Some would say that, without the Ravens giving quarterback Lamar Jackson the contract he wants, he should refuse to play under the contract he has.
So here’ the question. What would happen if/when Jackson decides at some point between now at 1:00 p.m. ET that he’s just not going to play?
Obviously, he can’t be forced to play. He’d sacrifice his game check if he flat-out refused to play. And he’d set himself up for potential discipline for conduct detrimental to the team, which maxes out at a four-game suspension without pay.
The other reality of refusing to play is that, eventually, his contract would toll to 2023. Which would force the Ravens and Jackson to do it all over again in 2023 — and which would delay the potential
Kirk Cousins, year-to-year strategy that puts Jackson on the open market in 2025.
It’s HIGHLY unlikely that he would do this. As multiple sources throughout the league have said, Jackson simply isn’t wired that way.
That said, this is the first year of his career in which he seems to be keenly aware of the risk-reward realities of turning down long-term security and playing with only his current-year salary guaranteed. Will he be thinking about getting injured? Will it affect the way he plays?
Moving forward, will it impact his willingness to play through injury? The concept of the “hold-in” has become popular in recent years. It previously referred to a player who wanted a new contract, didn’t have one, and relied on an injury (real, embellished, or flat-out fabricated) to justify not playing.
What would the team do in that situation? Call him out? Suggest he’s using an injury through which he’d ordinarily play in order to express his displeasure with his lack of a contract?
If the Ravens already have decided to apply the franchise tag in 2023, it won’t matter if he has a down year and/or misses multiple games due to injury (or “injury”). So why should Jackson, if he’s banged up at all, put himself into the fray at anything less than 100 percent?
These are fair questions to ask as this unprecedented situation unfolds. For the first time ever, there’s a franchise quarterback who wants a new deal, a team that is willing to give him a new deal, an impasse over whether the deal will be fully-guaranteed, and no agent to advise Jackson on whether, for example, he should have held out from training camp or engaged in a hold-in as that term is now used, showing up and refusing to practice or play until business was taken care of.
It’s too late for Jackson to walk away or hold a one-man wildcat strike. It will be interesting to see whether, as he inevitably accumulates bumps and bruises during games that count, he decides to apply a much higher bar as to what it will take to get him to keep playing without the long-term deal he clearly wanted.
