The intention in Baltimore seems to be to put a greater share of the burden on the offense on quarterback Lamar Jackson’s shoulders—or rather more specifically, his throwing arm. Not only have the Ravens turned over their wide receiver room, they swapped out offensive coordinators in favor of one that will give him the power to audible at the line of scrimmage and call his own plays. The focus is also on him throwing more and running less.
But for that to work, Baltimore Banner reporter Jonas Shaffer argues, he needs to get better at throwing the ball down the field. The former Baltimore Sun scribe broke down Jackson’s deep passes from last season and found the results wanting—on the receivers’ end, but also on the quarterback’s.
“An explosive attack requires home run hitters, and Jackson has had one of the NFL’s worst whiff rates on deep shots”, he writes. “His accuracy on passes of at least 20 air yards has fallen each of the past two years, according to Sports Info Solutions. A review of his deep passes last season by The Baltimore Banner found that he went 15-for-45 (33.3%), excluding Hail Mary attempts and throwaways”.
A very interesting statistic that he goes into is the catchable rate of his deep passes. For most of his career, he had been in the middle of the pack in those numbers or slightly below. Last season, only 41 percent of his deep passes were deemed catchable, 34th in the league, and only 35.9 percent were on target, 32nd-best.
While other factors go into that, the quarterback obviously has a lot to do with the rate of catchability of his passes. It helps to have more open targets and better pass protection, of course, but that’s where the eye test comes in handy, and if you click through to the article above—and included here again—he broke down all 45 of his deep pass attempts. An interesting wrinkle in that analysis seems to be that his own results got worse as the season progressed.
For what it’s worth, Pro Football Focus graded Jackson 31st out of 36 qualifying quarterbacks in deep pass attempts. On the raw numbers, they have him completing just 14 of 47 deep pass attempts for 407 yards with five touchdowns to three interceptions. Only four quarterbacks had a lower completion percentage.
He also ranked 32nd in Big-Time Throw rate with just eight such throws on the season, while ranking 18th in Turnover-Worthy Throw rate. His adjusted completion percentage was just 31.9, 33rd out of 36 quarterbacks, credited with only one pass dropped on his 47 attempts.
Jackson was graded the sixth-best deep passer back in 2019, the year he was the unanimous league MVP. He has not graded higher than 19th in his other seasons, however. Can this current receiving corps help him get back to his better days?
