NFL teams aren't jumping to sign Lamar Jackson. Are they in the right?

The truth is that Lamar Jackson has never been viewed as an elite quarterback in NFL front offices, but his unique style brings more rewards than risks

It’s been almost a month since the Baltimore Ravens placed the non-exclusive franchise tag on their franchise quarterback Lamar Jackson, which opened up the chance for any team to offer Jackson a contract, if they’re also willing to part with two first round picks. A potentially market-setting contract and two highly valuable picks isn’t cheap, but teams recently have been willing to part with as much, or more for an older Russell Wilson and the scandal-plagued Deshaun Watson.

So far, the quiet in the Jackson offer market has been deafening. Nearly every team that could be in the market for Jackson’s services has denied interest through various media intermediaries, with only the Indianapolis Colts, via their general manager Chris Ballard, showing explicit interest. Ballard called Jackson a “special player” and indicated the team was doing due diligence on Jackson, though seemingly as part of a leave-no-stone-unturned philosophy for solving the most important position in the sport.

Roughly half of the NFL doesn’t have a surefire, young franchise quarterback on the roster, so the lack of interest in Jackson is perplexing. As I’ve argued in the past with the Eagles’ selection of Jalen Hurts and the possibility of the Bears taking a quarterback this year, until you know you have an elite quarterback, you should always look to add the the quarterback position and bolster your chances to find one.

The reasons why so many teams are passing on that opportunity with Jackson is more complicated than charges of collusion. In this analysis, I’ll compare Jackson to the other young, elite quarterbacks who have gotten, or are on track to get, the biggest paydays in the NFL. I’ll also take a look back at historical data to see how similar quarterbacks to Jackson have aged into the second and third phases on their NFL careers.

There is evidence that Jackson’s rare abilities and play-style make him unique among the current crop of elite signal-callers, but that concerns around durability and sustaining production, at least in the medium-term, are overblown. Jackson won’t be the right quarterback for every team, but he checks the necessary boxes to be an elite option for many.

NFL TEAMS DISCOUNTING LAMAR JACKSON IS NOTHING NEW

One of the problems with the theories that NFL franchises have gotten together to collude against giving Lamar Jackson a fully guaranteed contract offer is that underestimating him is nothing new in NFL front offices. Jackson fell all the way to the end of the first round in the 2018 draft, and the data we have on NFL decision-makers’ opinions shows that his standing hasn’t risen as much as other quarterbacks, even after winning a unanimous MVP in this second season.

One of the best sources to assess the NFL opinions on quarterbacks is Mike Sando’s offseason “quarterback tiers” article in The Atheletic, in which he surveys 50 NFL coaches and executives, asking them to bucket quarterbacks into one of five tiers. What’s great about this analysis isn’t only the explicit nature of the assessments, but also a longer record of results, going all the way back to the 2014 offseason when Sando was with ESPN.

In most offseason articles, Sando gives explicit information on the exact tiering from all 50 coaches and executives. His definition for “Tier 1” aligns closely with the type of quarterback teams would be willing to write a blank check to acquire, and is the most useful data point to determine how Jackson compares to others in the minds of NFL front offices. I’ll be eagerly awaiting this July’s article for feedback on current opinions.

A Tier 1 quarterback can carry his team each week. The team wins because of him. He expertly handles pure passing situations. He has no real holes in his game.

Notice the key indicator of “pure passing situations” which, like it or not, is a huge differentiator for many of the NFL’s decision-makers for what makes an elite quarterback. Looking at the tier 1 votes over the years for Jackson and the most coveted young quarterbacks in the NFL, it’s clear how they’re viewed differently.

There haven’t been many questions in NFL coaches’ and executives’ minds about Patrick Mahomes going all the way back to the offseason following his first NFL season, as he was labeled as a Tier 1 quarterback by nearly 90% of the surveyed voters, moving up to all 50 the next two offseasons. Josh Allen didn’t get any Tier 1 votes after his first two NFL seasons, but jumped to 20 after his 2020 breakout campaign, and all the way to 38 last offseason. Deshaun Watson had a few tier 1 votes after his second season, then jumped up to more than half the voters labeling him in that bucket following his third and fourth years.¹ Even the youngest quarterbacks currently up for a potential extension - Justin Herbert and Joe Burrow - had hit the Tier 1 threshold in the majority of minds of the NFL after their second years.

