Lamar Jackson makes more history as his doubters look even more ridiculous

With every step in his remarkable career, Lamar Jackson has trounced his doubters. You’d think they’d run out of things to doubt…

It would likely be a profitable exercise after the 2019 NFL season to compile a book containing all the analysts who have doubted Lamar Jackson, and all the ways in which Lamar Jackson has made those analysts look downright ridiculous. Baltimore’s quarterback has been maligned at every turn on his NFL career path, and whatever the motives, it’s not working.

Thursday night in a 42-21 win over the Jets that moved Baltimore to 12-2, won them the AFC North, and kept them in position for the one-seed in the AFC, Jackson did a few more things to add to his MVP candidacy:

  • He broke Michael Vick’s single-season record for rushing yards by a quarterback, and now has 1,103 rushing yards on the season, with two games left to go. Vick’s record was 1,039 in 2006, over 16 games.
  • He completed 15 of 23 passes for 213 yards, five touchdowns, and no interceptions, breaking the record for touchdown passes in a single season by a player 22 years old or younger. Jackson stands at 33 touchdown passes on the season, Peyton Manning and Jameis Winston held the record before with 28.
  • He became the first player in NFL History with more than 4,000 passing yards and more than 1,500 rushing yards over his first two seasons. Again, with two games left to go in the 2019 regular season.
  • He recorded his third game of the season with more than four touchdown passes and more than 50 rushing yards. Cam Newton is the only other player in the Super Bowl with three such games in his career. 
  • He became the first quarterback in NFL history with three games of five touchdown passes with fewer than 25 passing attempts in each instance. Jackson had all of those games this season. Eddie LeBaron, Don Meredith, Craig Morton, Ben Roethlisberger, and Drew Brees have each matched that feat in two different games — in their entire careers.

“Everybody was a fan of his — still is,” Jackson told Colleen Wolfe of the NFL Network after the game, when Wolfe asked Jackson if he had been a Vick fan. “I still watch his highlights. I go on YouTube and watch all the greats. Especially him. He was the guy who would spin defenders and stuff like that — he was amazing. It’s an honor to break his record.”

Of course, Vick isn’t one of the guys who have doubted Jackson — he sees too much of an evolutionary version of his own game to do that. But there is an entire cottage industry of people who get paid to opinionate about football who have insisted that Jackson isn’t legit for one reason or another. The all-timer, of course, was Hall of Fame general manager Bill Polian insisting as Jackson came out of Louisville for the 2018 draft that Jackson should switch to receiver — a take so weird, Polian eventually had to recant it.

Even when Jackson started lighting up the league in his second NFL season both as a thrower and as a runner, the guys broadcasting his own games, and supposedly doing their homework beforehand, were getting it wrong. After Jackson threw the first of three touchdown passes against the Bengals in a 49-13 Week 10 win, former NFL quarterback Rich Gannon had this to say from the booth:

“The Ravens do such a good job changing the launch point for Lamar Jackson. He rarely throws the ball from the pocket. They get him out on the edges, they cut the field in half, and he throws the ball so well and so accurately on the move.”

Stats and tape proved (and prove) a different story. Going into that game, Jackson had attempted 240 passes from the pocket, completing 134 for 1,611 yards, 10 touchdowns and five interceptions, and a passer rating of 95.9. At the time, Jackson had more attempts from the pocket than Kirk Cousins, Mitchell Trubisky or Josh Allen. Going into Week 15, Jackson had completed 192 of 286 pocket throws for 2,348 yards, 22 touchdowns, six interceptions, and a passer rating of 109.1. So, he’s actually improved as a pocket passer since Gannon’s erroneous evaluation. Perhaps he was inspired by it!

The analysts weren’t done, of course. After the Ravens beat the 49ers in a 20-17 Week 13 thriller in which Jackson rushed 16 times for 101 yards and a touchdown against San Francisco’s top-flight defense, 49ers color analyst and ex-NFL defensive lineman Tim Ryan made comments on a Bay Area sports radio station that got Ryan suspended from his job for a week.

“He’s really good at that fake, Lamar Jackson, but when you consider his dark skin with a dark football with a dark uniform, you could not see that thing,” Ryan said. “I mean you literally could not see when he was in and out of the mesh point and if you’re a half step slow on him in terms of your vision forget about it, he’s out of the gate.”

Ah. So it’s the skin color and the color of the football. Riiiiiight. Unperturbed, Jackson came out the next week against the Bills’ excellent defense wearing white sleeves in a game where he rushed 11 times for 40 yards and threw three touchdown passes.

