The Pittsburgh Steelers take the practice field for the first time in training camp later today. They are pretty much the last team to get their hands in the dirt, though not by a wide margin. The Baltimore Ravens, for example, just got out there, and not without indications of the growing pains of a new offense with a new group of wide receivers.
“I thought [Lamar Jackson] looked good”, Ravens head coach John Harbaugh offered of his initial impression of the new Todd Monken offense, via the team’s website. “We’re building it; it’s new…Lamar is a perfectionist. He wants everything exactly right, and I like that about him. So, we’ve got a long way to go, but we’ve got some time to get there”.
This offseason marked the first coordinator change in Jackson’s career—sort of, given that Greg Roman was already more or less running the show once the then-rookie quarterback got into the lineup in the middle of the 2018 season. It will be an adjustment period, but one they hope will be for the better.
And Harbaugh is not about to down his quarterback’s quest for perfection in his game, or at least what he perceives to be just that. He talked about how Jackson is hard on himself “If he doesn’t get a word right, if he doesn’t get a snap count right, if a motion is not right or something like that, a read is not right”.
Not that that is likely to be any different from just about any starting quarterback in the league who cares anything about winning. Messing anything up at any time is not good; it’s just that there’s a lot more time to correct things in training camp than, say, on third down in December.
Monken’s offense is expected to place more responsibility on Jackson, including the expanded freedom for him to call audibles and run his own show when the time calls for it. It’s something he’s reportedly wanted for a while and is now getting.
In addition to his new contract—albeit perhaps not quite the one he wanted—he also got a series of new weapons, most notably former All-Pro Odell Beckham Jr. and first-round pick Zay Flowers at the wide receiver position. They join another former first-round pick, Rashod Bateman, as the top receiving threats alongside tight end Mark Andrews.
So what will Lamar Jackson the perfectionist look like moving forward with the proverbial training wheels off? Sometimes it almost seems as though fans of opposing teams have been waiting for this moment, trusting that he won’t be able to shoulder the load and in order to continue winning will have to fall back on his legs and improvisatory magic.
I’m afraid I’m not as confident as others seem to be in his alleged mediocrity as a true pocket passer. Granted, there are areas in which he still needs to improve, I would argue, especially when it comes to reading defenses, but are they going to win a bunch of games? Yeah, probably. It’s what they’ve done since he first stepped on the field.
