No one wants to pursue the brilliant Lamar Jackson. Is that stupid or sinister?

Something is off with the Lamar Jackson situation.

This week, the Baltimore Ravens hit Jackson, a former unanimous league MVP, with the non-exclusive franchise tag after failing to secure a long-term deal. It’s unprecedented. We haven’t seen a team put the non-exclusive tender on a quarterback this century.

The Ravens believe Jackson is worth a contract somewhere in the range of $160m to $180m in guaranteed money. Jackson wants a contract in line with that signed by Deshaun Watson a year ago, a fully guaranteed deal worth $230m. Baltimore’s position: find someone else willing to pay you that and then get back to us.

The mechanics of the non-exclusive tag are wonky. But the upshot is that Jackson is free to negotiate a contract with any team in the league. If he agrees to a deal with a team other than the Ravens, Baltimore then have the option to match that deal and keep Jackson – or allow him to leave, receiving two first-round draft picks back as compensation.

Jackson is 26 and slap-bang in the middle of his athletic prime. All but a handful of teams should be falling over themselves to talk to Jackson, who is negotiating a deal himself alongside a management team rather than using a traditional agent.

And yet: nothing.

The league just spent a week in Indianapolis pushing, prodding and studying the latest crop of soon-to-be draftees at the annual scouting combine, trying to figure out which prospects will turn into franchise changers – evaluations that will mostly turn out to be wrong. Yet with a known game-breaker available, the ultimate one-man offense … silence.

Why are all of these teams so publicly “out” on Lamar Jackson, an MVP winner in his prime at the most important position in the entire NFL? What am I missing