Lamar and Kyrie: Pickleball Partners For Life
I've been heads down on a few projects and haven't enforced my writing habit. Shame on me. I'll catch you up on those over the next few weeks on what's been an exciting time. So many of you reached out after I spilled my guts about my dog. Meant so much and was so wonderful to speak to so many.
Now, I don't write a lot about football, but I do continue to take victory laps for my lukewarm take about the formerly San Diego Chargers, and I figure I had to weigh in on the problem facing my hometown Baltimore Ravens and its star QB Lamar Jackson.
Apart from LIV golfers, I'd venture to say the current ranks of "unwanted" premiere athletes starts with Lamar Jackson and ends with Kyrie Irving (although Rudy Gobert has to join these two). Two incredibly talented and confounding personalities, that nobody seems to want. Unproven as leaders, proven as team wreckers (Kyrie) and proven as brittle players (Lamar).
And so it's with that I propose they team up, start a pickleball team and tour the country, proving to all, they are still better at everything than you and me, but do it together, for the kids.
While I won't get into how awful Kyrie Irving is, despite his on-court wizardry, he went to Duke and is a flat-earther, why would I even have to prove anything else? I'll dig a bit into Lamar Jackson and how he went from being one of the most loved Baltimore athletes to one who almost unanimously is being escorted from the crumbling city. And through it all, Lamar has become at least on the surface, very much unwanted by the bulk of NFL owners.
I loved Lamar Jackson coming out of Louisville. All the talk of him not being an NFL quarterback was garbage. He was dynamic at Louisville, could run, throw (and run) and brought a type of football to the Ravens we hadn't known, ever. The list of quarterbacks in Baltimore has been anything but dynamic, including the likes of Joe Flacco, Kyle Boller, Vinny Testaverde and Trent Dilfer. That said, the Ravens have won two Superbowls.
I wanted to love Lamar as Michael Vick 2.0, his self representational brand of football. He fit in Baltimore. So much so that in 2020, I bet the Ravens +4500 to win the Superbowl. They ultimately fell to Chiefs that season, but not before a VERY promising run. Since his rookie season, Lamar has been on a tear, winning a league MVP, setting running records, until about December, and then he tears something, which makes him unplayable late in the season or in the playoffs. His current playoff record is 1-3 through five seasons in the league.
The Lamar Jackson story has captivated the NFL and sports world in general. A player without an agent seeking to become amongst the higher paid players at his position. Rumblings are that Lamar Jackson is seeking $250 mln guaranteed, or approximately a $50mln per year cap hit. He sees the Deshaun Watson deal as the target to match. Now I don't know whether this is what Lamar has said during his negotiations with the Ravens. Usually agents, or agents of agents leak things to accelerate a deal (or blow one up). In this case, we have garbled tweets, cryptic emojis and inconsistent chatter from Lamar and his mother.
The Ravens are doing what they should do in light of what appears to be dwindling interest in these types of shenanigans around the league. By failing to reach a long-term deal with Lamar, they've been pushed into a corner, forced to use the franchise tag that allows other NFL teams to negotiate with Lamar, whilst giving the Ravens the opportunity to match any deal.
After weeks of no offers, rumors of collusion abound. Chatter is that NFL teams want to break the precedent set by the woeful Cleveland Browns ownership with Deshaun Watson and/or that negotiating without an agent is a no-go.
And lest I seem "pro-owernship" which is a tough position to take, let me make a better case for them.
- He hasn't played in January in a couple of years.
- He's got a 1-3 record in the playoffs.
- As a running QB his effectiveness will decline with each year.
Most importantly, if they are going to spend $50mln on a guy like Lamar, the data would suggest they will not win a Superbowl. At $50mln, Lamar would represent 22.24% of the Ravens salary cap, $224.8 mln in 2023. If you assume a modest adjustment to the cap each year, by his 5th season in a long-term deal, he'd project to represent ~16%. Now this is just an estimate because we don't know the contract, nor the cap, but the bottom line is, it's still too high to win.
Adam Thompson
The Highest Cap Percentages to Reach a Super Bowl
Going back to the year 2000, the QB who reached the Super Bowl with the highest percentage of league salary cap is Peyton Manning, whose $23.2M cap hit in 2009 represented 18.8% of the league cap. The Saints beat the Colts that year.
And so I don't have the answer, but I do know that if Lamar and Kyrie teamed up for Pickleball, I'd pay for that. Godspeed.
📻 Music
As you can tell I meant to send these out a few weeks ago as both Wayne Shorter and Tom Verlaine are no longer with us.
Two albums about 10 years apart. It speaks to how much we can explore different elements of life over the span of a decade.From the heart of bee bop to the most melodic free form tunes on.
You can't get this on Spotfiy. I don't know why. It's probably too good. I have it on CD and vinyl in a box, somewhere. It's gorgeous and beyond warm.