While he didn’t break the NFL single-season passer rating record, Lamar Jackson came extremely close. He entered the regular season finale with history’s second-highest single-season passer rating.
Jackson had a great, but far from his best, game yesterday as he completed 16-32 passes for 217 yards, two touchdown passes, and no interceptions.
While he missed on a couple of throws here and there and had to deal with a drop or two, his day was still good enough to earn a stellar 92.8 passer rating.
However, it was not good enough to raise his season passer rating above the 122.5 that Aaron Rodgers achieved in 2011. That remains the record, with Rodgers also holding the second-best mark, 121.5, in 2020.
Peyton Manning’s 2004 performance is third, in which he posted a 121.1 passer rating. Jackson is next, finishing 2024 with a 119.6 passer rating.
In addition to achieving the fourth-best passing season ever, by statistical measure, he became the first player in NFL history to accrue 4,000 passing yards and 900 rushing yards in the same season.
The reigning league MVP also accomplished something no one else has ever done- throwing for over 40 touchdown passes and fewer than five interceptions.
Lamar posted an other-worldly 41-4 TD pass-to-interception ratio this season.
“He’s just one of a kind. There’s nobody like Lamar Jackson,” Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh told the media in postgame.
“He’s in the locker room, and he’s not happy about the last drive. … He wants everything to be perfect. That’s why these numbers are the way they are, because of who he is.”
In the postgame sideline interview for the television broadcast, Jackson was asked about breaking records that would make him one of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game.
“It means a lot to me, those guys before me paved the way,” he responded.