The Hint That Will Tip the Ravens’ Plan for Lamar Jackson

Plus, the pressure on Steichen in Indy, how Washington landed Eric Bieniemy and more.

More MMQB: A Forgotten Play Set the Tone for Super Bowl LVII | A Deeper Look at Jonathan Gannon | A Farewell Q&A With Chad Henne

The franchise-tag window opens Tuesday, and it closes in two weeks. And if history is any indication, most teams considering using the tag will let things play out over the full two weeks before making a final call—there’s really no advantage to doing it earlier rather than later.

Here, then, are the tag numbers for 2023 …

• QB: $32,416,000
• RB: $10,091,000
• WR: $19,743,000
• TE: $11,345,000
• OL: $18,244,000
• DE: $19,727,000
• DT: $18,937,000
• LB: $20,926,000
• CB: $18,140,000
• S: $14,460,000
• K/P: $5,393,000

Obviously, the big question is whether the Ravens will tag Lamar Jackson, and we’ll get to that here in a second. But teams like the Giants (Saquon Barkley/Daniel Jones), Raiders (Josh Jacobs), Bengals (Jessie Bates), Cowboys (Dalton Schultz/Tony Pollard), Chiefs (Orlando Brown), Seahawks (Geno Smith) and Commanders (Daron Payne) have decisions to make, too.

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Lamar Jackson will get tagged—one way or another—by Baltimore :: Tommy Gilligan/USA TODAY Sports

And on Lamar Jackson, the big question isn’t whether the Ravens will tag him. It’s which tag they’ll use. As you can see, the quarterback tag is $32.4 million. The exclusive tag—and this can change, with new quarterback contracts coming in or old quarterback contracts being restructured—stands at $45.46 million right now.

We went over this last week in The MAQB, but it’s worth reiterating that each tag sends a very different message. The former exposes the Ravens to another team signing Jackson to an offer sheet and finding a way to (even though it’s technically against the rules) poison-pill the contract for the Ravens. To do it, Baltimore has to at least be comfortable with moving on from Jackson and getting two first-round picks in return. The latter would take Jackson off the market completely, and say, more or less, He’s going nowhere.

So why wouldn’t the Ravens just put the exclusive tag on him? Mostly because it would make a contract harder to negotiate. Your starting point, off that tag, would have to be a two-year guarantee of over $100 million (the sum of two exclusive franchise tags), because that’s the route you’d have to persuade Jackson not to take. And even then, he’d have the option to not sign it, with no penalty for not showing up until September (when he’d start losing game checks off that tag).

Which way will the Ravens go? To me, it’s still incredibly unpredictable, because Jackson has handled this the same way he plays—uniquely.

And there’s a part of me, based on what I know, that believes this is still a play on principle for Jackson. He’s taken an unprecedented number of hits for a quarterback through five years on a rookie deal, so it would be wholly understandable if he looked sideways at a conventional quarterback contract offer that would give Baltimore injury protection down the line.

No matter how you slice it, this isn’t going to be an easy one for the Ravens. It will start with their first move.

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The early stages of Steichen’s run in Indianapolis are going to be judged, fair or not, on one thing—and that’s whether or not he can get the quarterback position straightened out. From the minute the Colts pulled the plug on Frank Reich, there was really no gray area on what it was about—getting the quarterback right. Indy had already benched Matt Ryan to get a look at Sam Ehlinger. Reich’s OC, Marcus Brady, had been fired. And Jim Irsay’s fingerprints were all over it.

Whispers, pretty loud ones, at the time were that Irsay wanted to get the quarterback position right, for the long term, once and for all. No more bridge guys (like Matt Ryan or Philip Rivers), no more reclamation projects (like Carson Wentz). The logic then followed that either Ehlinger and Jeff Saturday would thrive, or the team would sink to the bottom of the league and be in position to set the organization up to get one in the draft. We know how that turned out.

So Irsay’s hinting that the team likes Bryce Young last week or confirming that they’re planning to take a quarterback in the top five was hardly news to anyone in the building. And ultimately, that’s what hiring Steichen is about, too—getting a coach who could work with different types of quarterbacks and have him at the side of whomever the rookie coming in winds up being.

The good news? Steichen is pretty qualified when it comes to this. He had a very close relationship with Rivers, both as position coach and coordinator, in San Diego and Los Angeles, then helped a rookie Justin Herbert acclimate to the NFL in the COVID-19 year of 2020 (Herbert won Offensive Rookie of the Year) before building an offense for Hurts the last two years that blended NFL pass-game concepts with an Oklahoma run-game foundation.

