Lamar Jackson went off again on Monday night, leading the Ravens to a 45-6 win over the Rams that was as lethal as it was efficient. He’s the clear frontrunner for MVP this season, and is doing stuff at the quarterback position we haven’t seen, like, ever really.
He’s phenomenal. He’s fun. He’s fantastic for the league.
He’s also someone a lot of NFL experts were wrong about. There was the ridiculous argument that he should have played wide receiver when transitioning to the NFL. Some doofuses have argued that he’s too mobile, whatever that means, and that only NFL passers who stay in the pocket have succeeded in the league.
Some of these arguments come from a football space, maybe. Some are, let’s be honest here, because Jackson is black. And people still are holding on to them! These arguments are infuriating. In the cases of plenty of trolls, they’re most likely disingenuous.
And I’m not going to waste time on them. It’d be easy to dunk on all these people and feel good about myself, and call them out one by one for how wrong they were and are. I’m not going to do that. Rather, let’s highlight a few people who got Lamar Jackson’s offensive explosion exactly right.
First, there were loyal Ravens fans. Well done, believers. Good on you. Plenty saw the way the team played after they gave the team over to Jackson, and predicted big things for this year.
There were also experts who saw this coming. Shoutout Gregg Rosenthal of NFL.com, who looked at Jackson film this offseason and wrote, back in July, that Jackson would be “making the leap” this year.
From the article:
Conventional wisdom says the approach can’t last, as if Baltimore won’t evolve. Jackson indeed took too many hits throughout the season, as the Ravens weren’t afraid to run him inside on key downs. But the conventional wisdom also fails to account for how much better a runner Jackson is compared to the competition.
His burst with the ball is superior to that of most running backs. He has the patience and vision of a player who sees the field holistically. While he may not be able to run this much his whole career, the Ravens aren’t crazy to believe he could thrive rushing over 200 times with 400 throws in the first few seasons of his career as he grows his passing skills.
Rosenthal was all over it, and proved dead right. Well done.
How about Warren Sharp of Sharp Football Analysis, who on August 20 wrote the article “You Are Wrong About Lamar Jackson“?
Sharp was right about Lamar Jackson.
From the article:
With a full offseason of camp with the first-team offense, playing in an offense that is being built to emphasize his strengths, guess what?
If you doubt him, you’ll probably be wrong about Lamar Jackson in 2019, too.
He’ll be just as dynamic a runner as you remembered him being last year.
But he’s going to be a far better passer than what you were tricked into thinking he was last year.
Precisely what happened.
Or how about Charles McDonald, who looked at Jackson’s NFL potential back in 2018, before he was even in the league, for Football Outsiders.
McDonald wrote then:
The team that drafts Jackson needs to be aware that there will be some growing pains as he adjusts to the NFL. Still, he’s a supremely talented passer with advanced understanding of what college defenses were throwing at him. His electric ability as a runner will provide an immediate avenue for success, and he’ll play his entire rookie season at age 21.
Trying to peg where he’ll go in the draft process will be difficult, but he should make the team that pulls the trigger on him very happy.
I’d say the Ravens are very happy.
Per some good internet feedback, I should also shout out Benjamin Solak of The Draft Network, who wrote in June that “Consistency is the name of the game for Lamar right now, and with it acquired, he has the physical tools to take a big leap in Year 2.”
And look at Luke Easterling, back in 2017 (!), making the case for Lamar Jackson as the best quarterback in the draft class.
And while we’re at it, I’ll shout out our own Steven Ruiz, who called out the coded language about Lamar Jackson when he was being evaluated for the NFL Draft.
So yes, dunk on all the doofuses who didn’t see Jackson’s greatness, or can’t even see it now. But also, a round of applause for the analysts and fans who saw this coming.
