The player’s perception about a certain plan or scheme isn’t necessarily always the same as the coach. There have been a number of times over the years around this time in which we experience members of the media taking statements made by Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin for clarification, who often responds with some type of comment about the players playing and the coaches coaching.
And Pittsburgh certainly isn’t an isolated scenario in that regard. The same thing happens all around the league, as players don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle as the coach does, and thus can’t see the bigger picture. So it’s fair to take Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson’s initial comments about getting “the keys to the offense” this year with a grain of salt. Only this time head coach John Harbaugh is echoing his quarterback’s comments.
“Yes, it is the evolution”, he said, via the team’s website, about how the new offense under Todd Monken is giving the quarterback more control, including greater leeway with audibling and calling plays in the huddle. “We’ve been in that world before, but not to this degree. To me, the offense starts in that world more than it did before, and I’m excited about that, [and] I know Lamar is excited about that”.
Jackson is now going into year six, so one would hope by this point in his career that he could be entrusted to have more control over the offense. Whether or not that has anything to do with why Greg Roman is no longer here as offensive coordinator and why Monken was brought in, I can’t say. The team also moved Tee Martin from wide receivers coach to quarterbacks coach, and they’ve been a tandem building this offense around the quarterback.
“Todd is right in there with Tee coaching the offense to the quarterbacks; that’s been really good”, Harbaugh said. “We’ve had a lot of one-on-one sessions, in terms of just how we’re going to operate and how the quarterbacks need to operate. I think you saw today the communication is probably better than what you saw last week, so we’ve just got to keep building on that”.
There is need to work on communication this year with the new wide receivers that were brought in. The Ravens signed Odell Beckham Jr. and Nelson Agholor in free agency, and then they used their first-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft on Zay Flowers.
More weapons than he’s ever had before. More control than he’s ever had before. More throwing, in his own words, than he’s ever done before. And certainly far more money than he’s ever had before after signing the biggest per-year contract in NFL history earlier this offseason.
As one would expect, this year is all about Lamar Jackson. The Ravens have given him the proverbial keys in more ways than one. He believes he can get them where they want to go. They’ve given him enough gas to get there. How far will they make it?
