It’s no secret that the Pittsburgh Steelers have found success against the Baltimore Ravens and QB Lamar Jackson in recent years. The Ravens have beaten the Steelers once in the last eight matchups. And Jackson is 2-4 versus Pittsburgh. The Steelers have limited Jackson to a 59.1 completion percentage, four passing touchdowns, and seven interceptions while sacking him 20 times.
However, the common consensus is that Jackson is playing better football this year than he has in his entire NFL career. His 69.1 completion percentage through 10 games is a career-high by almost two full percentage points. He leads the league in passing touchdowns with 24. He’s also leading the league in yards per attempt (9.3) while only throwing two interceptions.
The Steelers’ defense will have a very tall task on Sunday. But ESPN’s Mina Kimes says Jackson’s armor has one potential crack.
“If you’re Pittsburgh, your hope in this one is your very, very good and sound run defense, right, which we just saw shut down Washington, stops Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry on the ground so that you get him into third-and-longs,” said Kimes on Friday’s episode of the Dominique Foxworth Show. “Pass rush, you know it’s very hard to get to Lamar. But if you can get him to big-play hunt and take them out of their rhythm of the intermediate play-action passing attack and whatnot, you can at least get some variance there and perhaps get off the field.”
As Kimes said, getting to Jackson this year is very hard. Defenses have sacked him 13 times in 10 games compared to 37 times in 16 games last season. He’s just not taking sacks like he has previously.
And a big part of that is Jackson’s improvement against the blitz. He’s faced the blitz on 119 dropbacks this season, per Pro Football Focus. He’s completed 67.9 percent of his passes and thrown eight touchdowns versus just one interception when blitzed. And he’s only been sacked five times.
That’s a problem for the Steelers if they’re considering using game plans similar to those in the past. Foxworth brought up the Steelers’ defensive game plan for the first meeting in 2023. The Steelers blitzed Jackson on over 50 percent of his dropbacks.
That’s a recipe for disaster this season. In fact, defenses don’t want Jackson making quick decisions. He’s completing 78.1 percent of his passes that he attempts in under 2.5 seconds. As Kimes said, the Steelers want Jackson out of rhythm. That’s because he’s only completing 58.7 percent of his passes when he holds the ball for at least 2.5 seconds this year.
As for big-play hunting, two of the three top games this season for Jackson’s average depth of target were in losses. And the defenses sacked him seven times in those three games. That’s more than half of his sacks coming in three games. So if the Steelers want to get Lamar Jackson to the ground on Sunday, they’ll want to keep him in the pocket for longer and have him try to force the ball down the field.
