The details are beginning to trickle in on the Lamar Jackson contract. The truth won’t be known until the full deal can be reviewed and analyzed.
Per multiple reports, it’s a five-year, $260 million deal, with $185 million in total guarantees.
There has been some confusion as to whether it’s an extension of his one-year, $32.4 million franchise tender -- especially since the team announced it as an extension. (Because he wasn’t under contract, there was nothing to extend.) Per a source with knowledge of the situation, it is a straight five-year deal.
That means it’s worth $52 million per year. That makes it, on the surface, significantly more valuable than the Jalen Hurts contract, since Hurts gets less than $260 million over the next SIX years.
With $185 million in total guarantees, the all-important full guarantee at signing isn’t known. Jackson wanted the Deshaun Watson deal -- five years, $230 million, every penny guaranteed. We’ll eventually know how much is guaranteed at signing and then, more importantly, how much of the remaining injury guarantees convert to full guarantees in 2024, 2025, and/or 2026.
The structure and the cash flow will be critical. As it stands, it truly is a traditional structure for a quarterback contract. The full guarantees at signing will fall short of $185 million.
Will they be $133 million, as they were under the offer he rejected in August 2022? Will another $35 million flip to fully guaranteed after one season, the way it would have happened under the offer he rejected in August 2022?
That’s all to be determined when the final details are revealed. And that will happen not long after the contract is officially signed.
