NFL Fallout Week 8: Ravens Must Plan For A Future Without Lamar Jackson

Superstar quarterback Lamar Jackson once looked like he was headed toward a lucrative contract extension after this season. Some thought he might even be the first NFL player to hit $70 million per year. Such a deal once looked like a no-brainer for the Baltimore Ravens. But they can’t possibly justify giving him a contract like that anymore. Because as valuable as Jackson may be as a player, he is becoming more of a liability with his never-ending list of injuries. The Ravens quarterback has now torpedoed a second straight season in Baltimore after suffering what might be a season-ending thumb injury on his first pass Sunday in what resulted in a 36-10 loss to the Buffalo Bills. Baltimore’s Week 8 showdown with Buffalo was supposed to be Jackson’s grand return from a high ankle sprain that cost him three games. But instead of riding in like the cavalry and saving his team’s season, he will instead land on injured reserve. And that leaves the Ravens reeling, again. They’re now 1-3 when Jackson doesn’t play (or barely plays) this season, after going 2-2 last year when he was sidelined by hamstring and back injuries. (It’s worth noting the Ravens went 1-4 without Jackson in 2021 and missed the playoffs entirely. In 2022, they went 2-4, which includes a wild-card loss.) Of course, even after he returned last season, he wasn’t the same player. He slumped in the passing game and wasn’t nearly as effective rushing. Baltimore went 5-4 in his final nine starts, losing its division lead and a playoff berth in the regular-season finale. And that’s the problem. A fully healthy Jackson is as good a quarterback as there is in football, but over the past two seasons he’s rarely been healthy. So the Ravens have to be concerned about his long-term future. He’s 29 now, and injury issues don’t usually get better with age. In a league where, as the cliché goes, availability is the best ability, they can’t hand him a $300 million-plus deal and spend the next half decade keeping their fingers crossed. That’s not to say the Ravens should be done with Jackson — not by a long shot. It was just three years ago that he won his second MVP award. Two years ago, he was runner-up. He’s always a threat to give an MVP-worthy performance when he’s on the field. But who knows at this point if he can ever get back to that level, or sustain it for long if he does? That’s why Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta must start thinking about the future and preparing for life without Lamar. Here’s how, specifically: Let Jackson play on the final year on his contract in 2027 and prove he can stay on the field, while also identifying and grooming his potential replacement. Then, if Jackson stays healthy and looks like MVP self again in the first half of next season, the Ravens have options. They can try negotiating to bring him back on a somewhat reasonable deal. If that looks unlikely, they can always try and trade him before the 2027 deadline to a club that will give him what he wants (since Jackson has a no-trade clause). Or the Ravens can ride out his comeback campaign before letting him hit free agency. But at least by then they’ll be ready to move on if they have to. It’s an expensive and tricky play, of course. Jackson is due $51.25 million in salary and an $8 million Option bonus next season, when his cap hit will be an enormous $84.3 million. And with no extension — and no agent to help him out — it seems doubtful Jackson would be willing to help them out and restructure some of that cap hit into the three voidable years already in his deal. And the closer they push him toward free agency in March 2028, the less of a chance there will be that his next deal will be reasonable. He also has a clause in his contract that prohibits the Ravens from using the franchise tag on him. It’s possible that $70 million per year could look like a bargain for a player like him by then. But Jackson would be 31 by then, and there’s just no erasing his extensive injury history. Sure, it would hurt the franchise to watch a player as great as Jackson walk away. But it would hurt Baltimore even more to pay him as he stands on the sidelines. The Ravens have done way too much of that in four of the past six seasons and they should be tired of it by now. Jackson may be an integral part of their franchise, but they can’t afford to tie themselves down to an oft-injured quarterback. He may be capable of lifting them to great heights, but his constant absences just keep dragging them down. The shame of the Minnesota Vikings season is that they seem to have one of those truly special defenses capable of carrying a mediocre quarterback all the way to the Super Bowl. If only they had a mediocre quarterback. Kyler Murray is proving to be something worse. That’s why it’s time the Vikings end this quixotic experiment and do whatever they can to trade for a quarterback before the deadline next Tuesday. And their target seems obvious. They need to call the Raiders and try to shake Kirk Cousins free. Cousins, at age 38, is playing some of the best football of his career for a Raiders team that is going nowhere, even after they got back to .500 with a 38-35 win over the Jets on Sunday. He’s been a valuable addition for Las Vegas. He’s helped jumpstart new coach Klint Kubiak’s program. But he’s not the future and the Raiders aren’t going to sustain any success against a schedule that is about to get especially tough. But Cousins could help the Vikings straighten out an offense that has been one of the NFL’s worst despite occasional flashes of competence from the 29-year-old Murray. Overall, Murray has barely been an adequate game manager. Yes, he’s thrown only three interceptions, but he’s also thrown just five touchdown passes. The Vikings can’t survive in the postseason with a paltry output like that. And they have too many offensive weapons to keep letting Murray waste them. Justin Jefferson remains one of the league’s best wideouts. Receiver Jordan Addison, tight end