him to move from his demand of Deshaun Watson money. And as for Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, if he doesn’t cave, the deal Watson got could be considered an outlier from desperate owners that have been failures on the football field for the 10 years they’ve owned the Browns. But if Bisciotti does follow the Haslams’ lead, then other owners will have no choice but to fall in line.
Bengals star quarterback Joe Burrow will be in his fourth season in 2023. That negotiation will draw interest league-wide when the Bengals try to re-sign
him to a long-term extension. What the Ravens ultimately decide to do about Jackson will factor into how Bengals owner Mike Brown compensates Burrow.
Time will tell on Love
The end of Kevin Love’s time with the Cavaliers came swiftly during the All-Star break. Love on Feb. 16 asked for a buyout so he could go to another team and actually play instead of just sitting on the bench and cheering for his teammates as he did in his last 12 games with Cleveland.
Love was waived on Feb. 18 and signed with the Miami Heat two days later. Just days before the buyout, Cavs coach J.B. Bickerstaff answered a question about Love and said the 34-year-old forward would get playing time as the season progressed with the inference the Cavs would rely on the 14year veteran in the playoffs.
Cavaliers president of basketball operations Koby Altman said the same thing on Feb. 9 when the trade deadline passed without the Cavaliers making a trade or buying out Love. At that time, he said Love had never asked for a buyout.
“It’s not easy for Kevin,” Altman said. “He wants to play. I think he’ll have an opportunity to play again this year, but where we’re at now, I think J.B. is really comfortable with the rotation we have. But to answer your question, I have not been approached by them at all (concerning a buyout) and I don’t anticipate it, either.”
So what changed in one week? It seems unlikely the Cavaliers would agree to a buyout for Love just to be nice guys. He was in the final portion of the final year of a four-year, $120 million contract that at one time was too cumbersome to trade.
“We’re going to miss Kevin, regardless (of playing time),” Bickerstaff said before the Cavs played Denver on Feb. 23. “I’ve talked a ton of what Kevin has met to me as a person and as a basketball coach, so we’re going to miss him, for sure.
“It’s going to take other guys finding a way to fill what Kevin was capable
of. We don’t know what we don’t know yet. The guys that are going to have to play in those clutch minutes — are they prepared for those minutes? Can they do the things Kevin has done historically?”
The word “historically” is a key to what Bickerstaff said. Love’s 8.5 points, 38.9 shooting percentage and 6.8 rebounds per game are all career lows.
Love started for the Heat on Feb. 24 in his first game with Miami. He played 21 minutes. He missed all four shots he attempted, each a misfired 3-pointer, but he grabbed eight rebounds and had four assists in a 128-99 loss in Milwaukee.
“This is a great opportunity for us,” Bickerstaff said. “This isn’t a one-year deal for us. This is a longterm plan we’re putting in place. The only way those young guys who haven’t experienced it get better at it is by going through it. So we’ll see when the time is there.”
The Cavaliers, 38-25, have lost three straight games after winning seven straight. They will try to end the skid Feb. 26 in a 6 p.m. game with the Raptors at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
Love definitely wasn’t in the team’s long-term plans even if he played out his contract in Cleveland. But it isn’t a stretch to imagine the Cavs finishing fourth and the Heat finishing fifth in the Eastern Conference. That would mean a first-round series of Love facing the team that decided to move on from him.
I didn’t know that
… until I read my Snapple bottle cap.
Sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins can. … One of Snapple’s original founders, Arnold Greenberg, ran a sardine and pickle store with his family in Queens. … Since 1924, it has been illegal in Arizona to let a donkey sleep in a bathtub after 7 p.m. … Powerful earthquakes make the earth spin faster. … Frogs never drink. … The pupils in goats’ eyes are rectangular.