Lamar Jackson shared a new chapter to his own saga Monday after he took to Twitter and revealed that he requested to be traded on March 2. As expected these tweets added fuel to the Jackson sweepstakes fire. Former ESPN personality Dan Le Batard gave his thoughts yesterday on his show, and commented on another side of this Lamar Jackson situation.
Le Batard’s comments included a shot at the Atlanta Falcons at the same time, so The Morning Shift reacted to what Dan had to say this morning.
“I know how you arrive at the theory that this is collusion, and you know that there are all these other things working against Lamar," Mike Johnson gave his reaction. "But anybody who's saying you don't want to piss off Desmond Ridder dude, I haven’t heard anyone say that.”
Mike and Tiffany agree that they haven’t heard anyone say that either. The Morning Shift crew goes back to the deal the Cleveland Browns gave Deshaun Watson last offseason for reference to make their next points.
“Anybody who’s comparing the DeShaun Watson situation it’s a reach,” Mike said. “The Cleveland stuff is completely, completely different. If Lamar was a pocket passer, if he wasn’t a run first guy, this would be a completely different conversation, but it’s not. Deshaun is different, Cleveland is different, and the whole situation is different.”
Tiffany believes that the Deshaun Watson deal is connected to what’s going on with Jackson.
“Yes it was a bad move and I think the collusion stuff has a lot of weight to it because the owners are all like hey we all got to protect our own money and we’re not going to let this happen again,” said Blackmon.
Tiffany also talks about how the Ravens placing the non-exclusive franchise tag on Lamar sounded alarms in her head because maybe the Ravens knew teams wouldn’t want to sign Lamar to the type of deal he is looking for.
“This is the NFL, these are the owners, this is stuff that’s not new," Blackmon said. "There’s been other collusion cases, Colin Kaepernick, I mean this is nothing like out of the realm, like this is extremely plausible.”
Mike, Tiffany, and Beau quickly touch on the Falcons having the best odds to land Lamar Jackson, and Beau wraps up the discussion by bringing it back to Dan Le Batard.
“If Desmond Ridder had a two or a one next to his draft round the Falcons would be fifth or sixth on this list, that’s what irritates me about Dan Le Batard’s comments," Beau said. "Look, nobody said that at all, first off you’re making stuff up, you’re putting up your little narrative on things, and the second part is why is Desmond Ridder the one getting crapped on in all of this.”
Mike and Beau definitively believe Le Batard took a shot at Ridder in his comments, Tiffany believes Le Batard took a little bit of a shot at Ridder, but was really just trying to illustrate his point with a fact that came across like it was a shot at Ridder.
If Dan believes the league is colluding on Jackson, and believes there is racism involved, he is entitled to his opinion, and maybe he has a legitimate argument. However, the questions about Jackson’s ability to be a pocket passer are still there, Jackson’s durability is still in question, so it just seems like he is singling out the Falcons and shading Ridder when some of Lamar’s on the field abilities are still in question, and could be the reason why NFL teams, including the Falcons, are hesitant about investing draft capital and a lot of money in to Lamar. Also, nobody has seen enough of Ridder to know what he is capable of.
Arthur Smith and Terry Fontenot have done a lot with a little bit during their short time with the Falcons, and now they are trying to set the foundation and build the team the correct way, and just because their Falcons architectural plans do not include Jackson it doesn’t mean they are building wrong, being racist, or colluding against Jackson. Le Batard’s comments just don’t seem fair to Smith, Fontenot, or Ridder.