Lamar dazzles again to settle debate
BALTIMORE – Sports talk shows better find something else to discuss. The NFL MVP conversation is over.
Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson made sure of that with his perfect passing performance Sunday in a 56-19 victory over the Miami Dolphins, which secured the AFC’s No. 1 seed for Baltimore and gave the team its first division title since 2019.
That was the year Jackson was unanimously voted MVP and the last time the Ravens earned the top overall seed. If the voters do the right thing and crown Jackson in a few weeks’ time, he will become the 11th player with multiple MVP awards. The list he joins is honorific: Peyton Manning, Jim Brown, Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes among them.
In what has become an award almost exclusively reserved for quarterbacks, the lack of a dominant one – or team – this year created a discussion that lasted longer into the campaign than usual.
Last week, following the Ravens’ dominant win over the NFC’s No. 1 seed, the San Francisco 49ers, Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said Jackson had “an MVP performance.” What did he think of Jackson’s encore?
“I’d say it’s even better,” Harbaugh said, later adding, “He played a great football game. He played a perfect football game in terms of the passing game.”
“Perfect” not being necessarily hyperbolic. Jackson finished with a perfect rating of 158.3. He averaged 15.3 yards per attempt and completed 18 of 21 passes – two of which hit receivers in their hands. He racked up a season-high five TD passes and threw for 321 yards.
“I was like a little kid at the movie theater, except I didn’t have popcorn,” linebacker Roquan Smith said. “It was pretty sweet, man. The guy’s a warrior. Busts his tail day in and day out.”
After the game, Jackson wouldn’t acknowledge that he was feeling himself.
“I feel like if you could tell you’re in the zone,” he said, “you’re not in the zone. I was just locked in.”
The “MVP” chants started during pregame introductions, when he was the last Raven to have his name called. They became louder as the game played out. Jackson said he didn’t hear a thing.
“The only thing that was on my mind was to finish the game, and today we did,” Jackson said.
Last year, in a Week 2 loss at home to the Dolphins, the Ravens blew a 21point lead and were outscored 28-3 in the fourth quarter.
“He told us at the beginning of this year that he got us,” edge rusher Odafe Oweh said. “There was nobody that didn’t believe him. I’m proud of him.”
Once Jackson locks in, Oweh said, the rest of the team follows suit. And the good news for Jackson’s teammates is that he cares little for individual accolades. His commitment has endeared him to his coaches and his teammates since he was a rookie.
“I think Lamar, his reads and his progressions, are so much quicker and faster and decisive,” said fullback Patrick Ricard, who caught one of Jackson’s scores. “He knows where he wants to put the ball and I think we have the weapons to make it happen. Guys are getting open, guys are making the plays when it’s needed.”
That’s largely a byproduct of offensive coordinator Todd Monken’s offense, which has given Jackson the freedom to change plays at the line of scrimmage and allowed him to play with an overall aggressiveness.
A prime example came on a 33-yard completion to Odell Beckham Jr. down the right sideline in the second quarter. It was a highlight-reel catch for Beckham, but Jackson audibled into the route when he saw man coverage at the line. He gave the receiver the signal. Beckham beat his man and Jackson delivered a strike only he could catch.
“There’s no debating,” Beckham said of the MVP race. “I think we look too much into statistics and all of that … the way that he leads this team, he just always keeps us alive.”
“That’s the type of game plan I like,” Jackson said. “He was dialing it up, being aggressive, letting me be the decision-maker.”
He could choose whether to push the envelope or take what the defense is giving. When things are right in the offense, it all comes naturally, he said.
Jackson hasn’t been perfect all season. The deep ball, at times, has been lacking. But a 75-yard touchdown to Zay Flowers is proof of the improvements in that area.
“We kept saying, if we could start hitting the deep ball, we can make those big plays, it’s going to be a back-breaker,” Harbaugh said. “It turned out to be a back-breaker today. It was great to see.”
Even as the Ravens remained consistent, winning in a variety of ways to establish themselves as the AFC’s premier team, Jackson had a five-game stretch in which he completed 57.4% of his passes. Numbers can deceive. He averaged 5.9 yards per carry in those games and made enough plays with his arm.
Last week, the term “quarterbacky” began trending on social media when it was used in an anti-Jackson MVP argument, in which it was claimed he didn’t play enough like a traditional, pocketpassing signal-caller.
“So he can run the ball pretty well? So he’s not as ‘quarterbacky?’ ” Ricard said while throwing his hands in the air. “I don’t know. He’s a great player.”
By this point, linebacker Patrick Queen said, the naysayers have run out of excuses to discount Jackson.
“People find a reason just to hate him and try to be negative about him,” Queen told USA TODAY Sports. “But the guy has nothing negative about him. And he just proved that today.”