The winner of this week is NFL quarterback Lamar Jackson. Why? The dual-threat quarterback just scored the deal of a lifetime from his team, the Baltimore Ravens, without an agent — thereby saving himself a whole lot of dinero.
Jackson is now the highest-paid quarterback in the league having successfully negotiated a five-year, $260 million deal with $185 million in guaranteed money, as announced Monday. Less than two months ago, Jackson had requested a trade from the organization — which seemed unwilling to pony up the sort of cash he was demanding.
On Thursday, Yahoo Sports reported that both Jackson and the Ravens were unwilling to discuss what changed from that request to his now seismic contract.
“Today we’re going to keep it about the future,” Jackson said during a news conference about the monster signing. “I’m not really worried about what happened in the past.”
“I really didn’t care for other teams,” Jackson said. “I wanted to get something done here. I wanted to be a Raven.”
As told by Yahoo, “Jackson and his mother Felicia Jones, who doubles as his manager, did not hire an NFLPA-certified agent to negotiate this contract. So Jackson described a negotiating stance that essentially required him to fully compartmentalize his role as QB.”
“If you’re going to represent yourself, you’ve got to have a strong mind,” Jackson said Thursday. “I wouldn’t say you can get out there and put your feelings into it.”
Under NFL rules, an agent can only take 3% of a player’s contract he helped negotiate. That percentage pales in comparison to other sports leagues, where agents can make a commission of up to 15% — but it still would have meant that Jackson would have to fork over millions of dollars.
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Now he won’t have to do that, and he and his mother can keep more cash. Surely, other players around the league are hitting up their agents, saying, “What am I paying you for?”
Jackson has some advice for those guys — man up and put on your business hat.
“It’s different from just playing football,” Jackson explained Thursday of the negotiating process. “You’ve got to put the game outside, put the game in one part of your life and speak to a grown man with millions and billions of dollars, and understand terms and different language.”
Now the Ravens and Jackson have their eyes set on the Lombardi Trophy.
“I really want to finish my career here,” the former Heisman winner said. “I want to win a Super Bowl here.”
You have to love stories where people cut out the middle man or so-called experts and get the job done themselves — especially when that person is a 26-year-old who grew up in poverty and is now multi-millionaire many times over.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.