The NFL season is now under a month from kicking off, and we here at LothropSports can’t wait. Every week, we will be addressing a different football storyline until the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers kick off at 8:20 PM on September 5 at Soldier Field.
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There are few divisions in the NFL more wide open than the AFC North. Any of the 4 teams are capable of making the playoffs come January or crashing and burning on their way to a top-8 draft pick come April. However, none of these teams have a wider range of outcomes than the Baltimore Ravens. After veteran quarterback Joe Flacco led the sputtering team into their bye week at 4-5, head coach John Harbaugh handed the reigns to Heisman Trophy-winner Lamar Jackson. The dynamic Jackson led Baltimore to a 6-1 record the rest of the season, which ended with a division title and a first round playoff loss to the LA Chargers. Once the offseason rolled around, Harbaugh and the front office fully committed to building around Jackson, sending Flacco to Denver and signing free agent back Mark Ingram in addition to picking up O-Line help in the draft. However, the decision to build long term around a QB like Jackson is questionable at best.
Remember the last time a team went all-in on building a run-first scheme around a Heisman winning QB? That would be your 2017 Tennessee Titans, who rode Marcus Mariota and their “exotic smashmouth’ offense to a Divisional Round loss to Tom Brady. However, this team overperformed its peripherals dramatically. They went 9-7 in the weakest division in football, and were actually outscored by 22 points and outgained by 124 yards over the course of the season. Additionally, they had outrageous luck, going 8-4 in games decided by 7 points or fewer. Their luck culminated when they beat Kansas City in the wild card game when Mariota threw a touchdown pass...to himself. The team still fired head coach Mike Mularkey after the season, and failed to make the playoffs last year in Mike Vrabel’s first year in charge. This all happened in spite of the fact that Mariota was a league average QB when it came to throwing the ball, much better than Jackson.
The next best QBs to compare Lamar Jacksn to are Robert Griffin III and Colin Kaepernick, who were electric early in their careers before injuries and wear and tear slowed them down and forced them to become more reliant on their subpar passing. This eventually drove both players into relative obscurity, although Kaepernick could be a viable backup on a quality team in a political vacuum. In short, most rushing QBs see early success, but slow down as time wears on their legs. Jackson has already started half a season of football, and his slowdown might start as early as this season.
In Jackson’s 7 regular season starts, teams struggled to stop his prolific rushing. The dominant strategy was for teams to put 8 men in the box and crowd traditional running lanes. However, Jackson was elusive enough to consistently bounce outside and outrun the big men chasing him. However, in his 8th game as a starter, the LA Chargers finally found a way to counter Jackson. The Chargers took advantage of the depth in their secondary to play almost every down with 7 defensive back on the field, creating a “quarters” defensive formation. Having smaller, quicker players on the field enabled LA to shut down any routes receivers could run while also snuffing out any of Jackson’s scrambles and designed runs. Jackson produced one of his worst games, running 9 times for 54 yards and going 14-29 with 194 yards, 2 TDs, and a pick against San Diego’s quarters scheme. The rest of the team managed just 36 yards on the ground in 14 tries. Teams have now had a full offseason to prepare for stopping the former first-rounder, and smart defenses will almost certainly implement some version of a quarters scheme to stop Jackson.
Even if defenses figure out more ways to stop Jackson, the fact remains that he is an inefficient runner. Over 16 games and 7 starts, Jackson toted the rock 147 times for 695 yards, both of which are the most a QB has ever recorded in a season. But while his raw stats were astounding, Jackson’s run value was quite poor. He ranked 40th out of 42 in Football Outsiders’ DVOA (how much defense adjusted value a player adds per play) on QB runs at 27.2% worse than average. That was enough to beat only Baker Mayfield, an improviser who played behind a subpar O-line, and Philip Rivers, an old man who has 9 children. Players who rated in front of him include Eli Manning (!!!???) and Tom Brady, who is, I remind you, roughly 20 years older than Jackson. Even Joe Flacco, the man Jackson usurped, was a more valuable runner, with his plays clocking in at average value. The Ravens QB also tied for the league lead in fumbles with 12, and lost the ball once every 21 times he was involved in a play ([pass attempts + touches]/[interceptions/fumbles]), a higher rate than any other passer. Over 16 games, that translates to 7 picks and 24 fumbles, unsustainable numbers for any offense. Lamar Jackson certainly can fill up the scoresheet, but the value it brings to his offense is questionable at best.
