Lamar Jackson has started 22 games during the regular season in his NFL career. He has produced a record of 19-3 during that time, including going 13-2 during the 2019 season, producing a performance that saw him named just the second unanimous MVP in league history. What he has done individually lately can be truly remarkable.
But he is still 0-2 in the postseason, and that’s what he’s concerned with. Numbers, awards, the regular season. None of that is what he’s after. Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens are looking for a championship. Frankly, last season, they already accomplished about as much as you could without one. I believe they even set a record for the most players named to the Pro Bowl.
Yet they were handled in 2018 by the Los Angeles Chargers. This past season, the Tennessee Titans took care of them with relative ease, holding one of the highest-scoring offenses in NFL history to just 12 points. Jackson put up big numbers, 365 yards passing and another 143 yards rushing, but they amounted to little o the scoreboard.
He told Alex Marvez during an interview on SiriusXM that he is still “puzzled” over the postseason loss. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know what happened’. Like, we had good plays. We had good drives. We’ll hit a hump one play. They steal the momentum, and it’s, you know, the NFL is like a momentum game. Like, whoever’s got momentum, they’re going to score points”.
“They might come out with a victory, and that’s what it was”, he added. “We was flat the whole night. That game was not on our defense. I feel like we just didn’t execute on offense. [If] we put more points up, it’d be a great game”.
Since the Ravens won the Super Bowl in 2012, Joe Flacco only took them back to the postseason once before Jackson was drafted in 2018. That season, they were 4-5 before Jackson took over at quarterback, helping the team finish with a 6-1 record to win the AFC North. They followed that up with a 14-2 season in 2019, claiming the top seed for the first time in franchise history. But they’ve still advanced no further than the Divisional Round since 2012 and are just 1-3 in the postseason since then.
Jackson puts much of the blame on himself. “It was like when we scored, we didn’t get excited. It was like we already lost. We can’t do that no more. That’s what I’ve seen, including myself”, he said. He also added that he wants to work on getting the ball out faster as a passer this offseason.