True to all that, here’s what Steichen said he’ll look for in a young quarterback: “Accuracy, decision-making and the ability to create are the three things I look at in a quarterback. I think all three things are very important. But obviously, above the neck, the players I’ve been around—Jalen Hurts, Justin Herbert and Philip Rivers—they all have one thing in common: They’re obsessed with their craft. If you can find that in a quarterback, you’ll probably have some success.”

Which is to say, Steichen will be flexible, to a degree, in assessing Young, C.J. Stroud, Will Levis and Anthony Richardson, in envisioning how the Colts would work around each guy’s strengths and weaknesses. And that’s a great thing for Indy, in that it will allow GM Chris Ballard and his staff to look at each guy with an open mind.

That said, make no mistake, Steichen and Ballard have to get this one right, if the way the owner has handled the last six months is any indication of what he expects.

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Bieniemy takes over as offensive coordinator in Washington :: Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports

Commanders coach Ron Rivera deserves credit for taking a big swing on Eric Bieniemy. The tough reality for Rivera—following the dismissal of offensive coordinator Scott Turner—was that selling his open position to a coach with options wasn’t going to be easy. The team missed the playoffs the last two years and is about to be sold. And the new owner, presuming Dan Snyder doesn’t play Lucy and pull the football away at the last minute (which can’t be totally ruled out), very well might want his own people in 2024.

That’s why a lot of folks leaguewide, and even inside Ashburn, thought Rivera would end up turning to quarterbacks coach Ken Zampese, who’s at least been a coordinator before. Instead, Rivera gets Patrick Mahomes’s OC, and gets him with the Chiefs coming off their second championship, and third Super Bowl, in four years. K.C. is also coming off its fifth straight home AFC title game, a stretch that encompasses the five years Bieniemy has run their offense. Which, at least on paper, would seem to be a wildly unlikely development. Based on what I know, it went down for a couple of reasons.

First, there’s the relationship that Rivera has with Andy Reid. Rivera coached linebackers for Reid for five years in Philadelphia (1999 to 2003), and views him as a coaching mentor. The two have stayed close, serving together on the coaches subcommittee (also known as the Madden Committee), and working together on a number of leaguewide initiatives. Getting good intel on Bieniemy’s availability was never going to be a problem.

Second, there’s Bieniemy’s frustration. He’s had 16 head coaching interviews (the Jets interviewed him twice). This offseason he interviewed with an executive he worked with in Kansas City in Colts GM Chris Ballard. And I don’t know if anyone tracks this stuff, but he has to have been told, Thanks, but no thanks, more times than anyone in league history. I can’t blame him for getting sick of it and wanting to try to change something.

This also allows him to change the narrative—from being Reid’s and Mahomes’s OC, to just being a good football coach again. If this does that for him, then it makes a ton of sense. And if you’re Bieniemy, as much as you might look at the NFL’s larger problem of a lack of diversity at the top of the coaching ranks—and you want to be part of the fix—you also have your own personal goals. If one of those goals is being a head coach, it’s easy to see where this move is logical, especially when you consider that, even if there were to be changes in Ashburn a year from now, you’re established enough to get another coordinator job elsewhere in the league.

As for that first point, again, that relationship was part of how this all went down, and part of a pretty interesting month in getting here for Rivera, because …

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The Commanders getting Bieniemy actually started with them missing on him. For the same reason other head coaches may not have considered getting the Chiefs’ OC realistic, the idea didn’t really cross Rivera’s mind in the aftermath of Turner’s firing, which went down two days after Washington’s season ended.

Then, Rivera started digging into what he wanted to build offensively and was studying quick-game concepts of three- and five-step drops to get the ball to Terry McLaurin, Curtis Samuel and Jahan Doston faster and highlight the strengths of Sam Howell coming out of his rookie year. He kept coming back to two things—what the Chiefs do offensively and the fact that Bieniemy had signed a series of one-year deals.

So the second week of the offseason, he huddled with front-office types Martin Mayhew, Marty Hurney, Rob Rogers, Eric Stokes and Chris Polian, and put Bieniemy on the list. The only problem was that the window to interview assistant coaches from the No. 1 seeds had already closed and, because the Commanders hadn’t conducted a first interview, they wouldn’t be able to get to Bieniemy during the second-interview window for Super Bowl teams during the bye week ahead of the big game.

