The Jacksonville Jaguars and quarterback Trevor Lawrence agreed to a five-year extension worth $275 million, a league source said.
Lawrence’s extension will be worth $55 million per year and includes $142 million fully guaranteed, according to the source. The deal matches the extension the Cincinnati Bengals gave Joe Burrow in September, making the QBs the highest-paid players in the NFL.
Lawrence joins a group of quarterbacks who make over $50 million per season, including Burrow ($55 million), the Detroit Lions’ Jared Goff ($53 million), the Los Angeles Chargers’ Justin Herbert ($52.5 million), the Baltimore Ravens’ Lamar Jackson ($52 million) and the Philadelphia Eagles’ Jalen Hurts ($51 million).
Lawrence is entering his fourth season with the Jaguars, who selected him with the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. He was a member of the much-hyped quarterback class that year and a player many pegged as the best prospect the league had seen in years.
The 24-year-old struggled during his rookie season under then-coach Urban Meyer in 2021, logging a 71.9 passer rating that tied for second worst in the NFL.
However, his passer rating climbed to 95.2 (tied for ninth best) in 2022, the same year he earned a Pro Bowl selection and led the Jaguars to the playoffs. They beat the Chargers in the wild-card round and then lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs in the divisional round.
Last season, Lawrence threw for 4,016 yards with 21 touchdowns, 14 interceptions and an 88.5 passer rating (21st in the league).
The NFL Network first reported news of his extension.
How Lawrence stacks up among QBs
An extension for Lawrence after Year 3 lines up with the same time frame of most prolific quarterbacks on rookie contracts like Burrow, Herbert and Hurts most recently. Now where does the Jaguars quarterback stack up against all his QB peers the past two seasons?
I’ve examined the state of each quarterback room in the league using a few of my favorite metrics (with the help of TruMedia, Pro Football Focus and Sports Info Solutions):
- Expected Points Added (EPA) per dropback
- Passer rating
- Total QB EPA
- On-target percentage
- Catchable-pass percentage
Rankings are in parentheses in the EPA charts and in the box next to the rates in the on-target and catchable-pass percentage charts. Those rankings are for individual seasons in the past two years. Qualified passers attempted a minimum of 100 passes in each season.
EPA metrics
| Year | player | EPA/DB | Psr Rt | Total EPA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
2022 |
0.12 (14) |
95.2 (22) |
63.1 (11) |
|
|
2023 |
-0.03 (52) |
88.5 (46) |
-31.1 (71) |
On-target/catchable percentages
| Year | Player | ONT% | Rank | Ctch% | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
2022 |
78.2 |
10 |
86.0 |
31 |
|
|
2023 |
73.8 |
40 |
83.8 |
58 |
It has to be slightly alarming to find all of Lawrence’s metrics down significantly from 2022 to 2023, in every category within the study. This started before the late-season injuries for the Jaguars quarterback, though.
Will that change without Calvin Ridley — and with Gabe Davis — now in Jacksonville? The heat will be on Lawrence now more than ever to become, at worst, a top-10 quarterback now that he’s being paid like the big boys. As of now, he hasn’t proven to be in that conversation yet. — Larry Holder, NFL senior writer
Required reading
(Photo: Wesley Hitt / Getty Images)