Ian Rapoport Expects Ravens Would Use Exclusive Franchise Tag on Lamar Jackson

The non-exclusive tag number for quarterbacks is $32.4 million. The exclusive franchise tag number has not been announced yet; it currently projects to be $45.248 million.

If the Ravens tag Jackson, they will have until July 15 to sign him to an extension before he would be locked into the tag next season.

As Rapoport noted and General Manager Eric DeCosta emphasized in the Ravens’ season review press conference three weeks ago, the Ravens’ intention remains to sign Jackson to a long-term contract. When asked if the Ravens had made a decision on which tag they would give Jackson, DeCosta said he’s “thought about it every day.”

“I would love to be able to go down there and not have to talk about Lamar Jackson because we got a deal done,” DeCosta said. “But no matter what, we will have a plan in place like we always do. We’ve been down this road before in different ways with different players, and we’ll do what we think is best for the club.”

Now that we’re more than two weeks removed from the Ravens’ heartbreaking loss to the Cincinnati Bengals in the wild-card round, The Baltimore Sun’s Childs Walker and C.J. Doon took stock of the state of the Ravens and assessed how much optimism there should be for the 2023 season.

“On a scale of one to 10, call it a six,” Walker said. “The Ravens’ wild-card loss in Cincinnati confirmed what we knew all season: they could compete with anyone for 60 minutes. It also confirmed that even with a decent offensive performance, they would struggle to score enough points to knock off the league’s best. But the Ravens will spend the offseason knowing they came as close as anyone to shutting down one of the NFL’s hottest teams.”

Doon wrote: “They were a 98-yard fumble return away from beating the team that almost returned to the Super Bowl. I’d say that’s a pretty good reason to be optimistic about next season. [Mike] Macdonald might already be one of the best defensive…