Ravens QB Lamar Jackson ‘had to define himself’ in the NFL. There’s little doubting him now.
Miami Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel recognizes unconventional talent. All he has to do is look in the mirror.
Long before the 40-year-old whiz became the man in charge of the team standing between the Ravens and securing the top seed in the AFC on Sunday at M&T Bank Stadium, McDaniel was a scrawny teenager who was a walk-on wide receiver at Yale, where he majored in history and took classes from African art history to consumer culture. He never recorded a stat for the Bulldogs, but, as The Athletic reported, won a pull-up contest with 39 in a row and was consumed with film study.
His road to NFL stardom was also bumpy (alcoholism and rehab), meteoric (coaching intern at age 22 with the Denver Broncos to offensive assistant under then-Houston Texans coach Gary Kubiak a year later) and had its share of detractors (fired shortly after Kubiak hired him), to say nothing of the uniqueness in the coaching realm of sartorial splendor that regularly includes Nike Off-Whites and a rose gold Breitling watch.
Then there’s the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson, who is actually a lot like McDaniel.
The quarterback’s ascension was immediate — he was the NFL Most Valuable Player in his second season and joined Tom Brady as the only players to win the award unanimously — and even in a changing NFL his dynamic ability to run and pass are atypical of the position.
Already, Jackson’s 3,357 passing yards this season are a career high, with two games remaining. His 66.3% completion rate is also the best of his six-year tenure. His 786 rushing yards will fall well short of the 1,206 he had in 2019, but they are 201 more than the next closest quarterback, Justin Fields.
He’s also led the Ravens to the best record in the NFL at 12-3 (one game better than Miami), wins in 10 of their past 11 games and the precipice of the first-round bye in the playoffs and home-field advantage through the AFC championship game. Seven of Baltimore’s victories against teams with winning records have been by at least 14 points, including Monday night’s 33-19 pounding of the NFC-leading San Francisco 49ers.
It’s no wonder, then, that McDaniel is a candidate for Coach of the Year and Jackson his second MVP honor.
“Outside of this game, I’m just happy for the player because what I recognize is … you talk about an unbelievable talent,” McDaniel said this week. “But even him, he’s had to define himself. He’s had people tell him what he is and he disagrees.”
There’s little doubting Jackson now.
He is the betting favorite to be named MVP, and with good reason. But the numbers tell only part of the story of his evolution as perhaps the best quarterback and best player in the league.
Take his performance against the 49ers, and in particular his third-quarter touchdown pass to Zay Flowers to all but put the game out of reach. Any quarterback in the league could have completed the 9-yard throw to the wide-open rookie in the back of the end zone, but the beauty was in the play design and what Jackson did before it ever happened.
As he dropped back, tight end Isaiah Likely ran up the field to the right and running back Gus Edwards into the flat on the same side, sucking rookie safety Ji’Ayir Brown down. That cleared the middle of the field, and voila.
“I do think he sees the field very well,” offensive coordinator Todd Monken said Thursday. “He does a tremendous job, and we’ve worked awfully hard with our scramble drills in terms of our spacing down the field reacting to the quarterback.
“But even beyond that, I think he’s able to communicate what he sees and what he anticipates. Then, when he gets outside the pocket, [he] does a great job of seeing things. The touchdown to Zay … I don’t even know if we ever hit Zay one time on that part of it, but he saw the reaction of the safety and made an unbelievable play.”
It was just one of many this season.
Earlier in the same game, facing a first-and-20 from his own 15-yard line, Jackson stepped up and away from the 49ers’ rush and scrambled left. When it looked like he was about to run, linebacker Dre Greenlaw came off Likely and toward Jackson, only to watch Jackson awkwardly fling a pass back toward the suddenly vacant piece of Levi’s Stadium turf that Likely had suddenly cut in toward.
Afterward, coach John Harbaugh said Jackson’s performance was worthy of an MVP winner.
“It takes a team to create a performance like that, but it takes a player to play at that level — to play at an MVP level — it takes a player to play that way,” he said. “And Lamar was all over the field doing everything.”
He’s also done it without the team’s top running back coming into the season, J.K. Dobbins, who was lost to a season-ending torn Achilles tendon in Week 1, and some of it without tight end Mark Andrews, who suffered an ankle injury in Week 12.
He has benefitted, however, from a new scheme under Monken and new talent around him, including Flowers, Odell Beckham Jr., and Nelson Angholor, among others. Facing the NFL’s best defense every day in practice doesn’t hurt, either.
But Jackson doesn’t care about the hype he’s getting for MVP.
“Keeping a level head is the most important thing for us right now, because now the narrative is changing,” he said Wednesday. “It was just … ‘We don’t know about the Ravens.’ Now it’s, ‘Oh, they’re the No. 1 team.’ So, we’re not paying [any] mind to that. I feel like that’s bait — that’s clickbait. We’re trying to make it to February, so we’re going to take it a game at a time.
“I believe we’ve got a bunch of guys who’ve been doubted, a bunch of guys who’ve got things to prove — on our team — on both sides of the ball. So, I believe, anytime we’re the underdogs, we’re going to always rise to the occasion.”
Does Jackson feel he has anything to prove?
“To myself, absolutely, absolutely,” he said.
Another MVP trophy would prove a lot to everybody else, too.
Week 17
Dolphins at Ravens
Sunday, 1 p.m.
TV: CBS
Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM
Line: Ravens by 3 1/2