Rivera told the front office guys, more or less, We need to wait. So they did, going through other candidates in the meantime and biding their time.

Last week, Rivera and Reid talked a number of times, and Reid was very supportive of the idea, believing it could benefit both his former assistant and his current assistant. And Rivera could recall one other time Reid had put in that sort of stamp of approval—it was for former Eagles assistant Sean McDermott before Rivera hired McDermott as his defensive coordinator in 2011.

Which led into last week’s three-day interview (dinner Wednesday, interview Thursday, staffing and contract discussion Friday). Over that time, Bieniemy showed deep knowledge of the Commanders’ offensive roster; presented a detailed plan to get the ball in the hands of guys like McLaurin, Dotson and Samuel; and explained how he’d leverage the creativity Kansas City has thrived on for a decade in Washington.

And Bieniemy also went deep on the Dallas game, which was Howell’s lone start, and into how quick the quarterback was getting the ball out, his decision-making and his footwork.

By then, Rivera had cross-checked Bieniemy with the Chiefs’ other coordinators, Steve Spagnuolo and Dave Toub, and got glowing reviews back, which, really, only made this more about whether Bieniemy would take the job than whether the Commanders would offer it. Both guys affirmed what Rivera had seen: Bieniemy had some traits that all Reid assistants seem to have, in his confidence to command a room and lead (some of his hand gestures even reminded Rivera a little of Reid).

Now Rivera has his guy. And, again, considering the situation he’s in, with ownership and everything else in Washington, this is a pretty good get.

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I really like what the Panthers are doing with their coaching staff. You’ve seen the hires. David Tepper struck a check to convince Ejiro Evero to come to Carolina, rather than go to Minnesota with his buddy Kevin O’Connell. They pried the Rams’ assistant head coach, Thomas Brown, from Los Angeles to be their OC and bring some McVay influence to their offense. They’ve hired respected position coaches like Duce Staley (who will also be assistant head coach) and Shawn Jefferson, and taken chances on guys like DeAngelo Hall. And it all goes back to what owner David Tepper said: There’s no salary cap on coaches.

In Tepper’s hiring go-round, that meant giving then Baylor coach Matt Rhule a seven-year, $63 million deal to choose Carolina over his dream job with the Giants. In Round 2, it’s meant surrounding Frank Reich with a staff stocked with rising coaches and established teachers, and it’s going to be fascinating to see how this turns out.

To be sure, there are owners in the NFL who’d prefer that spending on coaches—both on the guys in charge and their assistants—stay under control. Some have even worked to ensure it. But with the deal Sean Payton got in Denver from the league’s newest owners, and what the league’s second-newest owner is doing in Charlotte, and what happened last year (with what Miami’s Steve Ross, who just paid his new DC nearly $5 million per, offered Payton), it’s clear where the tide is going on all this.

I say good. Owners should be investing money back into the product, and I applaud Tepper for doing that. Now, if the owners would only do the same with officiating and the fields, we’d be all set.

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Somehow, the coaching carousel is still spinning with a week left until the combine. We’re here for it, and for you, with some quick-hitters on it to wrap up the Takeaways …

• It sure looks like Brian Johnson is staying in Philly, after walking away from the chance to join Frank Reich’s all-star staff in Carolina. Which means he’s in line, once the proper search process is complete, to succeed Steichen as Eagles offensive coordinator.

• That would probably free up Kevin Patullo to return to Indy, where he was receivers coach under Reich, as Steichen’s offensive coordinator, once their process is complete.

• As for the defensive coordinator job in Philly, Eagles passing-game coordinator Dennard Wilson remains one to watch for a promotion into that role. As we’ve mentioned before, Vic Fangio and Jerod Mayo were high on the list as potential Gannon replacements, but both were spoken for contractually by the time Gannon landed the Arizona job.

• Bieniemy is likely to bring a couple of coaches with him to Washington, and there could be added responsibilities for assistant line coach Travelle Wharton with the Commanders as well. Wharton, who played 10 years in the league, has been an assistant line coach for Rivera for five years now (two in Carolina, three in Washington).

