The last time I flipped the channel on Lamar Jackson was the day I swore I would never count him out again.
It was a midseason, non-division game in October, and the Ravens got down early. Watching the game from L.A., I got fed up in the third quarter and decided the Ravens had wasted enough of my day.
You may remember this game: Oct. 11, 2021. The Indianapolis Colts at M&T Bank Stadium for “Monday Night Football.” Baltimore scored 22 points in the fourth quarter and overtime in one of the craziest comebacks in franchise history.
I only realized that something amazing was happening when I checked social media, and I furiously switched back barely in time to see the tying touchdown pass to Mark Andrews.
That day I learned that Jackson, who threw for a career-high 442 yards, was not someone you simply counted out. He was different. He was special. He was not going to come back every single time, but with him, the game was never truly over until the clock completely ran out.
After that, I resolved to never turn off a game with Jackson under center. And since that day, I never have.
Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson celebrates with fans after the team’s 31-26 overtime win against the Indianapolis Colts on Oct. 11, 2021. (Julio Cortez/AP)
As Baltimore prepares to wrap up its regular season with a winner-take-all grudge match in Pittsburgh this Sunday, the rampant discourse about Jackson — his work ethic, his attention to detail and his relationships within the franchise — lacks a sense of grounding.
We are talking about one of the most electric players in the NFL, one who makes his teammates feel like they always have a chance in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds.
Because Jackson hasn’t played to his superhuman standards this year, somehow, he doesn’t seem to be getting the benefit of the doubt he’s earned in eight memorable years in Baltimore. The “what have you done for me lately” nature of narratives belies that Jackson has spent most of his career rocketing Baltimore to offensive benchmarks that it only dreamed about before.
Does this mean Jackson is perfect? Infallible? Obviously not.
But in the hot-take sports talk culture of our times, we are not talking about Jackson like we would talk about almost any other elite-caliber player in the NFL. I find a lot of the discourse strange and off-putting.
It’s not a new discussion, but the latest iteration stems from a Baltimore Sun column last week accusing Jackson of, among other things, staying up late playing video games and falling asleep in meetings.
When did these things happen? Who made these complaints? We don’t know.
But the deeper, more insidious accusation leveled at Jackson is that he doesn’t take his career seriously enough (“an overgrown kid in an adult’s body”) and that the Ravens have different standards for him than for other players in the organization.
On the first front, Jackson denied those rumors on Thursday (“Do you think [coach John] Harbaugh would let me fall asleep in his meeting? That’s crazy. I’m right in the front.”). On the second, however, let me ask this: When has a pro sports franchise not made compromises for a star player?
Did Tom Brady not have his own trainer who specialized in alternative medicine, Alex Guerrero, who eventually ran afoul of the New England coaching staff? Doesn’t Aaron Rodgers go off in dark rooms during the offseason to do ayahuasca? We don’t know every compromise every franchise makes with its stars, but enough are in public view for us to recognize that throughout the NFL, there is an acceptable level of special treatment for special players.
There is no doubt that work ethic and fastidious preparation have a strong correlation with success, and any player can be diligent in these areas to perfect his craft.
But then there is genius — an erratic trait that is both hard to define but easy to recognize. There are football players touched by God. When they are at their best, they leave the most prepared, most fundamentally sound players in their dust. Lamar Jackson is of this exceedingly rare second type.
Even an off-the-cuff improvisation by Jackson is better than the best play the smartest football coach could ever draw up.
You can’t script genius, and you can’t neatly shape someone else’s genius to the standards of mere mortals. Sports teams always accept a level of eccentricity and idiosyncrasy from geniuses because the tradeoff is benefiting from their impossible-to-replicate talents.
Does this mean Jackson doesn’t prepare as well as others? To be honest, I don’t know.
Jackson is introduced prior to the team’s Week 3 game against the Detroit Lions. (Jerry Jackson/The Banner)
Jackson has always been more inscrutable than most. With no agent, his circle is tight. The Ravens seem to have a looser grasp on his medical updates than with other players. He is well-liked and well-respected in the Ravens’ locker room, but not necessarily an open book even to his longtime teammates and coaches.
To many of us, Jackson’s inner life is a black box. While tabloids splashed wedding photos of Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen and actress Hailee Steinfeld this past year, you’d have a better chance of finding smoking-gun evidence of UFOs than definitive news nuggets of Jackson’s personal life. That seems to be how he likes it.
I don’t want to imply that Jackson is above questioning, because he’s not. If you want to talk about reasons to doubt him, a good place to start is that he has a lousy record against upcoming opponent Pittsburgh (3-6) with more interceptions (10) than touchdown passes (9). He has a spotty 3-5 record in the postseason, a reputation of which he is keenly aware.
But to imagine that these shortcomings imply that Jackson doesn’t care, or doesn’t work at his game? That just doesn’t track.
Even with all the physical gifts in the world, you don’t get as good as Jackson is without effort. Just last season, he had a career-high 41 touchdown passes against just four interceptions and over 4,000 passing yards. He’s not the same player that showed up in Baltimore in 2018 — he has pushed the standard higher as a passer, even while remaining a dynamic scrambling threat.
It’s all the weirder because we’ve kind of been down this road before. As recently as 2022, it felt like Jackson might not be worth the headache. His contract talks were drawn out to the point that he publicly requested a trade after two injury-shortened seasons. But the Ravens stuck with him, and all he did in 2023 was win an MVP and lead them to the AFC championship game.
Did we learn nothing from that 2022 interlude? If anything, it proves Jackson deserves the benefit of the doubt that he can recover from his recent ugly run.
The idea that the Ravens should rustle up trade talks for Jackson to see if they can get a handful of first-rounders strikes me as incredibly backward. Teams spend decades of draft picks attempting to find a quarterback half as good as Jackson. Since 2019 (the year after Jackson was picked), 24 quarterbacks have been selected in the first round — none of them have won MVPs, and none of them have won Super Bowls, either.
Winning is hard. I’m not arguing that Jackson doesn’t have lessons to learn, or doesn’t have growing up to do. But the expectations he has for himself are at least as high as the ones others have for him — and to be frank, he has more than lived up to most of them. He has earned a bit more leeway than pundits seem to be offering.
I went around the locker room last month to talk with a few Ravens who were on that sideline against the Colts in 2021. When the Ravens were down 22-3, wide receiver Tylan Wallace said, “Even us being on the sideline, we were like, ‘Damn.’ We were looking at it like it’s gonna be hard to come back.”
The person who changed the vibe for the offense was Jackson.
“He was telling the guys — he just rallied ‘em up, said, ‘We gotta go, we gotta win,’” backup quarterback Tyler Huntley said. “‘Only way we win is if we go out here and do what we need to do and score.’ And he put it together.”
That was the day, those players told me, that they stopped doubting Jackson could do anything on a football field. They still feel the same way, even as the narrative has started curdling against the two-time MVP. The clock hasn’t run out on Jackson or the Ravens’ season — not yet.
“There’s been a bunch of occasions when he comes back that week of practice, and he comes in the game like he never left,” Wallace said. “He’s done it so many times.
“When you got a guy like that,” Wallace added, “anything can happen.”