Grade the Trade: Seahawks make a shock move for Lamar Jackson in proposed trade

The Seattle Seahawks seem pretty set at quarterback currently. Both Geno Smith and Sam Howell are signed through 2025 and both have starting experience in the NFL. Smith, for one, gets far too much disrespect without the fact-based evidence to back up many of the claims.

Smith might not be the best quarterback in the league, but he still led the NFC in touchdown passes in 2022 as well as the NFL in completion percentage, and in 2023, he led the league in fourth quarter comebacks and game-winning drives. He's been a top-15 quarterback in each of the last two seasons in terms of total QBR (and he was seventh in 2022).

Lamar Jackson has been a terrific regular-season quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens since 2018. He has twice won the league's MVP award (including last year). He has become a very accurate passer while remaining an extremely dangerous running threat. His issues tend to come in the postseason where he is 2-4 in his career.

Seahawks add Lamar Jackson but without any idea of what Seattle would give up

His completion percentage drops when the games get to be their most important as well. His career playoff completion percentage is just 57.4 and he has six touchdown passes in six games but also six interceptions. He stops being Superman in the postseason.

He also is extremely expensive with cap hits in each of 2026 and 2027 of $74,650,000. He is only 27 years old so should have a lot of years left to play, but can he lead his teams to a Super Bowl? His best chance might have been in 2023 and Baltimore did not make the championship game.

Marissa Myers of TWSN is certain Jackson is available in a trade, though. In fact, she is so sure she recently produced an article with the straight-forward headline "The Baltimore Ravens Will Trade Lamar Jackson to the Seattle Seahawks." No gray area there, but there should be because otherwise, the headline is misleading and far too declarative.

The issues with Myers' proposal are several, however. One is the offer as proposed by Myers below:

Myers does not tell us who or what the Seahawks would give back to Baltimore in return. That is important because Baltimore knows it can be relatively successful with Jackson behind center and a team would have to make a great offer in order to ply the quarterback from the Ravens. Myers' trade idea might be slightly closer to reality should she have given us the full trade instead of just half.

The biggest problem for Seattle would be that the team simply cannot afford Jackson. The Seahawks are already trending toward having negative cap room next offseason and Jackson's cap hit is $43,650,000 in 2025. Unless Seattle guts a part of the team then they can't pay for Jackson.

One can see the logic in Myers' idea. Jackson plays for the Ravens and Seattle's new head coach, Mike Macdonald, was Baltimore's defensive coordinator in the last two seasons, so there is a connection between Macdonald and Jackson. Macdonald would have also watched while Jackson failed in the playoffs. Either way, Seattle cannot afford the quarterback.

Grade: F

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