Lamar Jackson Chasing Another Level to His Game

In looking for a different final result, the Ravens quarterback is making his way down a new path, one he hopes will take him where two MVP seasons didn’t.

Jackson has two league MVPs to his credit. But he has yet to take the Ravens to a Super Bowl. / Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

Since Lamar Jackson’s whereabouts are a popular topic of conversation every offseason, we can start by shedding some light on where the Baltimore Ravens quarterback, and reigning NFL MVP, spent much of the spring: in meetings with his offensive coaches.

The idea for Jackson, from those coaches, was to increase his ownership of the offense going into Year 2 in offensive coordinator Todd Monken’s scheme. And the implication of the work was unmistakable.

Is there another level to Jackson’s game, something new for him to tap into?

Posed with that question, the 27-year-old smiled broadly.

“Time will tell,” Jackson said.

We already know a lot about the seventh-year pro, who won his second NFL MVP award last year. He is, without question, one of the greatest dual-threat quarterbacks to step on a football field—fourth all-time in rushing yards at the position, less than 1,000 yards from Michael Vick’s career record, and ninth in career passer rating (98.0). All of that’s come with incremental improvement over the years, as he’s rounded out his game.

So it might be tough for some to believe there’s another leap for his career to take. But if you listen to enough people around Baltimore, Jackson included—while the rest of us wait to get our first look at the 2024 version of Jackson at Arrowhead Stadium on Thursday night—you’ll hear that it’s coming.

“It’s just in the mental [part of the game]. Just being more of a student of the game, and not to model my game after Tom Brady, but Tom Brady’s a guy I feel like we should all try to look at—What had him so successful? Seven Super Bowls. He won with another team.”

- Lamar Jackson

“It’s just in the mental [part of the game],” Jackson says, leaning against a wall in a hallway next to the Ravens’ locker room. “Just being more of a student of the game, and not to model my game after Tom Brady, but Tom Brady’s a guy I feel like we should all try to look at—What had him so successful? Seven Super Bowls. He won with another team. His mindset, his approach to the game, him just knowing where all the guys are, knowing to get a protection.

“He’s not a guy who was a dual threat. He’s going to throw the ball. He’s going to protect it. I know I can get away from these guys, I know where the free rusher is, but let me protect it, let my guys work instead of going to run all the time. Small things. That’s the 1%.”

This summer, Jackson’s been chasing that 1% with all that he’s got, and setting the bar as high as he ever has. Which is where all the work with Monken, and everyone else, came into that bigger equation.

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Jackson had to invest time with Monken to deeper understand the coach’s offensive philosophy and make it his own. / Brent Skeen-Imagn Images

The way the Ravens have worked their coaching staff to evolve their schemes has been present since John Harbaugh first arrived in 2008. Harbaugh will move guys around, move guys out and promote guys, looking for the cutting edge he wants his program to live on.

Whereas some folks constantly seek continuity, Harbaugh knows when change is needed.

The Ravens have hit those points twice on offense over Jackson’s time. The first occasion came after his rookie year, when Harbaugh promoted Greg Roman to take Marty Mornhinweg’s place as OC. Where Mornhinweg was good with young quarterbacks, Roman would give them the best shot to lean into Jackson’s strengths and build a quarterback-driven run game. Four years later, it was time to evolve the pass game and build it off that run game, which is why Harbaugh moved Roman out in favor of Monken, the former Georgia OC.

Jackson reaped the benefits. In doing my annual preseason quarterback poll (which will be published Thursday; here’s the 2023 version), I heard resounding confirmation of it in how opponents saw the Ravens’ star, saying that he was more consistent, more refined and more accurate as a passer last season than ever before.

The hope in Baltimore is that all of that was just the beginning.

Jackson, for his part, got the offseason going with that in mind.

“Last year, totally different system, different coaches, different mindset with the coaching, I just had to be around them a lot more,” Jackson says. “Coming off that AFC championship game and watching film on that, I believe, going into my seventh year, I need to be a more vocal leader to the guys. I’m getting older. I’m not the young guy anymore. There are more guys younger than me on the offensive side of the ball. I got to step it up. It’s my time to speak, it's me and Mark Andrews [as the veterans].

