I have no such qualms about Lamar's longevity or durability. I may be an outlier, but I am of the strict belief that any contract upwards of $50M/yr needs to be a multi-year contract beyond 7-8 yrs perhaps. As for the guarantees they could be around 180-200M which secures him for 4 yrs at least. Now, my sense is with the new TV contract coming up, the cap will burgeon upwards of 250M in a couple of years and keep going up. Now, it is to the Ravens' advantage to sign him to a multi-year contract now so they can leverage his cheaper (relatively speaking deal) starting 2025 through whenever it ends. So, my hope is for a 7-8 yr contract
I suspect if they are paying him 50M+, they're going to have to spread it out over a longer duration. It's a risk-reward thing that they'll have to internally assess. By signing him for 7 yrs, then they are able to participate in future QB salary saving and the burgeoning cap given the upcoming new TV deals. So, if I were the Ravens I would either offer him 7 yrs or 3 yrs and nothing in-between. 3 yrs is far less risk and also potentially no reward at all if Lamar balls out and stays consistently healthy and available. Then they'd have to pay him the market price of well over 60M/yr on another extension. I think the Ravens know that Lamar isn't injury-prone like the media pontificates day and night. Then, they should shoot for the 7 or higher term extension with 50+M annually and about 4 yrs of it guaranteed, say 200M. So, my hope is it is a 352.5M extension for 7 yrs with 200M guaranteed.
So I have three huge problems with this:
1. I honestly don't know what Lamar has done to warrant a 7-8 year contract. Basically nobody gets that deal. Mahomes got that deal (longer), but his achievements are wildly above Lamar's and pretty much everybody else's. Especially over the first 3-4 years. Nobody else is in that arena. You can go look around at all the big money deals, including people more qualified and less qualified for one, and basically none of them go beyond 5 years.
2. The deal you described is a fairly bad deal for everybody. For starters, if Lamar knows the cap is expected to go up, why would you want to wait 7-8 years to get back in the market again? Why wouldn't you want to theoretically become a FA again by like 30-31?
For the Ravens, with that kind of structure, you're basically forced into a restructure/extension after like year 3-4. Even if the cap got to like $300M, you'd undoubtedly be looking at like $55-60M cap hit 4-5 years down the road. That's not attainable at that level. Contracts these size are basically just a series of extensions until the player retires or the team moves on.
3. I'm not super concerned about durability issues long term. I'd call it more of the Michael Vick/Cam Newton effect. Is anybody certain that Lamar is going to be a prolific passer of the football at like 31-32? Not like he is now, or even above average, but prolific? Like top of the league level. Because if he's not, I think its a problem, because I don't think 31-32 year old Lamar is going to be running for a thousand yards (probably not even 500 yards) and is certainly not going to be running away from people at that age. He'll still have mobility, but that ability to make a defense totally guess what he's going to do with the ball is going to fade and fade quickly with age.
So with that knowledge, I'm not sure that I want to commit 7-8 years to him, because I don't know what I'm getting with him in 7-8 years. I was one of the few people who suggested that the shelf life for him, based on his skill sets, may not be a 35 year old veteran franchise player. It might be that 30-32 is when he hits his ceiling, and its all downhill after that.
Ultimately, the 7-8 year thing wouldn't scare me, depending on how the guaranteed money shakes out. But I'm not buying that either side wants a deal that long. They're not common league-wide, and I don't think Lamar is the type of player you usually hand that deal to. Especially 4-5 years in.
