Devon Kennard has seen Lamar Jackson up close and personal many times, as a defender during his nine-year NFL career and last year as a teammate with the Ravens.
Unsurprisingly, the review of his talent is a glowing one.
“He is a problem,” Kennard said.
So when Jackson was franchise-tagged by Baltimore on Tuesday, Kennard naturally expected rampant leaguewide interest to acquire his services.
But according to various reports, quarterback-needy teams like the Falcons, Panthers and Commanders are not planning to pursue the star signal-caller, which has left the veteran edge rusher bewildered.
“I’m not into conspiracy theories, but it doesn’t make sense to me,” Kennard told Compare.bet in an exclusive interview. “How does a past MVP that’s as dynamic of a player as Lamar Jackson not have any traction? And there are teams that need quarterbacks. It does make you wonder, I’ll say that. It kind of feels like there is pushback here. Obviously the NFL owners don’t want fully guaranteed contracts for everyone.”
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Kirk Cousins was the first quarterback to secure a fully guaranteed deal , followed by Deshaun Watson a season ago.
Despite numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, multiple teams vied for Watson, who signed for the most guaranteed money in NFL history at $230 million.
While it’s certainly rare for a team to sign a franchise player to an offer sheet, it’s even rarer for a former MVP quarterback to hit the market at 26 years old. Most expected a feeding frenzy for Jackson, but the bites have been tepid.
“For teams that don’t have their quarterback situations figured out, how can you not have a conversation with the man?” Kennard said. “It’s crazy. I do not understand that.”
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Kennard likes to look at situations with a very even-handed perspective, so he does admit the Ravens seemed to have played it well.
“I try to think of things very business-minded all the time, because I’ve realized this league is 100 percent a business,” said Kennard, who played for both the Cardinals and Ravens last season. “People want to ignore it, but I have to admit I understand the take from the Ravens’ perspective. ‘We can’t come to terms, and we don’t know if you’re worth what you’re trying to ask for, so let’s see what the market says.’ To a degree, that does make sense if you’re trying to get us to give you $250 million-plus guaranteed. We want to be sure that someone else is willing to pay that.”
So far, it seems unlikely another team steps up and makes an offer with a fully guaranteed number attached.
The NFL lags behind Major League Baseball and the NBA in that regard, as their contracts are fully guaranteed. If Jackson can somehow pull it off, the ball will keep rolling downhill with two guaranteed deals in consecutive years, but the owners might have something to say about it.
“As more and more star players do that and demand that, it can begin to trickle down to everyone else,” Kennard said. “Hopefully one day it becomes the standard.”
