On Tuesday, Ravens QB Lamar Jackson took credit for the team removing games from the locker room earlier this year. Initially, reports indicated the coaching staff ordered them removed, but later reports insisted players led that charge. With no ping pong to play, surely everybody would buckle down and they would start winning.
Well, it took a few weeks but the Ravens finally won on Sunday—and without Jackson. Needless to say, they should be in far better position to win with him returning this week. So of course reporters used his first media session in a month to ask about the ping pong tables.
“Oh, yes. I told [equipment manager] Kenico [Hines], our head equipment guy, I told him to take all the games out – like the ping pong table – and turn off the TVs”, Jackson said, via transcript from the Ravens’ website. “If we could have taken the TVs out, they would have been out of there too”.
Jackson said that while he appreciated owner Steve Bisciotti allowing those things, he felt the Ravens “had to focus”. He stopped short of taking players weren’t taking their job seriously. But he has high standards for bringing the games out of storage.
“Keep winning. Keep winning. Keep winning. We’re not going to have them for the rest of the year, so, keep winning”, Jackson said when asked how players can get their games back. “We’ll probably have them next year in the summertime, for OTAs or something. But right now, that’s not the focus”.
Sadly, the NFL minimum salary is currently $840,000, making it very difficult for professional athletes to afford their own ping pong tables. This is why they rely so heavily upon the ability to access them at work, so losing that privilege sent a dire message from Lamar Jackson to his teammates.
The Ravens currently have one of the worst records in football, sitting at 2-6. On Sunday, they mustered their second win with Tyler Huntley at quarterback, beating out the Bears. Now Jackson makes his return with a Thursday road game, albeit against the Dolphins.
Baltimore had one of the toughest schedules in the NFL in the earlier portions of the season, but now they have one of the easiest. That should make the task of climbing out of their 2-5 hole more manageable, as will the Steelers’ and Bengals’ troubles. They also still have five divisional games left, including two against the Steelers. Pittsburgh did not have the luxury of facing them without Jackson, as they have so often in the past.
Of course, if Jackson isn’t playing against the Steelers in Week 18, that could be bad news. It could mean the Ravens have already clinched the division and otherwise have nothing to play for. And if that is the case, surely it will have been the clarity of focus provided by a ping-pong-free environment that fueled them to make such a run.
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