The voters have consistently been skeptical of Jackson, with only 16 of 50 voters putting him in Tier 1 after his MVP 2019 season, which declined to only four the next year, before jumping up slightly to eight a year ago. Jackson hasn’t been close to the 25-vote threshold to be seen as a Tier 1 quarterback by most of the NFL, instead having voters mostly place him in the Tier 2 category, which is described as such:

A Tier 2 quarterback can carry his team sometimes but not as consistently. He can handle pure passing situations in doses and/or possesses other dimensions that are special enough to elevate him above Tier 3. He has a hole or two in his game.

I don’t think the description is totally off for Jackson as a quarterback who has some holes in his game as a passer, but the issue is that the negative impacts of those holes are likely overstated versus the value Jackson brings outside of the passing game. Beyond that, there have been a handful of the 50 NFL coaches and executives that don’t even view Jackson as clearing the bar for a Tier 2 quarterback, as he received three Tier 3 votes in the 2020 offseason, then eight in each of the next two surveys.

A Tier 3 quarterback is a legitimate starter but needs a heavier running game and/or defensive component to win. A lower-volume dropback passing offense suits him best.

Obviously the NFL coaches and executives view Jackson much differently from his biggest supporters in the media, and even his fellow NFL players. Jackson ranked first overall in the player-determined NFL100 rankings following his MVP season, though he did fall to seventh the next two offseasons. In the aggregate quarterback scores that Sando complies from the surveys, Jackson has never ranked better than seventh (2020 & 2021), and fell to 10th last offseason, below every other young quarterback on the plot above.

It isn’t collusion or a sudden shift in opinions on Lamar Jackson keeping teams from mortgaging their futures to bring him onboard, it’s mostly a reflection of how they’ve always viewed Jackson: a quarterback who can’t match the other young elite talents in passing situations.

WHAT DO THE NUMBERS SAY ABOUT JACKSON

We’ve established that the opinions in NFL front offices are low enough on Jackson to explain the lack of interest we’re seeing, but the cold, hard facts might disagree. I like to break out quarterback efficiency on all plays (dropbacks and designed runs), using the best measure of on-field value, expected points added. It’s also illustrative to separate sacks from passing results² and the contributions running the ball, either as a designed quarterback rush or scrambling after dropping back to pass.

Adding Jalen Hurts to the mix of young potentially elite-paid quarterbacks,³ we see that Jackson is within a tight range of overall career efficiency with the non-Mahomes group, producing his efficiency with somewhat lower passing contributions, but also adding good rushing value and sack avoidance.

Let me clarify, the efficiencies represented in the bars above have denominators of all plays, not just that subset of plays, e.g. the rush/scramble efficiency on a per rush/scramble basis would be higher than displayed, but that part of the game makes up a smaller part of overall quarterback play. I like this breakdown as a more intuitive framework for what’s driving the overall results.

As we saw in the quarterback tiering opinions above, the passing component is probably the most relevant when assessing the qualities of an elite quarterback in the minds of many, and Jackson’s career passing contribution trails that of Mahomes, Watson, Burrow and Herbert, but isn’t drastically different from Allen or Hurts. Focusing out a bit and looking at the seasonal passing efficiency contributions gives us more context on why Jackson still isn’t seen to be on the same level as those others he nearly matches in the career number.

Outside of a huge jump in passing value contribution in Jackson’s second season, his numbers have been relatively low, and on the decline the last three years. Allen’s career passing contribution may be similar to Jackson’s, but that’s largely influenced by early career struggles that can be safely put into the past. Even Hurts could be viewed by many⁴ as functionally a more efficient passer than Jackson at this point by the numbers, with at least a better trend after his breakout 2022 campaign.

The reason I like dividing the passing contribution by total plays, not just passing plays, is that is also can reflect the style of pass in terms of having a volume component. When we explicitly measure the passing volume of the quarterbacks by season, in terms of percentile for dropbacks per game, Jackson, again, looks different from the rest.

Some might put Allen in the “running quarterback” bucket and compare him to Jackson, but his dropback volume has been on another level the last three seasons. The same was the case for Deshaun Watson outside of his weird partial season in 2022. A Jackson designed run is more likely to replace a quarterback dropback, whereas an Allen or Watson run is replacing a running back carry. Even Jalen Hurts has been near the 50th percentile in dropback for multiple seasons, despite playing with a lead for most of his 2022 campaign.

The one season that Jackson topped the 50th percentile for dropbacks per game is the year of his worst overall efficiency in EPA per play. Interestingly, it also coincided with a slight bounce-back in Jackson’s tier 1 rankings. NFL coaches and executives like higher volume passers, even as somewhat lower efficiency.

The missing context from these numbers is the support quarterbacks get from their surroundings, which I’ve attempted to quantify with my adjusted quarterback efficiency metric (AQE). For what it’s worth, Jackson’s ranking in adjusted efficiency jumps to seventh last season from an unadjusted EPA per play ranking of 11th, meaning he was even more impressive than his headline numbers.

