The previous two seasons have not gone in the direction the Baltimore Ravens intended by any means. With QB Lamar Jackson ailing down the stretch, they only managed to make the playoffs in one of those two years, with his backup last season committing a costly turnover at the goal line to seal a first-round loss.
Now 12-3 with two games left to play, the Ravens can lock up the top seed in the AFC and a bye week by defeating the Miami Dolphins in Week 17. Miami is 11-4 and one of only two teams that can still catch them. The other is the Cleveland Browns, who would need to win out while having Baltimore lose out.
But with perhaps just one meaningful game left to play before the postseason, if they handle their business, Jackson is taking a pragmatic approach. He isn’t thinking back to 2021 and 2022. He’s looking back to 2019, the year that got away from the Ravens.
They were quite arguably the best team in the league that year, going 14-2 in the regular season and regularly embarrassing people, finishing the year with a plus-249 points differential, or more than two touchdowns per game.
And they lost in their opening round to the Tennessee Titans.
“We just need to keep going, keep staying locked in and keep staying focused, because we know what it was in 2019 when we were playing against [teams] like this [and] winning regular-season games”, he told reporters after defeating the previously 11-3 San Francisco 49ers, via the team’s website. “When the time came, we didn’t finish the season. We’re just going to keep taking it a day at a time, a practice at a time and a game at a time. That’s all I’m focused on right now”.
The Ravens were so dominant during the 2019 season, when Jackson was named the second-ever unanimous league MVP, that he frequently finished games on the bench. Backup QB Robert Griffin III played in seven games, starting the season finale with the top seed locked up. Six of those games in which RGIII played was not because of an injury to Jackson, but to protect him from injury in a game that was no longer competitive.
Yet they struggled to stay competitive against the Titans in that playoff loss, Tennessee up 14-0 by the opening seconds of the second quarter and putting up a 28-6 lead with under five minutes to play in the third. The Ravens only managed a touchdown and failed two-point conversion four minutes in to the fourth quarter to make for a somewhat more respectable 28-12 final score.
Jackson finished that game 31-for-59 throwing for 365 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions on top of a lost fumble. Titans RB Derrick Henry rushed for 195 yards on the day, yet QB Ryan Tannehill did all the scoring, throwing two touchdown passes on just 14 attempts and rushing for another. Henry did throw a touchdown himself on a gadget play.
Jackson knows very well what it’s like to get to this point—and to come up just short of it as well. So far he’s just 1-3 in postseason play, managing a 20-13 win over the Titans in the opening round the following year. It’s the franchise’s only playoff win since 2014, despite all the press. Nobody knows better than Jackson as he makes a run at another MVP award what really matters.
