BALTIMORE—“It’s been three years and four days since your last playoff game,” I said to Lamar Jackson Saturday night, and his brow got furrowed.
“Man,” he said. “Long time.”
Yep. Buffalo 17, Baltimore 3. A putrid affair for the Ravens in Orchard Park, dropping Jackson to 1-3 as a playoff quarterback and setting up a long road to Saturday. A very long road. “It’s been eating away at me,” he told me in the hallway outside the Ravens’ locker room. He’s had lots of regular-season wins, but two injuries robbed him of a third of the last two seasons, and a rancorous contract spat with the Ravens made things worse, as did reminders annually that he wasn’t a good postseason player. It’s all why Jackson has been more serious this season after the contract got done, less euphoric after regular-season wins. And why the 34-10 rout of the Texans Saturday almost seemed like the start of the season to Jackson.
As coach John Harbaugh told me: “It’s just the idea that everything that we do, everything that he does, every game up until this point was to put us in position for this. This is when it begins.”
“All season,” Jackson said, “I’ve thought, finish 13-4, get the one seed, first-round bye, then it’s only two games at home to get to the Super Bowl. That’s got to be our goal.”
The full Lamar was vital Saturday, because the Ravens were in trouble at halftime. They were lucky to be in a 10-10 game after the Texans—not a big blitzing team normally—blitzed on 13 of Jackson’s 18 first-half pass-drops (including scrambles), per Next Gen Stats. Houston sacked Jackson on two of the last three snaps of the half. So at halftime, the QB did something about it. “I talked to coach Tee [Martin, quarterback coach],” Jackson said. “I said, we can’t keep trying to get deep and developing routes because our guys can only block for so long. Then it might be holding, or me getting sacked. I gotta move. Just gotta get the ball out. Second half, it was more like us.”
Jan 20, 2024; Baltimore, MD, USA; Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson (8) runs the ball to score a touchdown against Houston Texans defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins (98) during the fourth quarter of a 2024 AFC divisional round game at M&T Bank Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mitch Stringer-USA TODAY Sports
Mitch Stringer-USA TODAY Sports
In the first half, Jackson’s time to throw per Next Gen was 3.53 seconds, an eternity in today’s NFL; it let the blitzing Texans pressure Jackson consistently. In the second half, prodded by Jackson’s halftime suggestion, the number went down to 2.70. Jackson wasn’t sacked. Baltimore dominated the half, shutting out Houston 24-0 and gaining 234 yards. Jackson ran for two scores in the last 30 minutes and threw for one, a touch pass plucked out of the air by TE2 Isaiah Likely, who has played very much like TE1, with six touchdowns in seven games since Mark Andrews went down with an ankle injury.
The Ravens have been impressed with offensive coordinator Todd Monken’s flexibility in year one. This is the best receiver corps Jackson has had in Baltimore, with field-stretchers like Zay Flowers (someone check his tracking device; seemed like he sprinted five miles in Jet Motion against Houston), Odell Beckham and Rashod Bateman. Monken obviously wanted to test the Texans’ back end; they were 23rd in the league in passing yards allowed. But Monken listens to his coaches and listens to Jackson. Thus the second-half metamorphosis.
Jackson’s never going to have the biggest stats, but this game, particularly the second half, was a perfect illustration of who he is as a player. He knows how to control a football game. His 152 yards passing and 100 yards rushing, and two TDs throwing and two rushing, and no turnovers, led to a 37:35 domination of time of possession. His mastery of the clock late in the game was Brady-like. From the midway point of the third quarter to :00 of the fourth, Houston had the ball only four minutes, five seconds. Jackson milked every second he could from the play clock, suffocating any chance C.J. Stroud had to rally his team. It was so maddening for Houston that coach DeMeco Ryans started using his timeouts with 6:26 left.
The story angle out of this game, clearly, was Jackson playing his best playoff game after four mostly lousy ones. Fair, certainly; Jackson was football’s Mookie Betts here, a five-tool player you might hold down for a few series but eventually he’s going to kill you with his arm and legs, and he doesn’t care which extremities he uses. There was something else impressive about Baltimore: Stroud came in having led 25 offensive touchdown drives in his previous nine games. Here, he got none (Houston’s lone TD came on a punt return). Last week, against Cleveland’s top-ranked defense, he put up 31 points. On Saturday, he led one field-goal drive. Nothing else. That led Harbaugh to tell me post-game: “We can win games in a lot of different ways.”
So now the Ravens move on to host the first AFC Championship Game in the city since, well, the first AFC Championship Game. True fact. The AFL and NFL merged in 1970, birthing the AFC and NFC. And in January 1971, John Madden brought his Raiders to Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium to play the Colts … and the Indianapolis Colts weren’t a gleam in anyone’s eye back then. Baltimore 27, Oakland 17, with one TD pass by the great Johnny Unitas. To Ray Perkins.
Unitas, Louisville Cardinal product. A half-century later, there’s another slightly more versatile one.
Lots of celebrating in a frozen Charm City Saturday night, savoring a playoff rout and anticipating the first title game in the city in 53 years. The most famous Raven was not celebrating, yet.
“It’s cool,” Jackson said, smiling only a little. “I feel all right. Still got a lot of business to take care of.”
Read more in Peter King’s full Football Morning in America column.