Of course, Lamar Jackson could be forgiven for his ineffective running if he could throw the ball well. Well...that’s where the bad news comes in. Jackson threw for 1,201 yards on 170 attempts, completing under 60% of his passes to go with 6 scores and 3 picks. These numbers aren’t stellar to begin with, but the advanced stats paint an even bleaker picture. NFL’s Next Gen Stats show that Jackson completed 4.5% fewer passes than expected, only ahead of well regarded names such as (brace yourself) 49ers backup CJ Beathard, Josh Allen, and Blake Bortles. That’s right: Blake Bortles, the man who’s name is so synonymous with inaccuracy that it became a running gag on NBC’s “The Good Place” (Whenever the comic relief character, Jacksonville native Jason Mendoza, throws something, like a molotov cocktail, he yells, “Bortles!” You generally don’t want to entrust your offense to someone who keeps Blake Bortles company on the stat sheets. Additionally, if Jackson had seen a full season under center in Baltimore, his QBR (via ESPN) would have been the 3rd worst in the league. Add that too the Ravens’ run heavy offense, having a QB who could catch the defense off guard with a play-action deep ball would guarantee a handful of big plays throughout the season. However, Jackson flashed subpar arm strength in his rookie season, posting the lowest LCAD (Longest Completed Air Distance) of any signal caller in the NFL, with 35.8 yards, nearly half of a Patrick Mahomes 65-plus yard nuke. Jackson’s inaccuracy on short throws and inability to put the ball over the top fail to inspire confidence in his long term prospects. If he continues to carry the ball this frequently, his legs will see an incredible amount of wear and tear within a few seasons, and his arm is not quite polished enough to carry him when the legs eventually give out.
Yet there are two main benefits to building a team around Lamar Jackson. The first is that he will only be 22 on opening day. He has a lot of room left to grow as a passer and a runner, and Ravens’ staffers are raving about his offseason improvements. He’s throwing downfield darts in camp and making ridiculous open field moves in preseason games. He has a ton of room to develop, especially in an offense that new GM Eric DeCosta spent tailoring to the strengths of Jackson. DeCosta solidified the offensive line in the draft and also added rookie and deep threat Hollwood Brown to a receiving corps that already includes Seth Roberts and Willie Snead. Mark Ingram was lured into town too, to take over the job of lead tailback. He promises to be a massive improvement over plodders Alex Collins and Gus Edwards. If all goes well, the Ravens will be able to bully teams on the ground, and Jackson can run an effective play-action passing game with pinpoint passes between the numbers and the occasional deep ball over the top.
The other benefit to building around Jackson: he’s not Joe Flacco. Flacco helmed the Ravens for the last 10 and a half seasons, leading them to a 96-67 record and a Super Bowl victory during that time. But by the end, he had become a stale taste in the mouths of the fans. In the 5 full seasons he has played since the Super Bowl XLVII, Flacco and co. won 10 games just once, and needed Jackson’s superb 6-1 finish to achieve that mark last year. Flacco was consistently a below-average Joe, only once posting an above par season by ANY/A (adjusted net yards per attempt) in that same span. The organization stagnated as a constant Wild Card Weekend fixture, and often loser, who relied on a bland ground game and rock solid defense to keep them competitive. With the defense starting to falter, a change was needed, and Lamar Jackson certainly brings change, but a season into his reign the pressure is on. Can he lead Baltimore back to the playoffs, or did they make the mistake of building around a gimmicky quarterback?
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