Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence, who has three years of service time, is eligible for a contract extension. However, our Sam Robinson said at the end of December that Jacksonville may postpone contract discussions with the former No. 1 overall selection, who did not make the leap forward that many expected when the 2023 season began. Trent Baalke, the Jags’ general manager, did not provide a date for such discussions, but he did hint that a new contract for Lawrence is not currently at the top of the list.
“There’s no doubt about Trevor and his long-term relationship with this team,” Baalke stated during a news conference on Thursday (via Myles Simmons of Pro Football Talk). “We’re going to get something done at the appropriate time.”
The Jaguars will almost certainly exercise Lawrence’s fifth-year option before the May 2 deadline. This will lock in a fully guaranteed salary of $21.98MM for the 2025 season, and when paired with the $1.06MM salary he is set to receive in 2024, Jacksonville would effectively have Lawrence under club control for two more years at a $11.5MM AAV. Even if the Clemson product is not currently a top-tier signal-caller, it represents exceptional value.
When asked to assess Lawrence’s performance in 2023 and how to improve his production moving foreard, Baalke said, “I think Trevor had another learning year, right? Like we all do when we’re a third-year guy in this league. I think there are some areas he made great strides in. You look at this season, one thing we’ve got to do is we’ve got to — two things, it works both ways — we’ve got to do a better job of keeping him safe and protected and he’s got to do a better job of protecting himself.”
Baalke referenced the myriad injuries that Lawrence faced in his third year in the league, including a concussion, a knee sprain, an ankle sprain, and a sprained AC joint. Although Lawrence was able to play through the first three of those ailments, they certainly affected his performance, and the sprained AC joint forced him to sit out Jacksonville’s Week 17 contest against the Panthers. That was the first game that Lawrence had missed in his career.
In his final four games of the 2023 campaign, Lawrence failed to post a quarterback rating above 83.9 and completed 60% of his passes for seven touchdowns and seven interceptions. Jacksonville lost all four of those contests, including a Week 18 matchup with the 5-11 Titans that was meaningless for Tennessee but that would have put the Jaguars in the playoffs as AFC South champions if they had won it. In all, the Jags lost five of their last six games to drop them from contention for the conference’s top seed to a postseason non-participant (the only game the club won in that stretch was the Week 17 contest that Lawrence missed).