• Mike Westhoff’s return to the NFL with the Broncos—he and Payton have been talking about it for a few weeks—is interesting in that it ends the 75-year-old’s second retirement. Westhoff first walked away at the end of 2012 after 12 years with the Jets. He returned in ’17 for two seasons with the Saints before walking away again. And now he’s back, and I’m told it’s only happening because he’s with the one head coach he’d return to work with at his age.

• While we’re there, Rex Ryan was with the Broncos over the weekend, too, and Denver’s interest in him, and also Vance Joseph and Mike Zimmer (added to the Westhoff hire), is a pretty good indication that Payton wants experienced hands around him. Having it that way, of course, will free him up to build the offense and work with Russell Wilson.

• The addition of Patriots-connected assistants Nick Caley and Ryan Wendell to the Rams’ offensive staff is a pretty good sign of the respect Sean McVay has for Belichick, and also for what McDaniels was able to build on that side of the ball in Foxboro.

• After Matt Nagy officially takes over for Bieniemy as Chiefs OC, his old job, as Kansas City’s quarterbacks coach, should be a sought-after one. But assistant quarterbacks coach David Girardi would probably be first in line to replace him, with quality-control coach Porter Ellett potentially then replacing Girardi as assistant QBs coach.

• Good move by Kellen Moore to get Doug Nussmeier to come with him to the Chargers to work with Herbert. Nussmeier was an OC at five different schools, has been coaching quarterbacks for more than 20 years and played the position in the league. He should be a pretty good resource to the young quarterback, on top of what Moore will bring.

• Dave Canales left the Seahawks to become Bucs OC last week, and I figured that he’d probably have to be the last guy left from Pete Carroll’s original Seattle staff. I figured wrong! Tight ends coach Pat McPherson and senior offensive assistant Nate Carroll, Pete’s youngest son, also go all the way back to 2010 with the team.

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SIX FROM THE SIDELINES

With football season complete and draft season starting, the college prospecting will start to be folded more into the NFL stuff in columns. Which is where we annually transition Six From Saturday to the Six from the Sidelines. So it’s time for this week’s thoughts on … whatever.

1. We all complain about the Pro Bowl, but the fact that I had so much trouble mustering up even a little interest in the NBA All-Star Game is as good a sign as any how obsolete these exhibitions have become. I’m not saying they should disband them—I think they serve a purpose, which is for the stars of each sport to get together in one place to celebrate their game. I actually like that part of it. But with so much access on TV and the internet to the stars of every sport, the appeal of just getting to see them, much less in a game that doesn’t matter, isn’t close to what it once was. So I think the leagues should just make these as fun as they can and use them to build relationships within their ranks, with any sort of money-making element secondary to that.

2. You is a pretty awesome TV series. And yeah, I know it’s four years old, and there are four seasons. But my wife just got me on to it on Netflix, and I’m almost through the first season. It’s definitely worth checking out.

3. I love Chris Holtmann and really hope he makes it out of this year, and we get a chance to see what he can do with a great recruiting class—which could include Bronny James—next year. I know it’s been our AD Gene Smith’s plan to let Holtmann see that through. But I can’t remember Ohio State basketball being this sort of terrible in a long, long time—a 1–13 stretch is pretty unacceptable.

4. I couldn’t get to much XFL this week. I’ll try to help you out on that next week. But for now, I can say that I’ve heard from people in the league, as Dwayne Johnson has addressed the team. And to a man, they all say he’s been great, coming off as very genuine and with a real plan—one that’s largely based on becoming a resource for the NFL—that might actually work.

5. One thing I legitimately love about how Nick Saban has built his program is that Alabama is never afraid to bring in an outside voice from which he can learn. So it was cool to see, last week, the Tide hire former Cardinals and Titans coach Ken Whisenhunt as a special assistant to the head coach. At an age (71) when most people become more closed-minded, it feels like Saban, over the last decade, has gone the other way, and that’s been to the benefit of Bama and college football.

6. The Kevin Durant experiment in Phoenix should be fascinating and help define how we remember him as a player 20 years from now. That group was good enough to nearly win it all a couple of years ago without him, but this situation still is significantly different than when Durant jumped on the Warriors’ freight train in 2017. He’s got a pretty excellent opportunity here.

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ONE THING YOU NEED TO KNOW

I’ll be skiing with the kids all week for their school vacation, and that will mean a little less from me on social media and on the site. But we’ll still have everything that happens over the next few days covered on there, and I’ll be back with my annual pre-combine primer on the draft class for next Monday. See you all then!