Kyle Goon: Was that the end of the Lamar Jackson era in Baltimore?

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Thunk.

Is that the sound of Lamar Jackson’s throwing hand hitting Greg Rousseau’s arm, jamming his thumb out of place? Or is it the sound of the Ravens’ Super Bowl window slamming shut?

Take your pick. They sound one and the same.

It might also be the sound of millions of stomachs in Baltimore hitting the ground with a sickly squelch as another promising Ravens season begins to go up in smoke. At minimum, Jackson will miss four weeks once he goes on injured reserve, a timeline that would bring him back Dec. 13 at the earliest. But even Ravens head coach Jesse Minter — who is incredibly protective of injury details — acknowledged it could “potentially” be the end of Jackson’s season, which would be the end of Baltimore’s season, too.

The most troubling thing, though, is that it could be the end of a whole lot more. Jackson’s future and the Ravens’ future are loosely tethered, and this nightmare season might be just enough to unbind them.

No one likes thinking about the salary cap and extensions, but Jackson’s Year From Hell is why they matter. The Ravens have Jackson under contract for one more season after this one. Everyone in Owings Mills, including owner Steve Bisciotti, publicly hoped that Baltimore could work out an extension that would secure his long-term future with the franchise, but it never came to be.

Instead, the Ravens have a ticking time bomb that is set to explode next season: Jackson’s nearly $85 million cap hit that would be the largest in the NFL, a consequence of his restructured contract. That untenable cap number was never meant as a solution — it serves as a threat, leverage to get the team to the negotiating table to hammer out a new deal with its star quarterback.

Only, if you’re the Ravens, what kind of deal do you need to make with Jackson?

When he’s on the field, he may be the best player in the NFL. But his latest injury means he will have missed at least 11 regular season starts in his two most recent seasons, which cannot be a good sign for an almost-30-year-old quarterback whose best games come when he’s healthy enough to be mobile. Jackson can do damage through the air, of course, but he said it himself last month: “I’m just trying to move how I move. If I can’t do that, I can’t help my team. I can’t put my team in a situation like that.”

At his peak, Jackson is as finely tuned and swift as a Ferrari. But his health means he’s spending more time in the shop than on the road.

The last time the Ravens dished out a massive, record-setting contract to Jackson in 2023, they were rewarded with an MVP season. I don’t think that ability is behind him, but even if he’s healthy, the team around him is more flawed and more expensive. General manager Eric DeCosta has gotten himself in a difficult spot by handing contracts to aging stars who are now struggling to justify the expense: cornerback Marlon Humphrey, middle linebacker Roquan Smith and tight end Mark Andrews among them.

Even if Jackson did agree to an extension — and while he has said he wants to stay in Baltimore, actions speak louder than words — could the Ravens field a winning team around him? Since 2023, Baltimore has been going in the wrong direction.

Since that AFC championship game loss, I’ve had several conversations with people on or around that team who feel that was Baltimore’s moment. With Jackson in MVP form, Mike Macdonald pulling the strings of an all-time great defense and a game within reach at the half, it was an opportunity for immortality that the Ravens squandered. “It should have been us that year,” is a familiar refrain.

Since then: a divisional round loss in 2024, a missed kick that cost them a playoff spot in 2025, and now in 2026 — well, whatever fresh hell this season has become. If John Harbaugh lost his job last year for hitting a ceiling with a group Bisciotti thought should be competitive, you have to imagine the sharks are circling DeCosta now, too.

Factors he couldn’t control have gone against him, including injury issues (Jackson, defensive tackle Nnamdi Madubuike) above all others. But it’s hard to see underachieving highly paid players and an offensive line that has been a nightmare for the last two seasons without seeing DeCosta’s fingerprints on the scene. His handpicked coach, Jesse Minter, has had some rookie struggles, exacerbated by the flaws of the players he inherited.

You’re going to hear a lot in the coming months from the front office about how the Ravens love Jackson, how they believe in him, how he has helped author almost every happy moment of the last eight seasons. These things are true. But there is also another side.

The Ravens are paying a lot of money to an all-time great quarterback who they thought would get them to the Super Bowl, and it hasn’t worked out. Now Jackson will be expecting another big deal, which will almost certainly compromise this flawed roster even further. We can’t even be certain that, come spring, DeCosta will be the guy calling these shots.

Does Jackson see a Super Bowl future in Baltimore? Do the Ravens see things improving if Jackson agrees to an extension? The answers to these questions are murky, to say the least, and they hint at the gaps between these parties, ones the Ravens and Jackson have always tried to dismiss.

I hope it’s not the end for Jackson in Baltimore. Teams wait a long time for quarterbacks who can lead them out of the wilderness, a lesson most NFL teams have learned painfully. Take a lesson from Buffalo: 22 years passed between the end of the Jim Kelly era and the dawn of Josh Allen, and there was plenty of misery to fill the space in between. Going from Jackson to begging for a capable quarterback would probably be the worst outcome for the Ravens.

But that decision isn’t up to me. It isn’t up to you. It’s not even clear it’s up to the Ravens, who tried and failed to extend Jackson in March.

So much of this rests in Jackson’s control. The future is a mess, and he and the Ravens will have to untangle it if they want to continue their partnership and see if it can still wrap up with a Lombardi Trophy. Jackson will have to carefully consider what he wants for his career.

He’s got nothing but time for the next month. And the rest of us have an agonizing march through a season without him, wondering in our idle moments whether we just saw the end of a once-hopeful chapter of Ravens football.