The Baltimore Ravens are trying to give quarterback Lamar Jackson a buttload of money. The 2019 MVP is taking his sweet time when it comes to negotiating a new deal, currently set to enter the fifth year of his rookie contract. Owner Steve Bisciotti even expressed some pessimism that Jackson would sit down to the table before the start of the season.
But he has no hesitation in handing the money over. On any front. Speaking to reporters last week, he even confronted the narrative that mobile quarterbacks are more prone to injury, a particularly relevant one given that Jackson missed the final five games of the regular season as the Ravens went from being a division leader to missing the postseason altogether with a losing record.
“Oh, Lamar is more susceptible? He is not”, he told reporters at the annual league meeting, via Jamison Hensley of ESPN. “These guys are banging their hands on a helmet and missing six games, like Drew Brees. You know what I mean? Burrow wasn’t running. He was in the pocket. He gets crushed and he tears his ACL”.
Burrow, of course, is the quarterback of the Cincinnati Bengals, the first overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft. He tore his ACL in the second half of his rookie season, but successfully returned this past year and helped lead them to the Super Bowl, coming up just short.
It should be stated that Burrow’s game does not nearly depend upon his mobility the way that Jackson’s does, and really, the argument about injuries for mobile quarterbacks is not so much that they are injured more frequently, but that an accumulation of injuries reduces the effectiveness of their mobility, which is usually a bedrock of their game.
“That running quarterback, a higher propensity of injury, people have like staked that as a has-to-be, and I don’t know that anybody has ever backed it up by any kind of study”, Bisciotti said. “I just don’t know that anybody has ever done that. Have you ever seen it? They talk about it like it’s gospel, like if you’re a running quarterback, you’re more susceptible to injury. It’s like, show me. Show me the stats. I’ve never seen them”.
Given that the Ravens have the most high-profile running quarterback in NFL history, perhaps it would behoove Bisciotti to commission an internal study into that research himself. It would seem to be a valuable piece of information they may want to have access to as they prepare to give him what may be a record contract.
