Lamar Jackson has been fired by the NFL cognoscenti since day one and he still has detractors despite his success. In the same way that Cam Newton was never going to please quite a few people for various reasons, Jackson seems to have met a similar fate.
He did things his way, in an unconventional way, and worked beautifully for the first few years of his career. He doesn’t want to do things the way they’ve always been done, and cognoscenti don’t like it.
Last week, Jackson View its first update about the condition of his injured left knee, which kept him sidelined for the final weeks of the Ravens season, incl The AFC team’s loss to Cincinnati on Sunday.
Suffering from a grade 2 PCL sprain, Jackson wrote, “on the border of a [Grade] 3” and he’s still dealing with swelling and instability. The PCL is a major stabilizer for knee joints; a grade 2 sprain is a partial tear, and a grade 3 is a complete tear.
On the court, Lamar isn’t a Lamar without good knees.
Off the field, he has no contract for the 2023 season and beyond, an issue that has made headlines all season.
Fans are fans, and so twitter is to be expected “Lamar quit” He will bring plenty of letters from those who say Jackson should put his health, well-being, and financial future on the line without guaranteed money if things go wrong. But it wasn’t just fans who criticized Jackson. On the Pre-game show on Fox SportsAt the event, Sean Payton would uncomfortably disparage Jackson, telling the quarterback, “The team is more important than you.”
Michael Vick parroted Payton and then said, “Put a brace on it, go. Put a brace on, let’s go.”
Outsiders will always have their opinions, and many still refuse to consider professional athletes as human beings because some of them earn very large salaries, but this call came from inside the house. That’s some dirty work.
If we wanted our inner Petty Betty to run wild, this is where we remind you that Payton has been suspended for an entire season for turning a blind eye to a bounty program that one of his New Orleans assistants ran (Which former NFL player Junior Gallet pointed out sharply) and that Vic derailed his rapid rise with utterly stupid decisions. But that would be a trifle, right?
Excuse me.
Payton, who gave up coaching last year because he said so It wasn’t where his heart was, seems to be heading down the miserable path John Gruden once trod, teasing that he’ll quit his cozy broadcasting job to be a franchise savior – if only the price and situation are right. However, he refused to acknowledge that Jackson may be doing the same and looked out for his best interests, current and future earning potential, and his current and future physical and emotional health. Jackson wants to be paid, and we assume he can walk on his own in 40 years. Payton wants to be honored. And I paid.
Let’s say Jackson plays against the Bengals. He put on a brace, as Vic gently said, and started the game. Dr. Jess FlynnThe Boston-based sports medicine physician told Yahoo Sports that Jackson risked tearing the meniscus, or cartilage, in the knee. These tears often require surgery, Flynn said, and some of the cartilage damage can be a lifelong problem.
Let’s say the worst happened. If Jackson had sucked it up like they wanted and played poorly, Payton and Vic would probably be the first to underplay it. And would they have offered to make up the difference on any money Jackson lost on his contract? of course not.
It could have been Robert Griffin III all over again, a talented quarterback hurting his long-term career by filling the team’s immediate need. Griffin posted as much on Twitter in defense of Jackson. Painfully playing for his “bro/team…changed the trajectory of my career,” Griffin wrote in a tweet.
said feat reporter Jim Trotter recently on NFL Network that after a game in December, he was approached by a player from a different team, who brought up Jackson’s injury, without even asking him. This player told Trotter he had a sprained PCL in the first week and months later it wasn’t 100%.
Lamar Jackson does not use an agent and it hurts him
The complicating factor in all of this is that Jackson does not have an agent. he really, Is that true You must have one. Representing yourself – or working alongside a family member, as Jackson does – is fine to an extent, as entry-level contracts are set and mostly standard. But the point at which Jackson should have acquiesced and hired an agent was long gone.
The agent tells the player side about things through the media, so when Jackson was injured in December, Baltimore coach John Harbaugh told reporters it was “week after week,” thus setting an expectation that it was a matter of a game-to-game situation. The agent would have come in behind Harbaugh and said it was at least a four-week schedule, which is in line with the average recovery for a PCL injury like Jackson’s.
The agent would deal with the team, paying on behalf of the client to make sure Jackson wasn’t rushed again too soon, a move that usually benefited the team over the player.
The agent also has arguments at the table so the player doesn’t have to have them, and when a deal is struck, any lingering bad feelings are mostly between the organization and the agent, not the player.
Jackson and the Crows have made a mess of all of thisAnd it seems to be getting worse. Not just because Jackson doesn’t have a proxy, but because he’s so online, every cryptic message and public response to a troll has amateur sleuths trying to figure out what she “really” means.
Also because many of Harbaugh’s public comments don’t come across like those of someone looking to welcome back the 26-year-old quarterback earlier this month who already has an MVP on his resume, as if that kind of player could easily be replicated.
And because Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti doesn’t want fully guaranteed five-year contracts, similar to what Cleveland has agreed to. Deshaun WatsonAnd to become the standard.
And because everyone has an opinion, many support the old NFL status quo: Who cares about tomorrow, shoot it and play through it today. It doesn’t matter, go out for the team.
It all glosses over the cold truth: A team is a business and will ruthlessly cut out any player the moment they think it’s best for the business and bottom line, no matter how many injuries they have.
Lamar is also a company. He knows that and moves accordingly.
But his next step, as he continues to rehabilitate his knee, has to be to have someone do the dirty work for him.