Lamar Jackson labored off the field and into the locker room, taking not only himself out of sight but any realistic Ravens’ playoffs dreams as well.
Facing a virtual must-win against the Patriots at home on Sunday night, Baltimore fell 28–24. To make the playoffs, the 7–8 Ravens will need to win out against the Packers and Steelers while getting Pittsburgh to lose in Cleveland against the three-win Browns. According to The Athletic, the Ravens have a 9% chance of that happening.
For Baltimore and its superstar quarterback, it’s another wasted year.
Jackson became the starter in Week 11 of his rookie season in 2018. Since then, he’s been on the NFL’s Mount Rushmore, joining Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Tom Brady over that stretch. He’s been a two-time MVP and a three-time first-team All-Pro. He’s won 76 regular-season games, only fewer than Mahomes (95) and Allen (86) over that span.
Looking at the AFC in 2025, the Ravens had a chance. Mahomes is out of the postseason. Joe Burrow and the Bengals never threatened to get there. Allen and his Bills will be, but they’re seriously flawed on both sides of the ball. And yet the Ravens might not even finish .500, an indignity they’ve only suffered twice in the John Harbaugh era, dating back to 2008.
In totality, it’s reasonable, if not obvious, to say both Jackson and this era of Ravens football will be remembered as fantastic with an unending feeling of longing attached.
Jackson will turn 29 in January. He’s now missed significant time in three of the past five years. In 2021, Jackson sat out five games with an ankle injury. The following year, he was sidelined for another five games with a sprained PCL, an ailment also costing him Baltimore’s wild-card loss to the Bengals.
This season, Jackson has missed three games with a hamstring injury sustained in Week 4, and is now hurt again with a back ailment. He’s also consistently missed practice, having been out at least one day during the week each of the past six weeks, listed with knee, toe and ankle designations in four of them. It’s notable that all of them, along with the three major injuries of his career, are all lower-body.
Coming into Sunday night, Jackson was rushing for 30.3 yards per game this season, easily the lowest figure of his career. As the future Hall of Famer ages, his legs aren’t going to regenerate.
Perhaps this is the time to look both backward and forward. The Ravens had two golden opportunities to win a Super Bowl with Jackson, earning the AFC’s top seed in 2019 and 2023. In those years, Baltimore won a single playoff game, advancing to his lone AFC championship game, but failed to reach the Super Bowl. In every other season with Jackson under center, the Ravens have just two postseason wins combined.
And this isn’t just about Jackson. While he’s beginning to enter a different stage of his career, one that will force him to rely more on pocket passing and less on those cheat-code legs, he’s also not getting a ton of support.
Baltimore has star receiver Zay Flowers but little else in terms of young, locked-up offensive talent. Center Tyler Linderbaum and tight end Isaiah Likely are pending free agents. Running back Derrick Henry is in the midst of another 1,000-yard campaign but will also be 32 years old come January. Receiver Rashod Bateman is 26 and signed for four more years, but has 18 catches all year.
This offseason, hard questions must be asked. Harbaugh is the franchise’s all-time winningest coach, but should he come back with so many great years muted by postseason failures? Should the Ravens invest once more in a receiving threat with a top pick as they have with Bateman, Flowers and Marquise Brown in recent years? With Jackson’s injuries piling up and rushing numbers declining, is a change in identity coming?
All of those thoughts are both valid and pressing. They are also essential to the future of the franchise. But nothing can fix what has gone wrong in 2025. A team that underachieved by any measure.
On Sunday night, the Ravens left the field dejected and beaten.
It must have been the same feelings for Jackson a few hours prior, knowing his body, and his team’s season, were once again finished.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Lamar Jackson Era in Baltimore Has Been Glorious—and Unfulfilling.
