Ravens Would Trade Lamar Jackson Straight Up for Colts No. 4 Pick - Rumor

Here's a Ravens rumored idea: Trade Lamar Jackson, straight up, to the Colts for the No. 4 overall pick in this NFL Draft.

As the Baltimore Ravens are acutely aware, there are a myriad number of moving parts in their situation with disgruntled franchise quarterback Lamar Jackson. But here's one way to make it easy ...

Trade Jackson, straight up, to the Indianapolis Colts for the No. 4 overall pick in this NFL Draft.

No more tagging, no more matching, no more negotiating.

Would the Ravens really do that after placing the non-exclusive franchise tag on Jackson, which was followed by him announcing publicly that he requested a trade away from the franchise?

Long-time NFL writer Peter King says it it so.

"If the guarantees weren’t stupid, I think the Colts would be interested,'' King writes. "My bet is the Ravens would take the fourth pick in the draft, solely, for Jackson.''

That does seem clean and simple, on the surface. The Colts get a superstar, albeit a pricy one. And then the Ravens draft a QB at No. 4, with fingers crossed that the chosen one, while playing on an affordable contract (as Lamar has been doing), develops into a Jackson-level superstar in his own right.

But there are a couple of "buts.''

One is from the Colts perspective. King points out that Jackson's injury history (34 percent of the Ravens’ offensive snaps missed in ’21 and ’22) would cause Indy to balk at paying a fully guaranteed contract.

And remember, we believe Baltimore has already offered a three-year deal fully guaranteed - and it wasn’t good enough for Jackson.

And the other is from the Ravens perspective. While some think they've played "dirty,'' their use of the tag is part of the rules of the game - and designed to net them not one but two first-round picks.

So why trade Lamar for a single first-rounder?

Baltimore's truly "clean'' solution here - and one that NFL Network's Ian Rapoport wisely says is the most likely - is that the Ravens work successfully to retain their best player in Jackson. That's "clean'' ... but it's not "simple,'' as if it was, it'd already be done.

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