Tag: lamar jackson ravens

Lamar Jackson nearing all-time QB rushing record

The Baltimore Ravens signal caller is only 108 yards behind Michael Vick, and his career rushing yards by a quarterback record of 6,109.

It has been a statistically superlative season for Lamar Jackson, who seems to reach new milestones weekly.

The next significant record to fall will likely be a quarterback’s career rushing yards, as the Baltimore Ravens signal-caller is only 108 yards behind Michael Vick and his benchmark of 6,109.

Jackson is currently second on the list, with 6,001 career rushing yards, so he is just one excellent game away from being crowned the new king of this statistic.

Getting it done against the arch-rival and division-leading Pittsburgh Steelers in a game of this magnitude would make it even sweeter. If not, it should come on Christmas Day at the Houston Texans. According to StatMuse, Jackson dominates the rushing yards per game statistic among quarterbacks.

He has averaged 60 yards per game rushing for his career, well ahead of Vick’s 42.7 ypg. Among the top 25, there is only one other quarterback in the top 50 ypg, and he’ll be on the opposite sideline this weekend.

Justin Fields, 23rd all-time in QB career rushing yards, averages 50.2. Of course, Fields is not even remotely in the same universe as Jackson as a passer, who enters this game with a 34-3 TD-INT ratio.

One of the significant keys to Jackson’s success has been his ability to manage the football and be a more “cautious” passer. RG conducted a study of “Quarterback Caution,” which included data from January 2018 to November of this year. The methodology was intense, including over a dozen statistical categories encompassing individual and team metrics.

The study covered all quarterbacks who played 90 games over those seven years. Jackson had a 13.21% “aggressiveness” percentage, making him the third most cautious quarterback behind only Patrick Mahomes (10.17% aggressive), who is the face of the NFL, and Jared Goff (12.31%), who has led the total turnaround of what has traditionally been one of the league’s worst franchises.

As expected, Lamar is in an elite company regarding quarterback caution. The study showed that cautious quarterbacks win games and put up big numbers. According to the RG study, Jackson has the fourth-best red zone career scoring rate, at 58.8%.

Much of that is due to the reigning NFL MVP perfectly embodying the definition of “dual threat.” He is every bit an elite passer as he is an elite runner. Being equally able to make plays with his arms and legs makes it impossible for him to game plan against them.

8 takeaways from Ravens coach John Harbaugh’s comments on Lamar Jackson

Baltimore Ravens coach Jim Harbaugh had some remarks on QB Lamar Jackson and the franchise tag quagmire.

The Baltimore Ravens chose the hard way to start the 2023 offseason when they designated quarterback Lamar Jackson with the franchise tag.

The former 2019 NFL MVP also added sizzle to the predicament on Monday when he revealed on Twitter details about a possible trade earlier in March. Jackson’s Twitter thread seemed to end with his sights set on another NFL city as he indicated Baltimore fans would always have a special place in his heart.

Coach John Harbaugh met with reporters at the NFL owners meetings in Phoenix to talk about the state of the team, and Jackson was a big ticket item on the agenda. Here are eight takeaways.

Once again, we are criticizing Lamar Jackson for the wrong things

Apparently, it’s a Very Bad Thing that Lamar Jackson can’t win while throwing 50 passes per game. Unless your name is Tom Brady, nobody else does, either.

Before we get rolling on this, let’s just get it out in the open: Lamar Jackson is not a perfect quarterback. There are things he needs to work on as a pure passer before he can be seen as a top-five player in that department, as opposed to an overall offensive weapon, and the only quarterback in NFL history with two 1,000-yard rushing seasons. Jackson isn’t great when throwing to middle of the field closed (MOFC) coverage, he can be erratic to either side of the field at times, he regressed as a pocket passer in 2020 (in part because the pockets were not as well-defined), and there are obvious instances in which he’s left schematic meat on the bone while insinuating that his passing game is too predictable.

The Lamar Jackson Reading Room, and missed opportunities in the Ravens’ passing game

That said, there’s something about Jackson that brings out the stupid in some people. There was the famous case of former Panthers and Colts general manager Bill Polian saying before Jackson was selected by the Ravens in the first round of the 2018 draft that Jackson should switch to receiver. There was all kinds of garbage about Jackson’s inability to win from the pocket when he was doing just that. There’s been an ongoing Greatest Hits of What Lamar Jackson Can’t Do, even and especially when he Does It.

A few years later… well, we have not gotten any smarter. Now, the thing appears to be that Lamar can’t throw eleventy bazillion passes per game, and save his team from the mulch.

We’re not picking on ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler here — he’s simply repeating what he’s hearing from other NFL teams when they’re looking to poke holes in Lamar’s game. But the very idea that it’s a debit for a quarterback to “fail” when he’s asked to throw more than 50 passes per game is absolutely ridiculous.

With Pro Football Reference’s Stathead tool, we are able to go through NFL history and tell you just exactly how many times a quarterback has thrown 50 or more passes in a game, and what the results were. From 1950 through 2021, there have been 661 instances in which a quarterback has attempted at least 50 passes in a professional football game. Of those 661 games, 142 ended in wins for the quarterback throwing at least 50 passes, 511 ended in losses, and eight ended in ties. That amounts to a winning percentage of .215, which is not exactly awesome.

So maybe let’s get a bit smarter about this. In his career, also per Pro Football Reference, Jackson has never thrown an interception when trailing with four minutes or fewer in a game. In those instances, he’s completed 24 of 34 passes for 344 yards and a passer rating of 132.5. In instances in which the Ravens have trailed with two minutes or less left in a game, Jackson has a passer rating of 142.9. And last season, per Sports Info Solutions, Jackson completed 18 of 31 passes for 219 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 101.4 when the Ravens were trailing by three points or more in the fourth quarter.

So, what is it that we’re trying to accomplish with this cherry-picked concept? Are we doing more than simply trying to find another reason to criticize Lamar Jackson for something else we wouldn’t expect other quarterbacks to do? Because unless you’re Tom Brady, who’s managed to come out on the winning side of 19 different games in which he attempted 50 or more passes (an amazing 13.3% of all “quarterback wins” in such circumstances), this particular ding is very much out of left field. Jackson has thrown more than 50 passes just once in his NFL career — Baltimore’s playoff loss to the Titans at the end of their 2019 season. That’s the only chance he’s been given in the league’s most run-dominant offense.

So, Lamar Jackson isn’t Tom Brady. Is that what we’re bagging on him for at this point?