Whoops, again.

Dec 8, 2019; Orchard Park, NY, USA; Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson (8) runs with the ball against the Buffalo Bills during the first quarter at New Era Field. (Rich Barnes-USA TODAY Sports).

At this point, Jackson’s skeptics are in the uncomfortable position of having to really drill down to find things that bother them. On the morning of the Ravens-Jets matchup, FOX Sports analyst Doug Gottlieb said on the Colin Cowherd show that he’d rather have Jets quarterback Sam Darnold than Jackson over the long term. Now, while Darnold has shown development as a quarterback since the Jets selected him third overall in the 2018 draft (29 spots before Jackson, who the Ravens took with the 32nd overall pick), Jackson has outpaced Jackson in every possible fashion in 2019.

No matter; Gottlieb had come up with his own picayune pickings — now, Lamar Jackson can’t throw outside the numbers! How original.

“I would still to this day take Sam Darnold over Lamar Jackson – it’s the long-term play,” Gottlieb said  “If you want to tell me that Lamar Jackson is a good long-term play, then you’re going to tell me that Cam Newton was a good long-term play, too. Lamar is Cam without the attitude and arrogance. You have to be mobile, but you also have to be able to throw and complete passes. He can do it on multiple platforms but he never throws outside the numbers… Unless they change the rules to where they can’t hit you outside of the pocket, they’re going to catch you and hit you. Cam was the biggest, strongest, and most athletic quarterback we’ve ever seen, and his body broke down at 30. We’re supposed to expect Lamar’s to be different?”

Yes, we know that Newton and Jackson are both mobile quarterbacks. And yes, we know that they’re both black. But to compare the two in a stylistic fashion is like comparing Kurt Cobain and Edward Van Halen — two individuals with highly effective, but massively different, styles. Newton’s body broke down primarily because he was getting bashed from the pocket, though that doesn’t fit the comfortable narrative. As far as Jackson’s durability, he’s far closer in style to Vick, and Vick played 143 NFL games from 2001 through 2015, starting 115. The only thing that could stop Vick’s career curve in the middle was a federal dog-fighting conviction, and 548 days behind bars.

As Warren Sharp points out, Ravens offensive coordinator Greg Roman has had running quarterbacks in each of his three stops as an NFL offensive coordinator — with the 49ers from 2011-2014, with the Bills in 2015 and 2016, and with Baltimore this season. in 91 starts, Roman’s quarterbacks have missed a total of three games due to injury.

“Mobile quarterbacks are so much safer when they’re out in space ‘driving the car’ as opposed to standing in the pocket, hoping that nothing surprises them,” Roman recently said of Jackson, per NFL reporter Andrea Kremer. “Lamar does a really good job being safe.”

As to Jackson allegedly never throwing outside the numbers… well, again, the stats tell a completely different story. Per the Sports Info Solutions database — a database well within the financial constraints of any major network — Jackson came into Week 15 completing 42 of 67 passes for 607 yards, 490 air yards, seven touchdowns, three interceptions, and a 108.2 passer rating (the same as Aaron Rodgers) on out, fade, corner, post-corner and seam routes — the routes most commonly thrown outside the numbers. Only Tom Brady (perhaps the greatest fade thrower in NFL history) and Deshaun Watson have more touchdown passes than Jackson on those routes.

But hey, don’t believe the numbers! Just take a look at this sick sidearm release on this five-yard touchdown pass to receiver Miles Boykin.

Or, how about this 10-yard touchdown pass to running back Mark Ingram?

Still skeptical? Well, if you’d prefer a deep touchdown pass outside the numbers, there’s this 33-yard pass to receiver Seth Roberts.

Any questions?

Undoubtedly, there will be more people doubting Lamar Jackson for their own reasons. We have a fairly good idea what the subliminal reasons tend to be. When you refuse to believe the tape, and refuse to believe the stats, and are bound and determined to go against the truth of one of the most remarkable quarterback seasons in NFL history, you are not only falling down on the job and obfuscating the truth; you are also denying yourself the pleasure of watching the quarterback position evolve to levels we’ve never seen before.

Sounds like a pretty rotten gig to me.

So. what’s next? Lamar Jackson doesn’t separate his whites and darks when he does his laundry? He can’t hit a curveball? Can’t sink threes like Steph Curry? He’s a Coldplay fan? He can’t throw ambidextrously?

Well, best not to bring that last one up, because who’s to say he can’t? At this point, wondering what Lamar Jackson can’t do seems an exercise in futility.