On the Worth of Lamar Jackson

The uncomfortable discussion nobody seems to want about Lamar's true value

Before I start, I have to note that this is an extremely uncomfortable topic for me to take on. It's not fun to talk about somebody else's figures, but this is a hot topic in the football world. I feel the need to throw my two cents in, because my perspective seems extraordinarily different than everybody else's.

Please keep in mind as you read that I do not hate Lamar Jackson. I am not a Lamar Jackson hater. I actually quite like Lamar Jackson. As long as he's not playing my team I find him extraordinary to watch, even if his brand of offence is a tad ugly at times. I'll be stating my honest opinion about Lamar's contract situation. To the best of my abilities, I'll do this in an unbiased way.

That said, let's get into it.

Where do you start with valuing NFL quarterbacks? To begin with, every contract that happened outside of the last three years should be discarded. The quarterback market is completely reset so often that going back any farther than that would be misleading. Also discarded are contracts where the player clearly gave his team a discount (hence why Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Tom Brady are not discussed here).

I feel it best to go with a bounded approach to analysing QB value. This follows with the normal NFL discourse. How often do you hear things like "x QB is so much better than y QB. He can't less money than him." The same thing happens turned around. Fans expect monetary value to align with the player's performance level at the time of signing.

This piece will also ignore all production from players after the signing of their deals. I do this since future performance matters none in a player's current valuation. It's all just guesswork. NFL teams don't value guesswork.

In the past three seasons, Lamar has generated 0.127 EPA/Play (12th among QBs with at least 1000 plays in that span) on a 0.4 CPOE (17th). This combined with his good but not mind-blowing 6.20 ANY/A over that timespan paints a picture of a QB who is an adequate but not great thrower of the ball, but one who still generates a good amount of points on a per play basis. I'm willing to go with Lamar on this one. Who am I to judge how he generates the points as long as they get generated?

Last season, Lamar generated 0.109 EPA/Play (14th) with a -0.6 CPOE (25th) with a 6.12 ANY/A (16th). These are all downs compared to Lamar's career averages, and not the bounce back in his contract year that was expected from him. I actually believe he regressed as a thrower this year. We are a long way from the Lamar that finished fourth in ANY/A and fifth in CPOE in winning the 2019 MVP.

Right. The MVP year. It's a miracle I've gotten this far into a Lamar Jackson post and not discussed it already, and yet, you won't see it mentioned again. There's a simple reason why: Lamar just isn't that guy anymore as a passer.

I understand that is an extremely bold assertion to make out of the blue like this, but Lamar that year ranked 1st in EPA/Play, fourth in CPOE, and fifth in ANY/A. This most recent year those ranks were 14th, 25th, and 16th. It's not the same player. Lamar's completion percentage (excluding spikes and throwaways) in 2019 was 68.7 on an expected completion percentage of 64.8. Last year, he was expected to complete 66.3 percent of his passes, yet completed only 65.7 (again, excluding spikes and throwaways). Lamar is attempting easier passes now, yet completing fewer of them.

You may be on me to get into Lamar's rushing ability. I'll throw you a bone. He's extremely good at it. In 2022, he was still the best rushing QB in the league. There's just one problem with this line of thinking when contemplating value. That problem is that Lamar Jackson, the best rushing QB in the world, generated 221 DYAR (defence adjusted yards above replacement level) in 2022, meaning that if just any other QB in the league had the exact same 99 rush attempts Lamar did (against the same defences, with the same quality of blocking, etc.) they would've ran for 221 yards less than he did. That's really good, but compared to the best passing QB, Patrick Mahomes, who generated 1754 DYAR (not including rushes), it seems like chump change. Passing is much, much more valuable than running.

So when you've got a person who is great at an unimportant skill and used to be great but isn't anymore at an extremely important skill, how do you value them?

Let's get into the bounds.

