Lamar Jackson is what most of us have thought he was...an average QB. (I've left out a lot of graphs and stats to give the meat of the study.)
Study: Pricing a Potential Lamar Jackson Extension...There's no evidence to state that Jackson’s performance as a QB is significantly...
www.the33rdteam.com
The below graph details the direction of Jackson’s performances starting with his rookie season in the top right hand corner. He moves from a standard rookie to league MVP and proceeds to regress in the following two seasons. (The graph wouldn't paste well)
Last season turned out to be Jackson’s least successful as a professional as he missed the playoffs for the first time and was marred by injuries.
Before we address the injuries to get a sense as to how that might affect any contract negotiations, it should be stated that the number of games played was not a variable in the clustering model and so Jackson’s movement towards the lowest cluster was a measure of what he did when he was on the field. So
even ignoring the injuries he sustained, this was Jackson’s most underwhelming season of his young career so far.
Although Jackson is far more elusive than [most] quarterbacks, it didn’t result in a great difference of sacks per game. The sacks also don’t account for any potential hits he may get on the run.
What is the greater concern is the trend of these sacks per game. In 2019, Jackson had 1.53 sacks per game which was only 28th highest in the league. In 2020, Jackson averaged 1.9 which was right in the middle of the pack for the league and then
in 2021 he almost led the league in sacks per game.
There’s no evidence to state that Jackson’s performance is good enough to warrant pay equal to quarterbacks such as Patrick Mahomes.
Should this contract deal get signed, it is likely to be much closer to the top-end as he is not going to accept anything else.
His play, however, places him near the middle of the pack among quarterbacks.