Baltimore Ravens QB Lamar Jackson beat the Pittsburgh Steelers for just the second time earlier this season. In order to advance to the next round of the playoffs, he will have to do it again. While the Steelers have had considerable success against the Ravens in recent years, OC Todd Monken isn’t faulting Jackson.
“I think it’s unfair to pin it all on [Lamar Jackson]”, he said of their struggles against the Steelers, via the Ravens’ website. “I’ve been here two years, and he’s played in three of them, and there are things I didn’t do well in the first game a year ago, and we had a bunch of drops”.
“The first game this year, we had turnovers and a bunch of penalties. That’s a team issue”, Monken pointed out, though Jackson also didn’t have his best game against the Steelers. “That’s not a Lamar issue, that’s a team issue, and he played really well this last time we played them, and we played well as a team, and that’s what it’s going to take Saturday”.
For his career against the Steelers, Lamar Jackson is 109-of-188 for 1,284 yards with 8 touchdowns and 9 interceptions. He has taken 23 sacks at a 10.9-percent rate with eight fumbles and a 40.3-percent pass success rate.
Suffice it to say that these are well below his career numbers. So when Monken talks about the Ravens’ struggles against the Steelers, Lamar Jackson is definitely a part of it. He is right, however, to point out that he hasn’t been the only issue, especially lately.
While the Ravens lost eight of nine games to the Steelers, several of those games came without Jackson, for starters. In some games Jackson has played, the Ravens repeatedly hurt themselves, either with drops or other unforced errors. They played out of character, though one wonders if there was a psychological factor.
It’s possible the Steelers were simply in the Ravens’ heads, and there is evidence to suggest that. When you keep losing to the same team yet seemingly beat everybody else, it has to stick out. And Lamar Jackson hasn’t always played the Steelers under the best circumstances.
That includes this Saturday, as the Ravens may be without Zay Flowers, their top wide receiver. Still, they are overwhelming favorites, and after Lamar Jackson beat them late in the year, I think the Steelers’ recent history of success against them has been forgotten.
Last time around, the Ravens didn’t even need Jackson to do too much against the Steelers. While he threw three touchdown passes, he only attempted 23, completing 15 for 207 yards. The Steelers did pick him off once. But in contrast to prior matchups, his teammates bailed him out. Marlon Humphrey’s pick-six sealed the win and perhaps dispelled the voodoo haunting them in recent years.
