The Ravens situation moving forward:
As it stands right now, the Baltimore Ravens will enter the 2020 off-season with just shy of $36 million in cap space per spotrac.com (pending Miles Boykin’s rookie contract). The Ravens will have just five players with contracts exceeding $10 million, giving them plenty of wiggle room to get Matt Judon secured long-term. Of course, it’s never that easy.
For starters, Baltimore always has a plethora of free agents to bring back, and 2020 will be no exception. Michael Pierce, Patrick Onwuasor, and Jimmy Smith will all be key pieces to the Ravens defense in 2019 and will also be free agents following the season. Losing all of them next off-season would be absolutely crushing, perhaps more so than what the team just experienced.
With plenty of players needing to be resigned, Baltimore will once again have its hands tied in negotiating long-term deals with its stars. The franchise tag seems like the easy solution, but that could be used on someone like Pierce, whose position should cost much less than Judon’s would. In a worst case scenario, Judon could be uninterested in returning to Charm City and will look to depart after 2019.
On a more positive side of things, the Baltimore Ravens will have every opportunity to extension talks with Matt Judon and have plenty of ammo to use to keep him around. With Eric DeCosta and the rest of the front office still in place, the Ravens will have no issue moving money around in order to keep him around for the unforeseeable future.
Short of an injury or massively disappointing season in 2019, there’s no doubt that Matt Judon will be cashing in big-time next spring. The Baltimore Ravens will be his top-suitor for all the right reasons, and it’s safe to imagine that they’ll do everything they can to keep him in purple and black past this season.