 to team keep it clean. Boy, it's been a lot of rumors just floating around about Lamar Jackson. He is the center of it all. And this is usually what happens when you are such a quiet person, when you don't really put yourself out there like that or your business out there like that. So these things, they get to flying. And one of the latest rumors, not even latest rumors, because this was first said like a couple of weeks ago, it came from former Raven, wide receiver, Quadri Ishmael. Shout out to him, by the way, had a lot of fun the other night speaking to both him and Sarah Ellison on the Twitter Spaces and shout out to anybody that checked that out. But he said it on there, on that Twitter space that we did the other night. He also said it weeks ago on the show that him and Sarah normally do on Twitter Spaces. He said it again in a video that he did with Forward No Sports Talk. Shout out to my boys James and Glenn. But so he's, it ain't like he said it one time and then it was like, okay, no, okay, let me see if he gets out there. No, he said it and he stood on it. He said that Lamar Jackson turned down a contract offer from the Baltimore Ravens. He said it was a nice contract offer. He said it was generational wealth. That's a phrase that he can has continued to use when speaking about the contract. Now, he hasn't given out any details on the contract at all. But he said it is a lot of money. It's a lot of money. We don't know the structure, the way that it was set up as far as the year and the terms and all that, the guaranteed money, signing, but we don't know any of that. He knows that, but we don't know any of that. But he said it was a pretty nice contract. So this has led a lot of people to jump to their own conclusions. It's led a lot of people to just be like, oh man, why would Lamar Jackson do that? Why did he turn it down? But I'm here to sort of try to pump the brakes just a little bit if we can. The reason I say that, we know that Lamar Jackson is not a traditional quarterback. He's not just your average quarterback back there behind his offensive line. Lamar Jackson is different. Lamar Jackson is a generational talent. But Lamar Jackson, he does a lot of things his way. He does a lot of things in a different way. A lot of people don't like that, but it's crazy because he's judged differently even when he does things a traditional way. Like for instance, have you ever worked at a job that you've been at for a little while? You might have been there like three, four years, and you've been doing a great job at your job. Your job, they can rely on you. They can count on you. You have done so many things for the company that you've worked for. So then they're like, hey, you deserve a promotion. And they're like, all right, they slide an offer across the table. You look at it. And what do you do? Do you take the first offer that you're given? No, you negotiate. You negotiate. This is something that's normal in life when it comes to jobs. And this is something that is normal when it comes to contracts in the NFL. And there have been too many people that tried to make this whole thing that, oh, if Lamar Jackson turned down a contract, what's he doing? What's wrong with him? No, this is normal. This is regular. This is all part of negotiating a deal, especially, especially as a quarterback. Because I do believe what Quadri was saying that it is probably some generational wealth. And he said it could set up Lamar's kids and his kids, kids and all that. Yes, I believe that is true. But wouldn't you expect it to be true of a contract for a quarterback? Of course you would, because it ain't going to be no little rinky dinky contract. Like there ain't going to be no penny snow. This is going to be some serious cash. Like even if, and I'm just using this as an example, he did not say this, but I'm just using it as an example, even if Lamar Jackson was only paid top 10 money, not top five or not even top three. Even if he was only paid top 10 money in his QB contract, it will still be generational wealth. So that whole generational wealth part, it really didn't sway me one way or no. Oh man, I can't believe you turned it. No, it's going to be generational wealth no matter what it ends up being. But let's not forget that you don't accept the first offer that's given to you. It's all part of negotiating. That's life. So with that being said, it's also started some narratives for some people. Oh man, Lamar Jackson, this shows that he doesn't want to be with the Baltimore Ravens. Well, not necessarily. I don't believe that either. It could show a couple of things. One, we talked about it already. It's all about negotiating. It's all about negotiating. He could feel like, Hey, you know what? Nice offer. Nice offer. But let me play this year out and then we'll see how it goes. Then let's really talk. Let's come back to these contract talks later on down the road. How about we do that? So he could be betting on himself. Another reason that he may have turned it down is because, Hey, what? Is this top five money? Okay, cool. Is it top four? Okay, cool. Is it top three, top two? No, I want to be the number one paid quarterback. It's a possibility. And it's all about timing. When it comes to QB contracts, it is all about timing. All about timing. So that could be it. Another reason that he may have turned this thing down, if that is the case, could be he may be looking around like, Hmm, the way that these Baltimore Ravens are set up. I just, I don't know if they really put their best foot forward for me, for us, for the team. I just really want to see what these guys can do. Really want to see the team that they build around me before I go into a long-term commitment with this team. Because I've been here for four years. It's been a wonderful four years, been a fun four years, but they've done a lot of right by me, but they've also done some wrong and not even necessarily some wrong, but there's some opportunities for growth. There's some opportunities to be better that we may have missed out on. Number one, it just starts with the offensive line. That's where it starts. That's not where it ends, but that is the beginning. He may be looking at the whole Orlando Brown Junior thing. And I've heard a lot of people say, Oh man, the Ravens, Orlando Brown Junior forced their hand. No, he didn't. He just said he wanted to be traded. Did Ravens have to trade him? No. Did he all of a sudden become a GM when he said he wanted to be traded and he wanted to play left tackle? No. Did he have the leverage or have the power? No. He didn't. He really didn't. Now we love Adolfo away. Shout out to him. But with Orlando