T.J. Hockenson and running back Aaron Jones are dangerous, too. But Murray just can’t hit them with any regularity. He’s hesitant in the pocket, erratic under pressure, and most of his throws to even open receivers are painfully off the mark. Yes, the Vikings are 6-1, as Murray has done just enough to win on a few occasions. But more often than not, he hurts them, like he did Sunday in their first loss of the season at Detroit. Murray’s numbers looked OK — 17 of 29, 210 yards, two TDs, one interception — but his actual performance was ugly. He was missing targets constantly, despite opportunities being there. These Vikings should have a championship in their sights, and they just can’t count on Murray to lead them there. Carson Wentz, his backup, didn’t look like a viable option, either. But Cousins could be. And he wouldn’t take long to get up to speed since he was thriving in Minnesota head coach Kevin O’Connell’s offense before tearing his Achilles midway through the 2023 season. Cousins might be a bit expensive, especially since the Raiders have given no indication they’re ready to trade him and hand over the reins to rookie Fernando Mendoza. The cost shouldn’t matter to the Vikings, though. They’ve never won a Super Bowl, and they haven’t been to one in 50 years. Their defense is giving them a real chance to end that drought this year. They can’t put a price on that. Jerry Jones has been hinting at defensive changes for weeks, even threatening to do something with his “old man” money to fix it. But at this point he only has one option and has to stop resisting it: He needs to fire defensive coordinator Christian Parker. It may be the only way to salvage the Cowboys’ season and save head coach Brian Schottenheimer’s job. The final straw should have come on Sunday when the Cowboys blew a 17-3 lead in the second half, ultimately losing 33-30 in overtime to the lowly Cardinals. The floodgates somehow opened when backup QB Gardner Minshew replaced Jacoby Brissett and led the Cardinals on four straight touchdown drives while covering 288 yards. The Cards added 44 more yards on their way to the game-winning field goal, but by then, the damage had been done. The Cowboys are averaging 27.4 points per game, but they are still just 3-5, staring at the backsides of the New York Giants in the standings solely because their high-priced defense stinks. The only trade Jones can make to fix this is to swap out Parker for Mike Pettine, the veteran coordinator who was hired as a senior assistant three weeks ago. Maybe he’ll have better luck than the 34-year-old Parker, who increasingly looks like an overmatched first-year coordinator. If nothing else, Pettine would give the Cowboys a much-needed fresh look. There is no shortage of teams interested in running back Jonathan Taylor if the Indianapolis Colts decide to trade him. But no team needs to get him more than the Green Bay Packers. It’s not just that the 27-year-old Taylor could be a huge boost to the Packers’ pathetic rushing attack, which is averaging a league-worst 60.6 yards per game. It’s clear that three-time Pro Bowler Josh Jacobs isn’t worth the tiny boost he can give them. He also might not be available much longer after the revelation over the weekend that three women had previously accused him of domestic violence, separate from the incident that landed him on the Commissioner’s Exempt List for the first six games of this season. The NFL says its investigation into Jacobs remains open and they’re looking into the new information. The Packers seem unlikely to do the right thing and punish him or cut him themselves. But he didn’t give them the kind of production in his first two games to make it worth the public relations flak they’re facing. Acquiring Taylor would give them a clean break, not to mention one of the best running backs in football to go with a quarterback (Jordan Love) who is having an elite season and a strong defense that is about to get star pass-rusher Micah Parsons back. Taylor could be the missing piece for the Packers in more ways than one. The Colts apparently want a package similar to what the Panthers got when they traded Christian McCaffrey to the 49ers four years ago: a second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-round pick. It’s a high price to pay, but it would be worth it to both as a means to move on from Jacobs while getting their struggling running game on track. The Denver Broncos still have a Bo Nix problem. Yes, they are 6-2 and one of the best teams in the AFC. But the third-year QB looks nothing like he did a year ago when he helped lead Denver to the AFC Championship Game. The Broncos have now won four straight after rallying to beat the Chiefs, 28-24, on Sunday. Head coach Sean Payton continued to find ways to squeeze just enough out of his offense, and Vance Joseph’s defense made it hold up with a terrific, game-ending goal-line stand. But if the Broncos are going to make a Super Bowl run, they’re going to need more out of their 26-year-old quarterback. They can’t expect him to game-manage them through the powerful AFC all season long. And that’s what he’s doing. Even though they went out and got him speedy receiver Jaylen Waddle to add a new dimension to their offense, Nix hasn’t taken advantage. The 222 yards he threw for against the Chiefs in Week 8 was tied for his second-highest total of the season. In four of eight games, he didn’t even top 200 yards. Yes, Denver won three of those games, but too many of Nix’s big plays are fluky or short throws that his running backs turn into big gains. At some point, almost all championship teams need their quarterbacks to carry them. Nix, who has been bailing out on too many plays and making too many questionable decisions, doesn’t look capable of that right now. The winning, of course, is good. So is him going five consecutive games without an interception. But the Broncos goals are much higher. If they want to reach them, they’ll need Nix to give them more. In NFL Fallout, Ralph Vacchiano breaks down the impact of the biggest events every Sunday.