Knee-Jerk Reactions: Ravens Lock Up Justin Madubuike

The Ravens and DT Justin Madubuike agreed to terms on a new four-year deal.

RSR staff react to the re-signing here.

Kevin McNelis

Consistently generating interior pass rush in today’s NFL is exceedingly difficult. Not only did Justin Madubuike do that for the Ravens this past season, but he also led the team by far in sacks. Beeks took a massive leap in production, and if he can consistently produce like this for the length of his new contract, sign me the hell up.

The other significant factor is the wiggle room it gives Baltimore in advance of the first wave of free agency. The pressure to do some creative accounting right away is releived, so when cuts or trades eventually do come, the cap space cleared can go toward addressing other spots on the roster.

I’d said in a piece a while back that any plan for this offseason should start with “Re-sign Justin Madubuike and…”

Step 1: Complete.

Based on @ProFootballTalk’s report, this should be the breakdown of Justin Madubuike’s 4-year, $98M deal. The $22M 2026 base salary will become fully gtd in March of 2025, so these numbers will change then, but for now, this is how it breaks down. pic.twitter.com/dlZna4oKCM

— Brian McFarland (@RavensSalaryCap) March 9, 2024

Rob Shields

For cap reasons, this deal had to get done. Based on the above breadown, the hit is 12.25M this season.

A large percentage of the deal is guaranteed. Brian MacFarland was wondering if a void year may have been added in, to spread the bonus out over five years instead of four, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

I have been against this move the whole offseason. I think Mads is a good player. He now is being paid like the second best player at his position. That will be eclipsed by Chris Jones soon and maybe Wilkins will also go past it. Of course we all know this is timing but the worry is that Madubuike has never come close to the numbers he put up in 2023. Was that a career year for him or a sign of things to come?  Does he revert back to 2022 and earlier or is he going to establish himself as one of the top three or four players at his position consistently?

There is nothing like up the middle pass rush. That’s an enormous thing and if he keeps that up, he will be worth this deal and maybe be worth even more than he’s getting paid.  If not, this deal will look bad going forward.

Darin McCann

It’s a really big number for one terrific year by a player who teased with his obvious talents the first three years of his career, without really putting it all together.

But it was the right year for him to do it, and he has a unique and hard-to-find skill set. The money was well-spent.

There are still a ton of questions regarding how this team will look next season, but having Madubuike, Roquan Smith and Kyle Hamilton manning the spine of the defense for the foreseeable future is a solid start. The contract, while huge, does help with this year’s salary cap as it removes that strangling franchise-tag number.

This is a big box to check off before legal tampering starts next week. We’ll count this one as a win.

Chris Schisler

This is exactly the news the Ravens faithful were looking for. The Ravens have had a habit of letting home grown talent walk out the door. We saw Matt Judon flourish in New England, for example. Justin Madubuike is the definition of home grown talent. He went from being a buzzed about draft pick to a hard working Raven. He’s basically doubled his stats each season. He doesn’t have a very extensive injury history. The new contract with Madubuike was a no-brainer. The Ravens took care of one of their own.

This reduces the chances the Ravens will resort to the franchise tag to retain a player. Over $20 million for one year of Madubuike would have been less than ideal.

This was the first step of the off-season, the first major move anyway. The Ravens now have a financial framework. They can focus on re-working deals and making free agency options a reality. Getting this deal with Madubuike done quickly will pay off. It’s a lot of money. You have to hope Madubuike makes it worth it (and he should). More than anything you just have to be proud of how Madubuike finished his rookie contract and became a cornerstone player for the franchise.

Tanner George

As EDC said in his press release, this was a great way to kick off the new league year. In addition to keeping a true disrupter around for at least the next four seasons, the Ravens were able to open some much-needed cap space ahead of free agency. This move is almost pure genius in that it’s the embodiment of a win-win situation. Seeing that it got done before Wednesday, the official start of free agency, the Ravens will still have the ability to bring in impact players that will hopefully push the franchise into Super Bowl LIX.

Overall, a fantastic deal on both sides; this marks the second consecutive year that DeCosta has negotiated out of a franchise tag. Let’s see how they use that newfound cap space in the coming weeks…

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