The road Lawrence has traveled to this point has included plenty of twists, turns and undulation. It began with a bumpy rookie season under Urban Meyer, smoothed out with a sophomore campaign spent playing for Doug Pederson. It then became a bit unruly in Year 3, in which Lawrence still managed to break 4,000 passing yards, but also saw his touchdown-to-interception ratio worsen while battling through a knee ailment.
The Jaguars’ late-season collapse — a reversal from their strong finish to 2022, which included a comeback win over the Chargers on Super Wild Card Weekend — complicated matters, at least when viewing the situation from above. But the Jags’ willingness to extend Lawrence now signals they’re not too concerned with how their quarterback performed in 2023. Instead, they’re trusting their evaluation of Lawrence and ignoring external worries.
New money always brings greater expectations, especially for the most prominent NFL players, and Lawrence is no different. He’s not feeling the weight of those expectations, though.
“I’m not gonna add any pressure to myself just based on getting this contract,” Lawrence told reporters on Thursday. “It doesn’t really change what I expect of myself and what the team expects of me. Whether this got done or not, (Jaguars owner) Mr. (Shad) Khan, (general manager) Trent (Baalke), (coach) Doug (Pederson), everyone, all the coaches expect me to play well and, like I said, to bring a championship here eventually. … Now that it’s done, it doesn’t really change that, but like I said, maybe from the outside it will a bit, but not for me.”
It’s likely comforting for Jaguars fans to hear their quarterback claim he doesn’t feel any more pressure entering Year 4. There’s truth in Lawrence’s statement, too, especially considering he no longer has to worry about how his performance will affect his wallet.
Ultimately, though, Lawrence and the Jaguars still need to deliver, especially after they gave away the AFC South last season. Lawrence believes he’s done his part financially for both the short and long term, and expressed plenty of confidence regarding Jacksonville’s outlook entering 2024.
“There’s always a balancing act of however many years you do, sometimes that can put the team in a better position, which is great. That was our goal, which I’m glad I felt we were able to accomplish,” Lawrence explained. “Obviously, there was a certain amount as a player you want to make and you want to be in the market value and all those things, but you also want to keep the team in a good position to where we can pay other guys and have other players around me and do all those things from a salary cap perspective.
“I don’t know how all that works, but I just felt like my agent and Trent and the whole front office did a good job of kind of maneuvering all those things where it felt like we all won in the end and it put us in a position to where we can still have a lot of talent here and we can bring guys in or we can keep the guys that we have. That was something that was important to me because it wasn’t worth it to me to sacrifice being able to have a good team just so I could make some money.
… “I think this is definitely the best team that we’ve had here in my eyes, just at this point in the year from what I’ve seen. I feel very confident in that.”