Kyle Goon: Eric DeCosta’s latest big trade shows how devoted he is to helping Lamar Jackson

If Lamar Jackson can find an NFL general manager who is as willing to please him as much as Eric DeCosta, I invite him to try.

He can search and search, but I doubt he’ll be able to find greener grass than he has had in Owings Mills.

There is a significant and vocal group of Jackson fans who shout that the Baltimore Ravens — and DeCosta chief among them — are not doing enough to support the two-time MVP. This contingent believes that the Ravens are being dragged to glory by Jackson (which, to some degree, is true), his brilliance managing to outshine a brutally incompetent and inflexible organization.

To which I’d counter: Have you seen what DeCosta has been doing for Jackson lately?

The Ravens’ latest move to trade for two-time Pro Bowl center Cam Jurgens from the Eagles is the most recent maneuver DeCosta has undertaken to protect and appease his quarterback. Think about all the ways in which this move cuts sharply against DeCosta’s grain. It’s a midseason trade for a starter, costing the Ravens two draft picks, including a 2028 second-rounder.

If you read the trade compensation aloud, you’ll be able to hear DeCosta’s teeth grinding from Owings Mills, sick over the thought of giving up so much valuable draft capital. It’s like planting a sapling, only to cut it down to replace shoddy planks in your house walls.

But the value of future Ravens pales in comparison to the importance of keeping the most important current Raven as protected as possible. This is one deal in which pundits grading the trade matters little: DeCosta had to make a move to help Jackson and give the 2026 team as much of a window to contend as possible. Winning now matters most — especially with Jackson only signed through the 2027 season and his future beyond a mystery.

Jackson made DeCosta’s offseason a lot harder in March when he didn’t sign an extension with Baltimore, the only pro team he’s ever known. DeCosta was able to restructure Jackson’s contract, but the resulting massive cap hit in 2027 will give Jackson all the leverage he wants whenever he decides to saunter back to the negotiating table.

If you want to ding DeCosta for not being able to sign Jackson to a new deal, that’s a fair critique. But consider all he has done since to try to improve the ecosystem for his star quarterback:

• He signed Zay Flowers, one of Jackson’s closest teammates, to a contract extension that made him one of the five highest-paid receivers in football. Though many observers felt it was too high a price, so far, DeCosta has looked prescient, as Flowers has been explosive and graded the third-best receiver in the league by Pro Football Focus so far.
• He went back on a trade for Maxx Crosby (a move that many people, including myself, have hammered him for) and used the first-rounder he got back to pick Vega Ioane, the consensus best guard in the draft. Ioane has been solid, and his emergency snaps at center have helped the Ravens win two games.
• He let Todd Monken, a highly competent playcaller who had worn on several players in the locker room, walk (even before the Browns hired him, the Ravens had already decided he was not coming back). DeCosta and Jesse Minter instead hired Declan Doyle, a playcaller who is Jackson’s age, that the quarterback has described in glowing terms. His concepts married with Jackson’s skill have produced tons of explosive plays when the supporting cast (and Jackson himself) is healthy.

It’s true that DeCosta’s offseason is not Ws straight across the board. He lost Tyler Linderbaum, who really tied the OL together but also signed with the Raiders at a price Baltimore could not afford. When he had an opportunity to sign a veteran receiver free agent in the spring, he did not — which has hurt the room overall, with injuries to Flowers and Ja’Kobi Lane. Could he have had a better guard signing than John Simpson? The market wasn’t exactly flush, but maybe he could have.

All of those problems are characteristic of a franchise trying to compete with a mammoth quarterback contract on the books. They’re similar to problems that Buffalo, Kansas City or Cincinnati have, with similar fan base complaints that the front offices don’t do enough to support the star QB. It says something that the two teams in the last Super Bowl — the Patriots and the Seahawks — both didn’t have huge QB salaries, enabling their GMs to build more complete teams around passers who performed surprisingly well.

Building around a player like Jackson is a first-world challenge, but a challenge all the same. The Ravens brought in Derrick Henry, a pairing that has worked well. They’ve spent tons of capital on receivers and finally hit on one in Flowers. They also have spent draft picks on blockers, and the curse of picking a guy as good as Linderbaum is that you can’t always pay him when he starts getting expensive. It was brutal when Nnamdi Madubuike, one of the other players with a big salary, sat out most of last season with an injury because the Ravens couldn’t do anything about the sunk cost.

When the Ravens lost three centers before Week 4, DeCosta took a lot of flak, even though even the most sage GM could never have predicted such a hit at one position. After taking that shrapnel, DeCosta picked up the phone and swung a deal that will improve the chances of keeping this offense viable — and keeping Jackson upright.

DeCosta has not been, and is not, perfect. But he has very obviously worked hard to get Jackson as much support as feasible and tried a lot of strategies — even ones that the Ravens don’t usually consider.

A general manager’s efforts are never a guarantee of results. No one learned that more painfully than DeCosta last year, when he assembled a roster that everyone thought had a chance to go to the Super Bowl and failed to make the playoffs. But this year as much as any, DeCosta has centered his efforts on Jackson and getting the most out of him that he can.

As Jackson works to get healthy this week, he may even have some time to consider his future, whether he wants to re-sign in Baltimore or seek another team to play for. At this point, it feels nearly impossible that Jackson could find a GM more hell-bent than DeCosta on making things work for him.