Brown Junior, with that whole trade, that weakened the offensive line. And they never really found an adequate replacement for him. They signed Alejandro Villanueva, but well, yeah, you know, and you saw, even though he was supposed to play right tackle this year and things changed and he ended up having to play left tackle. But still, Orlando Brown Junior was definitely the better option. And of course, I know for a lot of people hindsight is 2020. You could always look back and be like, Oh man, if they wouldn't traded him, and then Ronnie Stanley probably got a good could have got hurt and then we could have had him playing like I remember me before I didn't want him to be traded. I did not want Orlando Brown Junior to be traded. But if he was traded, then I felt like, All right, well, they got to have a plan in place. They got to do something there right tackle. And they obviously traded him before the draft. So they had options. They certainly did. So we'll see what goes down with that. He could also be waiting. So he could be looking at to see what the Ravens did in the past and be like, but he could also be waiting to see what the Ravens do in the future when they come to really building a fortress, building a wall, building that protection, having his security guards up front. As far as the offensive line, he could see how the Ravens handle this. He could see how the Ravens handle Bradley Bozeman or who that's going to be. If it's going to be Bradley Bozeman, if it's going to be Tristan Cologne Castillo, if they're going to end up drafting somebody and a lot of people talking about Lindenbaum. So we'll see what happens with that off. A lot of people talking about bringing Ryan Jensen back. That's a possibility. He can see what they do at right tackle. If it's going to be Joanne James, if it's going to be a free agent, if it's going to be a draft pick, what's going to happen there. He could be waiting. Hey, Ronnie Stanley, let's see how Ronnie Stanley comes back. Let's see if he's truly healthy. Let's see if he can hold it down. Ben Cleveland, how he going to put, that's a, and these are all just possibilities. He's all possibilities of what he could be thinking about when it comes to his future. Another thing he could be thinking about. All right, Greg Roman is going to be here. Let's see how this goes. Let's see how this goes. Let's see how we orchestrate this offense. Let's see if they let me put my best foot forward. Let's see if I put my best foot forward in this offense. Let's see what we can do. Let's really try to just reach our full potential because I don't feel like we've reached our full potential yet. And I want to because I want to show the world. We were doing some things this year early on. We certainly were, but we just, we didn't quite get it. And now with everybody coming back with all the guys coming back and hopefully they'll come back just as good or even better as they were before. All right, let's run it back and see how this thing goes. Same offense, but all the players that we were missing and then some for whoever we add. So it's a lot of possibilities of things that could be going on in Lamar's head. But my biggest thing, I just, I didn't want new narratives to be created based off of this, even though they're already going to get created. I can't stop no narrative from happening. But I just wanted to explain some different possibilities or some different things that could be going on, not only from Lamar Jackson, but from his camp period. And something that we've mentioned on here before too, a few times, if y'all been listening, is that right now after this past season would be the perfect time for Eric Dacosta and the Ravens to sign Lamar Jackson to a long-term deal because it would be based off of, obviously it's about the future, but it's about the past too. And it is what have you done for me lately, League. And they could be like, oh, look Lamar, look at that. Oh, your numbers, look at these numbers. Oh, your interceptions were up. Oh, your touchdowns were down. Oh, man, look at that. Wow, Lamar. Yeah, this is what we're going to give you. There you go. And let's see how it goes. There you go. Take that. He could have been looking at that. He could have looked at that like, hold up, man. But then on the flip side, this is where he has all the leverage. He could be like, all right, cool, but no, I don't like this. Yeah, my numbers were down. Look at how he performed, but look at everything that was around me. Look at my situation because what a lot of people keep on doing, they give the injury pass. They give the injury pass to coaching. Whenever you bring up coaching, people say, oh, man, oh, well, this coach, that's not fair to this coach because this coach didn't have this player, that player, they were missing a lot of guys due to injury. But you don't hit people saying that about Lamar Jackson. You don't hit people saying that about Lamar Jackson. When they talk about his numbers, when they talk about him having this down season, they don't bring up the injuries. They say, all Lamar should have been better. All Lamar should have done this. All Lamar should have done that, but they don't give him the injury pass. So Lamar could use that and just use himself to his advantage and all his leverage because he could say, look, yeah, look at the injuries, but even without the injuries, look at what you all did without me. Look at how successful you are or you all were without me. Look what you all did when I didn't play or really look at what you all didn't do when I didn't play. How was that? How was that experience? What was that like? How was life when all that stuff was going down? And that's all he had to say. That's your negotiation tactic. It's all about leverage. It's all about seeing how you can get the best deal. And of course, it's going to take some compromise on both EDC side. It's going to take some compromise on Lamar Jackson side. It's going to take compromise from both parties, of course. But that's how it goes in life when it comes to reaching new agreements with somebody. Team Keep It Clean. I love y'all. I appreciate y'all so much. I hope all of y'all are doing really good. Eric DeCosta. He'll have a chance to address it tomorrow because you know somebody going to ask, hey, so what's the status about Lamar Jackson's contract? How's that coming along? You know people going to ask about Lamar's contract. They're going to ask about Harbaugh's contract. But Lamar's contract is the one that people want to know about the most. And they'll have a plethora of other questions for him as well. But I love y'all. Appreciate y'all. And we out.