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Ravens’ Lamar Jackson proved he’s plenty ‘quarterback-y’ with another MVP performance in blowout of Dolphins | ANALYSIS

Brian Wacker, Baltimore Sun
·6 min read
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Is Lamar Jackson “quarterback-y” enough yet?

The superlatives for the Ravens’ leader flowed as freely and sweet as the celebratory nectar of not just a 10th victory in the past 11 games, but a 56-19 dismantling of the Miami Dolphins on Sunday afternoon at M&T Bank Stadium. With the win, Baltimore won the AFC North, clinched the conference’s No. 1 seed and secured the first-round bye in the playoffs and home-field advantage throughout the AFC title game.

At the nexus of all of Baltimore’s successes, against the Dolphins and against the rest of the NFL this season, was Jackson.

Six days earlier, Jackson threw for 252 yards and two touchdowns, rushed for 45 yards and led Baltimore to a 33-19 bullying of the NFC-leading San Francisco 49ers on Christmas night. Afterward, Ravens coach John Harbaugh called it an “MVP” performance.

Sunday, Jackson torched Miami, completing 18 of 21 passes for 325 yards and five touchdowns (along with 35 rushing yards).

“He played a perfect football game in terms of the passing game,” Harbaugh said in the afterglow. “He was on point.”

Harbaugh might’ve sounded hyperbolic, but he was accurate. Jackson finished with a perfect quarterback rating (158.3). It was the third time he has done so in his career, tying him with Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Kurt Warner and Ben Roethlisberger. Hall of Fame company.

And who was the last quarterback to have a perfect passer rating and more passing touchdowns than incompletions in the same game?

All Jackson had to do was look in the mirror. He did it against the Cincinnati Bengals in 2019. And against the Dolphins earlier that same season.

That’s also the last time he was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player, when he joined Brady as the only unanimous choices in history.

Now he’s poised to become the 11th player to win the award twice, at just 26 years old and in the sixth year of his career.

“It’s like watching a video game, bro,” Ravens cornerback Arthur Maulet said. “Every week, he does something and it’s like, ‘really?’ I played against him in Pittsburgh. I’m glad I’m on this side now. I don’t have to chase him around.”

The only difference between Jackson and a video game is that what he does is real, and it manifested itself in several ways Sunday, much the way it has most of the season.

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Last year against Miami, Jackson put on an epic and historic performance, racking up 437 yards of total offense and four touchdowns, including a highlight reel 79-yard scoring run. Then the Ravens’ defense disintegrated, choking away a 21-point fourth-quarter lead in a 42-38 loss. After the disastrous outcome, Harbaugh said the team had to “own” the collapse, and that how his players responded would be the story.

Jackson eventually got hurt and missed the last six games of the season, of course.

The story this time was that there wouldn’t be so much as a whiff of a comeback, thanks to a largely dominant defense that was without two main contributors, All-Pro-level safety Kyle Hamilton and cornerback Brandon Stephens, and because of the play of Jackson, who seems to grow by leaps and bounds by the week.

The 2019 NFL MVP all but locked up another one with his first-half performance alone Sunday, completing 12 of 14 passes for 255 yards and three touchdowns in the first 30 minutes to stake the Ravens to a 28-13 lead. The signature moment in a season full of moments came when he let fly a 33-yard bomb down the right sideline to a streaking Odell Beckham Jr., the three-time Pro Bowl selection who Baltimore wasn’t even sure could run when they signed him a one-year, $15 million deal before Jackson signed his own $260 million deal in the offseason.

It was the kind of poetry Baltimore has longed for from its wide receivers and has gotten more and more as the season has worn on, from rookie Zay Flowers, to veteran Nelson Agholor, to Rashod Bateman, to Beckham.

Much of it traces back to Jackson.

“We were on the same page, I got the signal, he threw a dot,” said Beckham, who made a diving, over-the-shoulder grab on a perfectly thrown ball and dragged his second foot in bounds as he tumbled out of bounds at the 1-yard line. “I expect myself to make those plays, I think everyone here does. To me, it felt like it was just a normal catch.”

And to many, it looked like just another normal performance from Jackson.

All afternoon, fans chanted “M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P!” just the way the Ravens had in the locker room in Santa Clara, California, after the victory over the 49ers. Jackson was immune to them and kept pouring gas on the fire, lighting up Miami with two more touchdown passes in the second half.

“[I was thinking,] ‘We need to finish this game.’ I’m not really paying attention to the chants,” he said. “Last year, the score was looking like that at halftime and stuff like that and [in the] third quarter. Then, those guys started making plays, and we didn’t do anything, but the only thing on my mind was to finish the game, and today, we did.”

And with it finished off any lingering questions about whether he should be the MVP.

With one game remaining in the regular season, Jackson has thrown for a career-high 3,682 yards and 24 touchdowns with just seven interceptions. He has also completed a career-best 67.2% of his passes. And he’s the best player on the best team, one that has been besieged by injuries, from running backs J.K. Dobbins and Keaton Mitchell to tight end and security blanket Mark Andrews.

Importantly, Jackson has been at his best in the biggest games, too, with Sunday just the latest given what was at stake.

“It was very important,” Jackson said. “We had a lot of guys banged up, nicked up with injuries, [and] guys who couldn’t play. We had guys who stepped up [and] knew the situation, and they played lights out [in] all phases.”

No one more so than Jackson.

“Ain’t no argument,” said tight end Isaiah Likely, the recipient of two of Jackson’s touchdown passes, including one on fourth-and-7. “You go out every Sunday and you tell me somebody better than 8.”

Added backup quarterback Tyler Huntley: “I just see how he’s locked in every play every second of the day. He don’t take no plays for granted. He don’t let a play go by where he’s not trying to get the best out of it. You’re damn sure right [he’s the MVP].”

Fullback Patrick Ricard, who caught the last of Jackson’s touchdowns on the day, hauling in a 4-yard pass on a play that he said the Ravens have been working on for weeks, agreed.

“He’s clearly a quarterback,” Ricard said. “He makes the plays with the throws. OK, because he can run the ball pretty well he’s not quarterback-y? I don’t get it.”

Neither do LeBron James or Ray Lewis.

“Quarterbacky huh!?!? NAAAAHHHHH!! H.I.M.,” James posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Looks real ‘quarterbacky’ to me,” Lewis wrote.

None of them need to worry, because anyone who watched Sunday, and this season, gets it now.