Lamar Jackson has been warned about his behavior online by ESPN analyst Rob Ninkovich following the Baltimore Ravens quarterback’s recent complaints on social media.
The contract situation surrounding Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens continues to get worse and worse for the quarterback. It all started last summer when Jackson turned down a 3-year deal worth $133m, all of it guaranteed, this despite coming off a season-ending injury.
He then suffered a second season-ending injury towards the end of the 2022 season, and perhaps as a result of that, the Ravens weren’t willing to give him what he felt he was worth in terms of long-term security, and despite asking to be traded, the Ravens instead gave him a non-exclusive franchise tag, a tag which allows teams to come in an negotiate a long-term deal for him, which the Ravens will then have the chance to match.
However, there hasn’t been a lot of interest from around the league and his latest actions might not have gone down well with those that might have had him as an afterthought, as he has taken to Twitter to further explain his side of the story:
But the way he’s been doing it hasn’t sat well with former NFL player Rob Ninkovich.
Lamar Jackson needs to leave his phone alone
Speaking on ESPN’s Get Up (starting at 0:55), Ninkovich pointed out that the way he has been talking on social media, especially when talking about his injury, might be doing more damage to himself and putting teams off from talking to him in the future:
Stop, Lamar stop tweeting and stop putting three letters out there, PCL. Just don't even talk about the injury in the past. Don't even talk about your PCL because these teams when you start bringing it back up, they're like ‘well, he had a PCL, he's even talking about his PCL, he'd rather have 100% PCL, so what was it 75% PCL?’
Stop tweeting about the injury stuff, please because that is what these teams hold against every player, any type of history of injury, they're going to hold it against you and you just listen to Arthur [Falcons owner Arthur Smith] about the injury history and not being there. That is the stuff that these teams and these owners want to hold against the players.
So if I was in Lamar’s corner, if I was in his group, I'd say ‘Lamar, tweet all you want. Don't bring up anything about any injury, anything. No PCL, no ACL, no ankle, nothing.’
Is it too late for Lamar Jackson?
Whilst Ninkovich’s heart might be in the right place, it does seem as though it might be too late to save Jackson and his reputation over all of this. Now that it is out in the open, teams are going to look at this and think twice about whether they want the hassle, not just over the injury, but also the person that is coming with it.
It might well be that teams were willing to overlook the injury problem (players like Odell Beckham Jr are still highly touted despite two ACL injuries for instance), but if they have to take on this sort of emotional baggage as well, then they might just wash their hands of the whole matter.