The bottom line comparing Jackson to the other young quarterbacks in the NFL isn’t that he’s a less efficient producer, but that his style is unique, and viewed negatively by evaluators. If Jackson can maintain his recent performance (I’ll tackle this question below), he appears to be worth a top-notch contract and draft picks for teams without a path to finding a franchise quarterback. That said, his unique style inherently adds risks, as we’re going to have less confidence in how his career will play out versus others, an important factor when talking about hefty contract guarantees.

WILL JACKSON BE ABLE TO MAINTAIN HIS PLAYING STYLE?

This might be the biggest unresolved question when evaluating if Jackson is worth all the money and picks that are required to make an offer. It’s indisputable that Jackson has been one of the most valuable players in the NFL since entering the league in 2018. Following two Jackson seasons ended up injury, extrapolating his efficiency out over time looks like a dicey proposition.

There aren’t a lot of historical comparables for Jackson’s rushing production, but we get a handful of names looking at the publicly available data from nflreadR. Below I’ve plotted what I call adjusted rushing and scramble yards (adds 10 yards for each first down and 20 for touchdowns) for every quarterback season since 2000. I highlighted those with a least 1,000 total adjusted yards between the two categories, and all five of Jackson’s seasons are further highlighted with a bolded, red label.

Jackson’s seasons fall mostly on the lower side of the plot, reflecting his higher proportion of designed run value versus scrambles. There are a few one-off players with over 1,000 adjusted yard seasons, like Tim Tebow, Robert Griffin, Alex Smith and Tyrod Taylor. The historical quarterbacks with the most seasons hitting the mark are Cam Newton (7), Michael Vick (5), Russell Wilson (3) and Colin Kaepernick (2). It’s not the most robust sample to draw insight from, but the trajectories on these players’ career will give us some frame of reference for projecting out Jackson.

Jackson just completed his fifth NFL season, so I’ll use that as a logically grouping for the historical careers of the comparable quarterbacks, also looking at their rushing production totals in the next two five-year periods.

Outside of Newton, the rest of the historical rushing comparables for Jackson did a good job maintaining their average seasonal production in the middle on their careers (years 6-10), before falling off in the later stages. Even Newton didn’t run less frequently as his career progressed, instead his numbers suffered from missed games and lower efficiency.

You might want to bucket Jackson with Newton as the most similar historical camp as they had materially higher rushing production in their first five seasons than the rest of the group, but I wouldn’t classify them as similar runners. Newton took much more punishment running between the tackles, whereas Jackson’s season-ending injuries came while dropping back to pass.

Vick is probably the closest stylistic comp, and his lack of designed run production may have been more a reflection of his playing era’s aversion to using quarterbacks in that manner than differences with Jackson. Vick’s rushing production increased slightly in the second phase of his career, while also producing the best passing efficiency seasons of his career. The rushing production for Kaepernick (when he wasn’t de facto banned from the NFL) also maintained into his second phase, though his passing efficiency suffered. Wilson was still an elite scrambling threat into his thirties, while growing as a passer.

The concerns with Jackson’s playing style isn’t in what will happen over the duration of his next contract, it’s what may happen thereafter. Rushing production dropped significantly for those quarterbacks who played into the third phase (years 10+), with Newton and Vick washing out of the league, and Wilson looking like a lesser version of himself in 2022.

WHAT SHOULD YOU OFFER LAMAR JACKSON?

The data shows that NFL coaches and executives likely undervalue Jackson’s production based on a fixation on traditional dropback passing, and a misunderstanding of the durability of Jackson’s playing style.

If I was sitting in one of the many NFL front offices in need of a quarterback, I’d be ready to bid on Jackson, with the understanding that extending him beyond the next five years could become a dicey proposition, and planning accordingly in contract structure. The medium-term guarantees aren’t the problem, it’s the long-term questions. You might getting a shorter window from Jackson than some other younger quarterbacks, but several years of elite quarterback play is still enough to justify the price.

1. I excluded Watson’s 2022 offseason results which were muddied by him missing a year and opinions on his conduct of the field. Even so, Watson still ranked higher than Jackson overall.

2. As much as I like to rant about the public and analyst underplaying the negatives of sacks, sack avoidance it is a separate skill from producing value when the ball leaves your hand.

3. I excluded Hurts from the quarterback tiering discussion since he hadn’t received any Tier 1 votes last year, and his breakout 2022 season makes previous results largely irrelevant.

4. Not a view I share, to be clear.