Ravens QB must shake enablers and defenders
Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson needs to hire a professional familiar with the inner workings of the NFL before his career starts moving downward orpossibly implodes.
Without question, he is the most explosive offensive player in the game, but he has no one around him to provide sound advice about his off-the-field behavior or even the multimillion dollar contract he is negotiating with the Ravens.
Jackson is a nice guy, certainly not belligerent or nasty, but lacks discipline. The Ravens have tried to provide the 24-year-old star with the proper guidance and instruction, but the inner circle around Jackson keeps everyone at a distance and the fourth-year quarterbacksheltered.
He is an overprotected kid.
On the first day of training camp practice Wednesday, Ravens coach John Harbaugh announced that Jackson tested positive for COVID-19 for the second time since November. According to Harbaugh, whose team is considered one of the favorites to win the Super Bowl title in 2021, about 90% of his players have been vaccinated, as has the entire coaching staff.
While the team hasn’t said which players are vaccinated, Jackson’s testing schedule since arriving at camp last Wednesday — he’s been tested daily whereas vaccinated players need only be tested every 14 days — suggests he’s among the minority of players who have not had the shot yet.
COVID-19 numbers are spiking around the country and the NFL recently put out a memo stating that if games are postponed because of an outbreak of unvaccinated players on one team, that team will forfeit the game and players on both teams will not receive gamechecks.
And since the Ravens were fined $250,000 and had 23 players spend time on the reserve COVID-19 list last year, you’d think someone would get in Jackson’s ear. But if his inner circle says no, Jackson will agree, regardless how selfish the move.
There is no guarantee whether Jackson had been vaccinated or not that he wouldn’t have tested positive again, but it would have improved his chances as well as those of his teammatesand others who work in the team’s Owings Mills, Md. complex. The benefits of these vaccines certainly outweigh the side effects.
In June, Jackson declined to say whether he was vaccinated or not, calling it a personal decision.
Regardless, the Ravens started training camp without him, and because of NFL protocol he might miss 10 days. (According to a memo shared with teams, an unvaccinated player who tests positive and is not showing symptoms must self-isolate for 10 days.) Harbaugh tried to downplay Jackson’s absence, but the Ravens spent most of this offseason preparing to draft rookie receivers Rashod Bateman and Tylan Wallace and signing free agent Sammy Watkins to increase production in the downfield passinggame.
They’ll still have the opportunity, but 10 missed practices can’t be made up. Worse yet, this is a quarterback who struggles with mechanics. He needs time with his new receivers and theircoaches.
But this isn’t just about Jackson on the field. Remember in March 2019, when he posted a video of himself driving 105 mph without his seat belt fastened?
In June 2020, there was Jackson in a video scrambling during a beach football game and falling over a nearby jet ski. Earlier this month, there was footage of Jacksontaking reps at wide receiver and defensive back on a basketball court against local players.
Come on now, who is advising this guy? Under sound advice, who risks a $40 million a year contract ona cement surface?
It’s time for Jackson to put on his big boy pants, grow up and cut out the immatureantics.
Harbaugh and team general manager Eric DeCosta are smart and reasonable men. Jackson has tremendous talent, but they also are seeing a pattern of poor decision-making that they haven’t been able to stop. Defending Jackson has to be getting old, from his lack of ability to throw outside thenumbers to his antics.
The assumption here is that if the Ravens sign Jackson to a new contract, there has to be restrictions on his offseason activities. Maybe there has to be a common sense clause added that when you are one of the most famous players in the NFL it’s not a good idea to walk into a restaurant — like he did last week when he visited the Harbor East restaurant Blk Swan — without a mask during the recentCOVID-19 surge.
After all, a lot of people want to meet Jackson, get his autograph and speak to him.
It’s sound advice, apparently something Jackson isn’t getting in his inner circle and is not mature enough to seek out on his own.