The curious Lamar Jackson contract situation reached semi-boil this week, with owner Steve Bisciotti lamenting the player’s unwillingness to take the team’s money and Jackson responding to speculation that he’s hoping to engineer a path out of Baltimore.

Through it all, neither Jackson nor anyone else suggested that he’ll decide to engage the Ravens in contract talks. The team is ready, willing, and able to pay him. But he won’t even start the process of making offers or requesting them.

At the start of the season, the story was that he was too focused on football. After the season, the story was that he was too focused on getting healthy. Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Jackson has told the Ravens that he’s currently too focused on having his best possible year and that he doesn’t want to do a deal until the 2022 season is over.

This meshes with Bisciotti’s spitballing on the possibility that Jackson thinks he doesn’t deserve a new deal until he wins a Super Bowl. Of course, not doing a deal that gives the Ravens a better cap situation in the short term could impede the efforts to put together a championship team, especially in 2023, when Jackson gets into the franchise-tag years of his career.