The Ravens know they’ll return to the negotiating table with quarterback Joe Flacco next winter, but owner Steve Bisciotti is confident the sides will continue their relationship far beyond the 2015 season.
In signing the Super Bowl XLVII Most Valuable Player to a record-setting six-year, $120.6 million contract two years ago, the organization knew the deal was structured in a way that it would need to be adjusted after the 2015 campaign. Flacco’s salary cap figure is scheduled to rise from $14.55 million this season to a colossal $28.55 million in 2016.
Speaking with season-ticket holders in a phone forum, Bisciotti said the organization has mapped out a 2016 roster plan to account for Flacco’s gigantic number, but common sense suggests the contract must be adjusted if the Ravens are to remain competitive next season.
“I’m not real worried about it. I know he wants to stay,” Bisciotti said. “He’s obviously more appreciated in Baltimore, maybe, than he is league-wide, but I think that even the league is starting to come around. Look at a guy who has not missed a snap in seven years and has a wonderful record in fourth-quarter comebacks.”
The current deal will have paid the 30-year-old quarterback $62 million over the first three years, but its structure allowed the Ravens to keep more manageable cap figures of $6.8 million in 2013 and $14.8 million last season. But those cap numbers will skyrocket starting next year, which will prompt the sides to tack on additional years to the contract to even out the yearly cap figures to be more in line with the original annual average of $20.1 million.
Such maneuvering would allow Flacco to collect additional guaranteed money based off what he was already scheduled to make over the next few years while increasing the chances that he finishes his career in Baltimore.
“When we get into the offseason, we’re going to be looking to redo that deal and probably do it back at a six-year deal and flatten it out a little bit more than it was this first go-round,” Bisciotti said. “We were kind of in shock — I think the whole league was in shock — when the market was showing that it was $20 million a year. Quite frankly, we weren’t prepared to do that. We back-loaded them, so [the cap numbers] were more like [$14 million] and [$15 million] in the first few years and then that [$20 million] average jumps back up to over [$28 million or $27 million].”
Flacco has never thrown for 4,000 yards in a season and has never made the Pro Bowl — he would have been taken as an alternate this past year if not for the birth of his third son — but he has the most road playoff wins in NFL history and the most wins (including the postseason) of any quarterback in the league since 2008.
Despite his confidence in extending his quarterback while easing the 2015 cap crunch, Bisciotti knows he’ll need to make the deal work for Flacco, who set career highs in passing yards (3,986) and touchdown passes (27) in 2014.
His current deal also calls for cap figures of $31.15 million in 2017 and $24.75 million in 2018, further illustrating the need to find a middle ground with Flacco’s agent, Joe Linta.
“I don’t want to say untenable. It’s something we will make [work], but we can make it a win-win for Joe,” Bisciotti said. “Even though it’s only cost us $14 million or 15 million [on the cap the last couple years], because of the guarantees, I do believe he’s gotten, by the end of this year, half of that contract, somewhere around $60 million.
“I think he’ll be very amenable to a new deal. Then, it would be our job since we’ve already gotten $28 million fitted under that thing to flatten out those hits on our cap, so that they’re more consistent. I’m very confident that we’ll get it done, and Joe and his agent both acknowledged when we did the deal [in 2013] that we would be back at the negotiating table three years later. We certainly are just as interested in Joe as we were three years ago.”
