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.” 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.” “As of March 2nd,” Jackson tweeted, “I requested a trade from the Ravens organization for which the Ravens has not been interested in meeting my value.” Lamar Jackson's trade request tweet on Monday may have told us more about the past few weeks than the next. Jackson’s tweets introduce another scenario: Had those trade conversations, and back-channel discussions of value and availability, already taken place? 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? 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? That decision spurred a wave of questions. The Ravens officially placed a non-exclusive franchise tag on Jackson at the March 7 deadline. Lamar Jackson reveals curious order of events And it’s possible Jackson’s tweets tell us more about the past month than they will about the next one. While the timing of Jackson’s tweets was fascinating, and the trade-request revelation a cocktail of the impressively assertive and perilously transparent, Jackson’s introductory phrase to that trade request might say even more about the likelihood his request is granted than the existence of the request at all.īecause while we wonder how the Ravens might respond to a request that feels new and fresh to us publicly, it’s possible they and the NFL at large already did. Thirteen and a half minutes elapsed before any non-Jackson related questions would follow. Ravens head coach John Harbaugh was left beginning his news conference with a request for comment on Jackson’s tweets, which he said he hadn’t seen. The thread dropped as NFL team owners, personnel executives and head coaches all converged on the luxury Biltmore hotel for days of meetings … and maybe even conversations about personnel, with key decision-makers all under the same roof. Arizona time - exactly three minutes into the AFC coaches’ 30-minute media window at the NFL’s annual owners meetings. Jackson’s four-tweet thread dropped precisely at 10:48 a.m. PHOENIX - The inevitable headline stemmed from the second tweet, the 11th through 14th words: “ I requested a trade.”Īfter all, it’s not every day that an NFL player, much less an NFL quarterback, and even more unusual a former NFL MVP, breaks his own news that he has requested his franchise trade him.Īnd it wasn’t on just any day or at any time that Lamar Jackson announced publicly that he had requested a trade from the Baltimore Ravens.
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