The B-Gap: Three under the radar teams that should be in on Lamar Jackson

By Sam Robb O’Hagan

Finding an appropriate landing spot for Lamar Jackson is a funny exercise. 

Jackson isn’t the problem. He isn’t a square peg being shoved into a round hole so much as he is the hole himself. He’s a generational, once-in-a-lifetime talent — a fact that desperately needs reminding, here’s The Ringer’s Steven Ruiz summarizing Jackson’s true value — that will instantly change the fortunes of any franchise.

The longer you engage in the exercise of mocking Jackson to prospective trade partners, the further it becomes apparent that the task at hand isn’t finding a partner that makes sense, it’s finding one that doesn’t. 

Jackson is an elite quarterback. His level of play is one of five, maybe six, in the NFL today, and the skill set he uses to get there is truly one of one. There is not a quarterback in the league that plays the position like Jackson. There is not a quarterback that can do the same things, that can solve the same problems. The four teams that roster an elite passer — the Kansas City Chiefs, Los Angeles Chargers, Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills — can ignore the Jackson circus. The select few that feel like they might — the Philadelphia Eagles, Jacksonville Jaguars, Dallas Cowboys and Chicago Bears — should probably still do their due-diligence, because Jackson is that kind of quarterback, but their comfort is defensible. 

Everyone else should be falling over themselves for Jackson’s services. He’s really that good. And he’s really that rare.

Of course, not a single team has even admitted interest in Jackson in the month that he’s been available. Arriving at the conclusion that extracurricular motivations are likely behind Jackson’s dormant market doesn’t take much digging (our own Brendan Nordstrom did more than enough), but for the purposes of this article, it won’t be unpacked. Assuming each team is willing to pay him what he’d inevitably be worth to them, here are three underrated teams that should be leading the race to acquire one of the NFL’s best players.

San Francisco 49ers

There’s an old football jargon that goes something like “if you have two quarterbacks, you have no quarterback,” a cliche that earned its wings during the 49ers’ most famous quarterback controversy between Joe Montana and Steve Young in the late 90s. 25 years later, the 49ers have not two, but three quarterbacks, and they aren’t exactly disproving the philosophy birthed by two of their team’s all-time greats.

Sam Darnold is, well, Sam Darnold; Brock Purdy was the very last pick in the draft for a reason, was certainly not the reason the 49ers finished the 2022 season as well as they did, and will now be coming off a critical elbow injury; Trey Lance has thrown 102 passes in two seasons, is recovering from a torn ACL, and the 49ers themselves keep trying to tell everyone they don’t believe in him.

Jackson would solve San Francisco’s quarterback conundrum, just about the only dilemma left on what could be the NFL’s most talented roster. And just imagine what an offense with George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk and Deebo Samuel, led by Jackson and orchestrated by Kyle Shanahan, could look like. San Francisco’s offense finished last season with the fourth-best offense in the NFL by EPA/Play, while enduring three different starting quarterbacks. Adding Jackson, who attacks the middle of the field as a passer far more potently than many realize, to an impossibly loaded offense that controls the middle of the field better than anyone else, is certainly a prize worth giving up on Lance and Purdy for.

The only complication to this marriage is the cost for the 49ers to acquire Jackson, who don’t have their first-round pick in 2023 and would therefore need to wait until after the draft to activate the much-discussed two-first round picks to fulfill the required compensation in Jackson’s non-exclusive franchise tag with the Ravens. But in a completely dead market, waiting until after the draft is a gamble that could pay off.

But the 49ers could go the sign-and-trade route, outlined by ESPN’s Bill Barnwell here. This road would likely end with San Francisco surrendering more than two first-round picks to acquire Jackson, but again, Jackson’s market is completely deserted. How much leverage would the Ravens even have, given that Jackson has already submitted a trade request and Baltimore has refused to meet Jackson’s preferred contract?

Getting Jackson in the building will be complicated, certainly, but the hassle will instantly make the 49ers Super Bowl favorites for the indefinite future (remember, Jackson is 26 years old), if they aren’t already in the conversation now. 

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The 2022 Buccaneers were probably the worst playoff team of the last decade, and the only two quarterbacks that remain on the roster are Baker Mayfield, now on his third team in six months, and Kyle Trask, who is so unathletic that he wasn’t even the starter for his high school team. The Bucs certainly have familiarity with unathletic quarterbacks, they won a Super Bowl with one less than three years ago, but if they’re truly serious about Trask like they say they are, it means they believe he has comparable technical ability to Tom Brady.

The Bucs could use Lamar Jackson.

But then again, just about everyone could. He is that good. But the Bucs are uniquely prepared to accommodate him, and then dream with him. The 2022 team finished completely out of their depth, but their incompetence was largely a symptom of poor coaching decisions and an aging, leaky offensive line ill-equipped to protect Brady’s statue behind it. But the core that won it at all in 2020 is still intact. Jamel Dean re-signing with the team for pennies on the dollar was a convicted reminder, so the Bucs are plenty capable of making their timeline fit with Jackson’s.

Chris Godwin, Mike Evans and Russell Gage still make up an above-average receiving corps, a luxury that Jackson has won an MVP and established himself as an elite quarterback without. Tampa’s defense is still excellent. The only questions that remain are the coaching staff, which was proactively addressed by the organization in the offseason, and the leaky offensive line, which wasn’t, but it still has Tristan Wirfs. And it’s difficult to come up with a quarterback more capable of surviving behind a subpar offensive line than Jackson. 

The Bucs have a core that is still ready to win-now, without a quarterback, in a division with no clear leader. And how good would he look in those jerseys?

Baltimore Ravens

This is cheating, but it needs to be said. 

There is not a team in the NFL that need Jackson more than the Baltimore Ravens, and there are plenty that need him. With Jackson on the field in 2022, the Ravens’ offense was ninth in the NFL with an EPA/Play of 0.060. Without him, Baltimore plummeted to 26th in the league at an EPA/Play of -0.086. That means that the Ravens offense was over a full point in expected value added each play with Jackson than without him. Think about that.

That Jackson even had the Ravens offense so high through the season’s first 11 weeks is remarkable in itself. Jackson was tasked with overcoming a heavily maligned and outdated play-caller and a wide receiver room booned by a former first-round pick with less than 1,000 career receiving yards. In the time that Jackson was on the field, the Ravens defense endured heavy struggles, too.

And yet, there Jackson was, carrying Baltimore to a 7-3 record and a division lead into the second half of the season. And now, here Jackson is, unable to convince the team he’s lifted to the playoffs for three straight years to give him a contract in the same ballpark as others near or at his level of on-field value.

Quarterbacks as abundantly important as Jackson, at his age, do not hit the open market. They are true, blank check, “name your price” players, and they always have been. Forget the extracurriculars. Forget the politics that come with becoming the second team to hand out a contract with $200+ million guaranteed in the last two seasons. Jackson is worth it; because what is the plan without him? All of the starting-caliber free agents are gone. The Ravens have the 22nd pick. Is it Hendon Hooker? It can’t possibly be Tyler Huntley, right?

To Baltimore, Jackson is worth whatever he says he is worth. The Ravens are, quite literally, nothing without him.