 So YouTube team, keep it clean. What's going on? It's Angraven here with another video and in this video to no one's surprise at all. The Ravens, Baltimore Ravens have re-signed Roquan Smith to a five year, $100 million deal. Yes, that is 20 mil per year. That's a lot of money for a linebacker. But Roquan Smith, when they traded for him, he made his impact immediately. Like right away you felt the presence of a Roquan Smith. And something that we always talk about on here, you want players that make everybody else's job around them easier. Ravens have been looking for that guy at Inside Linebacker for a long time. They thought they had it with CJ Mosey. And CJ Mosey was pretty good. Just didn't have that explosiveness to him. But overall he's a pretty good linebacker. And the Ravens tried to re-sign him, but wasn't enough money. He ended up going to the Jets and he'd been doing his thing over there. And then they tried here and there. They tried with a Patrick Queen, with Patrick on Wasu. They had Josh Bines, LJ Ford, hold it down for a little while, Kenny Young. So they've been trying different projects, but it just, it hasn't all come together yet. But then in the middle of this season, right before the trade deadline, the Ravens, they traded their second and a fifth and AJ Klein to acquire Roquan Smith. And I remember some people thinking, oh man, he's just a rental. But we said from jump, Roquan Smith is no rental. Like, come on now, these are the Baltimore Ravens now. Come on now. They're not bringing in him for the half the year and being like, all right, Roquan, buy, no. You knew that wasn't gonna, you had to know that wasn't gonna happen. And then the report came out a couple of months ago that the Ravens were trying to get a deal done with Roquan Smith before the regular season was up or before the during the season. They got it done now. And again, when you want to make something happen, you can find a ways to make it happen. So let's just read the report from Ian Rappaport. Says, Per St. Omni, the Ravens agree in principle with all pro linebacker Roquan Smith. Now the highest paid at his position in NFL history. We're gonna talk about the other one who could be the highest paid at his position in NFL history. We'll talk about that in a little bit, but first, now the highest paid at his position in NFL history with a five year, $100 million deal. 45 mil, fully guaranteed. So that's the most important part of the guarantee part. Cause all year, five year, 100 mil, 20 mil per. That looks great, but the real stuff is the guarantee. That's where the real money is. Cause it's kind of, it's worth up to 100 mil. So of course there's gonna be incentives and this and that, but the guarantees are the money that they get no matter what because it's guaranteed. So 45 mil, 45 mil fully guaranteed and 60 mil in total guarantees. Huge, the first off ball linebacker to get 20 mil per year. I guess Roquan's a dog. So now the dogs, they going crazy for their dog Roquan right now. They feeling the contract. They like it. They like it. Look at them. They like it. They like it. Let's go. Let's go. Come on. Let's go. Okay. Anyway, let's, let's proceed. Hey, stop. Anyway, continuing. So, when I first saw the tweet, I had to make sure it was real because it sounded believable. I was like, man, the person who wrote this, they worded it perfectly. But it was directly from Ian Ravaport. And it said, with Roquan Smith locked in, the Ravens keep the franchise tag available for Lamar Jackson. So, transferring to Lamar Jackson. Well, before we talk about Lamar Jackson, how this could possibly impact Lamar Jackson, I just hope that this season, it goes a little differently than the last time that the Ravens traded for a player that made an immediate impact on their team, on their defense in the middle of the season. I hope this playoff game goes different than that playoff game did. Because I remember last, I remember they traded in 2019 for Marcus Peters, made an immediate impact right away. And then he got re-signed to a contract extension right before the playoffs and yeah. But this should be different. But now, Lamar Jackson. Because I know that's gonna be on a lot of people's minds as it should be. How does this impact Lamar Jackson? Now, I know first, there's gonna be a lot of people saying that this is not right. How could they sign this guy? This guy ain't even been here for five months and Lamar Jackson been here for five years and they haven't even get a deal yet. I get that. But specifically to this year, because context is important. They just brought in Roquan Smith. They love Roquan Smith. They have seen him plenty of times up close and personal. But this year, they brought him in and their intention was to keep him around for a long time. Now they got him re-signed to his contract extension. But with Lamar Jackson, remember, we gotta remember, Lamar Jackson did say he's not negotiating during the season. He said that. And Lamar Jackson has been a man of his word. So you gotta take his word for what it is. This is his word. He said after week one, he done talking. After the season, okay, cool, we'll get back to it. But he said after week one, he just focusing on football and that's it. So I know people have been like, oh man, Lamar Jackson, he should negotiate his deal. He shouldn't step foot until he gets his deal. He shouldn't be back on the field till he gets his deal. And I get that. But again, he said he wasn't negotiating during the season. So that's that part. Now, the other part, this, a lot of us, especially myself, felt like this off season is headed for the Ravens to franchise tag Lamar Jackson. But this allows them to put their more focus, hopefully a whole lot of focus on resigning Lamar Jackson. And this knocks a huge domino out of the way for the Baltimore Ravens. This knocks it out of the way because the two biggest dominoes for the Baltimore Ravens this off season, Lamar Jackson, Roquan Smith. Those are the two biggest ones. And they got, Roquan Smith taking care of is Lamar Jackson time now. All the Ravens gonna be able to do it. I got my doubts. I really do, but we'll see when we do. But this does, the franchise tag is where I've always felt that this thing was gonna go. Especially during this season. Looks like that's where it's headed. And that's again, that's whether Lamar stays or he ends up going somewhere else. It's gonna be, whatever's gonna happen is most likely gonna happen through the franchise tag. Whether, unless the Raven could just somehow come up with some crazy great agreement and Lamar agrees to it, Ravens agree to it. They like, all right, let's get it, baby. But I just, for some reason, I don't see it. But the franchise tag, it works in a couple of different ways. If they wanna buy themselves more time to get a contract extension done, you franchise tag them. If you end up wanting to trade him, you franchise tag them. The franchise tag is not that it's inevitable but it seemed like that's the route that is going to, it's gonna take. Now, what them knocking out this Roquan Smith deal also does, it gives you a better projection as far as cap space and numbers and stuff. You have the specifics for the Roquan Smith deal now. You got that hammered out. And that's the biggest deal that you're gonna be giving out. Well, the second biggest deal that you're gonna be giving out this all season. Could end up being the biggest deal, we'll see. But since you got the, you got the specifics, you got the detailed numbers on that, now you can be like, all right, if you're gonna get this thing done with Lamar Jackson or at least if you're gonna try, if you're gonna try to get it done with Lamar Jackson, all right, you know more of what you're working with next year. Obviously some things are gonna change, players gonna be released, traded, signed, blah, blah, blah. The cap probably gonna go up most likely, but you got more of an idea. So it's cool, man. So I'm cool with it. Well, again, Roquan Smith, he's done his thing. Now Ravens, hey, y'all show us all the time, like, oh yeah, you gonna spend that bread on defense. Let's do it on offense now at those special positions too. Let's do, hey, like, why not? Why not? Cause right now the offense, some of there's significant high paid players, Ronnie Stanley, Mark Andrews, and those are definitely difference makers, especially Ronnie Stanley, Mark Andrews, sometimes he could be up and down. It all depends. But get your quarterback taken care of, man. Get your quarterback taken care of financially and then take care of your quarterback. So we'll see how things go, but this does make things a lot, well, not a lot, but a little bit easier for the Ravens headed into the off season. Same keeping clean. I love y'all, I appreciate y'all. And like Roquan Smith won't be when it comes to being in Baltimore anytime soon. We out.