I'll begin with the lower bound. It's Daniel Jones. No surprises here. Earlier this offseason Daniel Jones signed a four year contract with a total value of 160 million dollars with 81 million of that guaranteed at signing. Daniel got this contract after three years of 0.041 EPA/Play, -0.2 CPOE, 5.77 ANY/A football. Compare these numbers to Lamar's over the same span (0.127; 0.4; 6.20) and you'll see that Lamar has been much much better over that time. However, last season Daniel was every bit Lamar's equal. He had the same (0.004 difference) EPA/Play as Lamar, on a much better CPOE (albeit on easier throws) with a marginally worse ANY/A. He was also the third ranked rushing quarterback (behind Lamar and Josh Allen). Before you start thinking about quality of offence in this comparison, Daniel Jones' best receiver, Darius Slayton, generated 148 DYAR last year. 148 yards over a whole season. It's not like he was throwing to Justin Jefferson.

While I admit that Lamar is better and deserves more than Daniel Jones, we're on the lowest bound and we're already finding comparables. It's not looking good for him.

There are a few candidates for upper bound. The one people seem to bring up most is DeShaun Watson. I do not understand this at all. Either the people bringing up this argument don't care to look up the stats or are jaded by Deshaun's awful play in 2022. I'm affected by neither of those issues, so let's analyse Lamar vs Deshaun.

In the three years prior to signing his deal, Deshaun generated 0.202 EPA/Play (4th) on a 4.3 CPOE (4th). Although he was coming off a non-season in 2021 sitting out for reasons I won't get into here, he was still rewarded for these numbers with a five year contract worth 230 million dollars with it all guaranteed at signing.

Lamar cannot touch those numbers. Do you need to type them again? Lamar put up 0.127, 0.6, 6.20 in the QB triple slash over the three years prior to his contract year. Deshaun put up 0.202, 4.3, 7.46. I understand that Deshaun has character concerns that Lamar absolutely does not. I also understand that Deshaun Watson was one of the worst QBs in the league in 2022.

The fact remains, ignoring the knowledge of how bad Deshaun's 2022 was going to be, I cannot make a coherent argument as to why a player with Lamar's stats should be paid similarly to a player with Deshaun's. People who think this is the upper bound are barking up the wrong tree.

A more realistic upper bound is Russell Wilson. Russell Wilson in the three years before signing his 5 year, 242 million dollar contract with Denver (124 guaranteed at sign), Russell Wilson generated 0.136 EPA/Play with a 5.9 CPOE and 7.11 ANY/A running for his life behind a horrendous offensive line in Seattle. These numbers are all higher than Lamar's, but Wilson was also coming off a down season in his contract year. This sounds more like Lamar.

So, we have Lamar's value bounds as higher than 4 years, $160M (81 guaranteed), but lower than 5 years, $242M (124 guaranteed). That's an 82 million dollar negotiating window. I've still got some narrowing down to do. Luckily, it's already been done for me.

This is the angle that I've found that nobody else seems to acknowledge. I can't understand why it isn't brought up more. It's Kyler Murray. Last offseason, Kyler signed for five years, and 230 million dollars with 103 million dollars guaranteed at signing. In the prior two seasons (only two for Kyler because including a QB's rookie year is unfair), Kyler generated 0.136 EPA/Play on a 3.1 CPOE with 6.66 ANY/A. These numbers are very very similar to Lamar.

I think we've found Lamar's approximate value.

Based on their intense statistical similarity, I believe Lamar Jackson deserves a contract in the neighbourhood of Kyler's and Wilson's. That is to say five years, in the neighbourhood of 240 million of total value with 100-130 million dollars guaranteed at signing. Will Lamar get paid this way? Or will he get paid like the QB he used to be? It's not my job to answer that. We'll see what the GMs do.

If I can decide to a reasonable degree of certainty what Lamar's value is, then what's the holdup between Lamar and the Ravens? It's a good question; one that I don't know the answer to. What I do know is that if Lamar thinks he's worth Deshaun Watson money, he unequivocally isn't. If the Ravens want to pay him like he's Daniel Jones, that's wrong also. We'll only know after it's all over what the holdup is, but I sincerely hope the two sides can come to terms. None of us fans want to see money tear this great pairing of player and team apart.