Well, at least Lamar Jackson was able to help the Ravens win a playoff game this time around. Sort of. Jackson has made the postseason in each of his three NFL seasons, and Baltimore’s 20-13 win over the Titans in the wild-card round was the first time he was able to advance. In that game, Jackson completed 17 of 24 passes for 179 yards, no touchdowns, and one interception.
Thus, coming into the Ravens’ divisional round game against the Bills, the 2019 NFL MVP was trucking along with these postseason numbers: 62 completions in 112 attempts for a 55.4% completion rate, 738 yards, three touchdowns, and four interceptions. The Chargers flustered Jackson in the 2018 wild-card round by doing what they did to him in the regular season of his rookie year — they threw all kinds of coverage concepts at him with a heavy helping of seven defensive backs on the field. Jackson completed 14 of 27 passes for 194 yards, two touchdowns, one interception, and seven sacks. Jackson rallied late after a first half that was so bad, he was almost benched in favor of Joe Flacco.
Postseason nightmare No. 2 came in the divisional round of the 2019 playoffs, when the 14-2 Ravens and their unanimous NFL MVP were expected to cruise by the 9-7 Titans with very little trouble. But Tennessee defensive coordinator Dean Pees bewitched Jackson with late coverage switched, Jackson completed 31 of 59 passes for 365 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions, four sacks, and another early postseason exit.
After a revenge wild-card win over the Titans this season that was more about Baltimore’s defense than anything else, it was on to Buffalo. The Bills looked like a decent matchup for Jackson, as they play a ton of zone defense and Jackson had played exceedingly well against certain kinds of zone in the regular season.
Per Sports Info Solutions, Jackson led the league with nine touchdown passes against Cover-4 (“Quarters”) coverage, and overall, against Cover-2, Cover-3, Cover-4, Cover-6, Tampa-2, and combo coverages, Jackson completed 167 of 254 passes in 309 dropbacks for 2,582 yards, 1,287 air yards, 18 touchdowns, and seven interceptions. Only Tom Brady and Russell Wilson threw more touchdown passes against zone coverage in the 2020 regular season, and this seemed to be the ideal counter to opposing defenses realizing that they couldn’t play man against Jackson because he’d kill them in the run game.
The Bills came into this game thinking that if zone coverage was now like ice cream for Jackson, they were going to give him a tour of the ice cream factory. Per ESPN’s Seth Walder:
Bills ran zone coverage on 87% of Lamar Jackson's pass attempts in the first half.
Bills ran 56% zone in the regular season.
(ESPN/NGS)
— Seth Walder (@SethWalder) January 17, 2021
As has been the case throughout his career, Jackson missed a lot of meat on the bone — he had open shots to his receivers and either threw the ball in ways that reduced the potential efficiency of the catch, or missed the open shots outright. We can blame offensive coordinator Greg Roman all we want (and blaming Greg Roman has become its own sport these days), but when we look ahead to what Jackson can learn from these negative experiences, it’s clear that as dynamic as he is, he’s got a lot of work to do as a pure passer.
If we’re creating an offseason shopping list for A Better Lamar Jackson (and it appears that we are), here it is.