Ravens GM Eric DeCosta discusses organization’s relationship with QB Lamar Jackson while negotiating
The Baltimore Ravens have plenty of offseason questions as they look to build the best team possible to win a Super Bowl championship. While one of the things the team must figure out is who will be their next offensive coordinator, a key questions is who will be the team’s quarterback in 2023 with the situation with quarterback Lamar Jackson still unsolved.
During his end-of-season press conference with head coach John Harbaugh, general manager Eric DeCosta was asked about the franchise to player relationship with Jackson. DeCosta said that he thinks the organization’s relationship with the signal caller is “fantastic”, and discussed the intricacies of negotiating with him without an agent.
“It’s interesting. Our relationship with Lamar [Jackson], I think is fantastic every single day. Now, you can say, ‘What’s it like negotiating?’ That’s a challenge because that’s a business relationship. Anytime you negotiate with anybody, it’s not always going to be an easy conversation had, but that doesn’t affect our feelings for each other or John’s feelings for Lamar or the organization’s feelings for Lamar every single day, his teammates. We all understand this is a business transaction. That’s the challenge really for a player representing himself, I think. We have to keep those two personalities separate: the Lamar Jackson, the agent, versus Lamar Jackson, the player. The player is somebody who I hold in extremely high regard. He’s a fantastic competitor, one of the most infectious personalities you’ll ever see, one of the most talented players in the league, a truly wonderful person in the community in everything else that he does. So, that hasn’t changed; that won’t change. We’ll put our heads together; we’ll negotiate a contract. I told Lamar that, ‘Hey, this thing has been a burden for both of us,’ I said, ‘But when this thing is over, we are going to feel like a million bucks,’ and that’s truly how I feel.”
