Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens have vengeance on their minds after another season falling short of Super Bowl expectations. To date, the team has never won more than one playoff game in a single season with their two-time MVP. In his last three losses, however, he has fallen to Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills or Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.
The Ravens, though, believe they can beat any team with Lamar Jackson at quarterback—and to be fair, they usually do. He has a pretty good track record, and they certainly put up points. Even in the playoffs this year, Jackson led the Ravens to two games of 25-plus points. In five of his first six playoff games, they scored 20 or fewer—usually 13 or fewer.
Last year, the Bills narrowly defeated the Ravens largely thanks to a drop by TE Mark Andrews from Lamar Jackson. Jackson led Baltimore to a potential game-tying touchdown drive with under two minutes to play, but Andrews put the two-point conversion pass on the ground. They lost by two points, failing to recover an onside kick with no ability to prevent Buffalo draining the clock.
“We’re going to bounce back, and when we come back, I feel like we are going to have vengeance on our minds”, Jackson told reporters yesterday about the loss to the Bills, via the Ravens’ website.
Lamar Jackson did contribute to the Ravens’ problems in that game, but he was far from the only one. He had two bad turnovers, one a fumble and one an interception, but he otherwise played well. The Bills limited his running ability, but he went 18-for-25 for 254 yards and two touchdowns. The defense, meanwhile, couldn’t get the ball back, so the minus-three turnover margin was brutal.
Jackson is a four-time Pro Bowler, three-time All-Pro, and two-time NFL MVP. I personally think he deserved the MVP Award again in 2024, but the league gave it to Josh Allen instead. Last season was his best, throwing for 4,172 yards while completing two-thirds of his passes with 41 touchdowns to 4 interceptions. He led the NFL with 8.8 yards per attempt with a quarterback rating of 119.6. As a runner, he added another 915 yards and four touchdowns, averaging 6.6 yards per attempt. But he is also relying on his legs less and less, posting a career-low rush attempts per game.
The only thing Lamar Jackson has yet to achieve is the ultimate team success with the Ravens. That’s what he has talked about for years already, and rightly so. But to date, he and the team cannot get past the big dogs of the AFC. The Steelers had the Patriots, and now the Ravens have the Chiefs. To a lesser extent, they also have the Bills, who have beaten them twice but can’t beat Kansas City.
That’s the pecking order right now, and Jackson and the Ravens can’t be happy about it. They have only reached the conference finals once, which does not make for much of a legacy. And chances are they won’t get any further without beating the Bills or Chiefs. So they better be screaming for vengeance, or they’ve got another thing coming.
And yes, that was a fully gratuitous Judas Priest insert.
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