Well, couple things:
1. I'm not jealous of the teams that make the playoffs consistently. I'm jealous of the Chiefs, Packers, Patriots (with Brady) type teams that not only make the playoffs nearly every year, but advance far in the playoffs most years and play in SBs more than once a decade (which is still a great accomplishment in the grand scheme of things).
That's not been the Ravens in the Lamar era.
2. The worst case scenario is you pay tons of money to a player that doesn't win playoff games. That's the worst case scenario. And the more money the QB makes, the more dependent you are on the GM to win drafts. So you can't have one without the other.
None of this is to say Lamar can't win playoff games. I think he can and will. Its just that he hasn't. Basically I'm paying Lamar for the exact opposite of why we paid Joe... we're paying Lamar because he's an MVP-level regular season player. That's what his career has shown to this point. If he grows into a postseason MVP level player, sky's the limit on what this franchise can do. If he doesn't, you're going to pay a lot of money for a lot of years just like 2021 and 2022. We'll keep being the team that THINKS we can beat everybody, instead of the team that DOES beat everybody.
I'll say this as well...I don't think its a foregone conclusion this franchise goes into the tank if Lamar leaves. I think it may for a year or two, but there are exceptional QBs coming out of pretty much every single draft class these days. And there's no reason to think we can't land one of them.
I also totally disagree this is a team that's picking in the top 10 without Lamar. I think this team wins 6-7 games this year with Huntley, and I'm not a fan of Huntley. And that's like the floor. If you had a different QB that's better than Huntley but not Lamar, I think this could be an 8-9 win team.
This team, with Huntley at QB, is basically the same level of teams as the Browns, Steelers, Jets, Titans, Commanders-type teams are today. Those aren't bad teams. They're just average teams.