Opinion: Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson 'changing the game in every way'
CINCINNATI – As Bill Polian infamously predicted, Lamar Jackson’s football future is as a receiver.
He is destined to receive awards. He is already receiving adulation. He will surely receive many millions of dollars before he has finished retrofitting the quarterback position as the flesh-and-blood cheat code of the Baltimore Ravens.
Consider: Though he threw three touchdown passes and compiled a perfect passer rating of 158.3 in the Ravens’ 49-13 romp over the winless Cincinnati Bengals Sunday, Jackson’s signature moment was a startling spin move made in the midst a 47-yard touchdown midway through the third quarter.
Having juked Bengal safety Jessie Bates III with a sharp move to the inside, Jackson planted his left foot and made an abrupt 360-degree turn to elude the pursuit of safety Shawn Williams and linebacker Nick Vigil.
Vigil got his left hand on Jackson’s left arm, but then lost his footing as he overran the play, landing on his seat.
“I said to the offensive coaches, they’ll be watching that one for decades and decades,” Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said. “Everyone in the country is going to see by tomorrow afternoon.
“That was something. That’s rare. That was special.”
That was vintage Lamar Jackson.
“I never practiced it,” he said. “Actually, I did once — Saturday at walkthrough. It did it, and it actually happened in the game.”
Asked about performing a spin move during a walkthrough practice, Jackson performed a slow-motion rotation during his postgame interview. Asked why it had been necessary to do it in the game, when he might have been able to outrun the pursuit, he laughed.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve got to see it myself because I don’t know. I was just going.”
Now in his second year as a professional following a Heisman Trophy college career at Louisville, Jackson is going, arguably, at an MVP pace, emphatically debunking pre-draft doubts of his NFL potential. Rather than requiring a position change in order to contribute, Jackson has expanded expectations of quarterback capabilities in leading the Ravens to 13 victories in his 16 starts.
“He’s obviously changing the game in every way,” Ravens guard Marshall Yanda said. “The kid is coming into his own and playing on another level.”
Concerns about his accuracy have proved unfounded. Jackson raised his completion percentage to 65.9% Sunday by completing 15 of his 17 pass attempts, one of them on a sidearm throw and one of his two incompletions a deliberate spike to stop the clock
Meanwhile, the spin-move score helped Jackson raise his league-leading rushing average to 6.6 yards a carry.
Yes, he did it against the dismal Bengals. But as Jackson has refined his throwing mechanics (with a wider base and a fuller follow-through), he is putting up noteworthy numbers more often against the NFL’s elite. The Ravens lead the league in total yards per game since Jackson became their starting quarterback last November and last week dominated the mighty New England Patriots.
What the Bengals witnessed Sunday, then, was not an aberration, but an apparition; the kind of athlete who comes along only a few times in a generation.
“He’s one of the most exciting players I’ve ever seen; dynamic,” Bengals coach Zac Taylor said. “I’m interested to see what teams do down the road here to stop him because he certainly is hitting on all cylinders right now.”
The Bengals tried to prepare by putting a practice squad receiver at quarterback during the week, but as Bates said Sunday, “There’s not a lot of Lamar Jacksons being born.”
Ravens running back Mark Ingram, himself a former Heisman Trophy winner, called Jackson’s spin move, “the craziest thing I’ve witnessed on the field.”
“I wish I had like a GoPro on me,” Ingram said.
Polian, the former NFL executive who had questioned Jackson’s potential as an NFL quarterback, acknowledged his mistake in a recent interview with Paste BN, saying he had made the mistake of applying traditional quarterback standards to a player of unique athleticism.
Others are now falling in line, or falling on the ground at Jackson’s scalpel-sharp cuts.
“You’ve just got to be 100% disciplined and when you are, he’s still No. 8,” Bengals defensive end Carlos Dunlap said. “He’s second to none in the open field. He’s going to make guys miss.”