“My mindset, this season, I’m seeing the new guys, I’m seeing them run their routes and do different things, and I’m gonna say, That right there probably worked in college, but in the league, it’s totally different now. I approach those guys differently.”

But before he could, he had to invest time with Monken to deeper understand the coach’s offensive philosophy and make it his own.

So the two sat and looked back on the 2023 season, all that went right and also what went wrong. They worked through how Jackson saw the game. It might’ve been adjusting a route in a concept or adding an element to a play. Whatever the change was, it was always done with how Jackson sees and plays situations in mind.

“I’m going to let the coaches coach—that’s their job,” Jackson continues. “They’re the teachers. We’re the students. But sometimes we’re on the field, and we see some things different. Sometimes what we see on film didn’t happen on the field [the way it appeared to]. I just let coach know, Last time we did this and last time we played this team, this is what they gave me. I feel like if we do this, this will work. We pitch ideas off each other, and that’s how we move forward.”

And as Monken and Jackson moved forward in tailoring the offense more and more to Jackson, the two-time MVP became more comfortable as its conductor, not just with his arms and legs, but also with his mouth.

“It’s just me being more vocal,” Jackson says. “It was a new system. I wasn’t making checks. Now it’s, Let me flip this. It’s knowing where everything is.”

As a result, Jackson isn’t the only one who’s taken a big step this offseason. Third-year tight end Isaiah Likely and second-year receiver Zay Flowers have, too, and a big reason why is the chemistry they have with Jackson and how they’re collectively putting the offense to work, the same way Monken and Jackson have together.

Jackson’s leadership style helps, too, in how natural it comes across. According to those around him, he’s always most comfortable as another one of the guys, seeing, in other words, his teammates as big brothers and little brothers from the start. When he won his first MVP, he had a lot more big brothers, guys that had more NFL experience than him, than little brothers. Four years later, through his second MVP season, that has flipped. But his approach hasn’t.

Which has allowed him to do what he’s intended—help everyone.

“I’m just talking to one of my big bros, or I’m talking to one of my little bros, that’s how it’s going,” he says. “Nobody’s trying to doubt anybody. We’re trying to lift each other up because we’re trying to win. We’re all working together as a team. That’s how we’re approaching it.”

And with Jackson at least becoming more of a teacher than he has been, even if he still sees himself as a student, the Ravens have gotten more efficient.

“We’re speaking more ball out there,” he continues. “When we see it on the field, we’re talking about it, instead of waiting until we’re inside the building. We talk about it right there. We go get extra throws then—I’m thinking this way. I’m thinking this way. Then I’m going to throw the ball this way.”

Which is to say now, even if it is still Monken’s offense, now it’s Jackson’s, too.

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Jackson is 58–19 in the regular season, and 2–4 in the playoffs, including last season's AFC championship game loss to the Chiefs at home. / Geoff Burke-Imagn Images

Jackson isn’t dodging the elephant in the room.

He’s 58–19 in the regular season, and 2–4 in the playoffs. When he’s healthy, the Ravens invariably make it to the postseason. The results simply haven’t carried over when they get there and, no, making it to the AFC title game last year for the first time wasn’t any consolation, or even much of a step in his mind.

It wasn’t good enough.

“We lost,” he says, simply, when asked what he took from the experience. “That’s what bothers me. There’s a lot of things that you can nitpick in the game and say, We had a chance to win here. At the end of the day, it’s a team game. All of us played a part in that.”

As for what bothers him most?

“Everything,” he answers. “The mistakes we made throughout the game that put us in a situation to lose the game.”

The result was another example, for Jackson, of how each individual team has only one shot.

Three of the five linemen who started in front of him in that game are gone. The backfield has been revamped, with Derrick Henry in, and J.K. Dobbins and Gus Edwards out. The defense has seen changes, too, with Patrick Queen and Jadeveon Clowney now elsewhere.

What won’t change, even as the scheme evolves and the roster churns, is the foundation of how the Ravens maintain their standard.

That’s the part of 2023 that Jackson isn’t trying to erase. The Ravens finished the regular season 13–4. Their blowouts of the Detroit Lions, San Francisco 49ers, Miami Dolphins and Seattle Seahawks might’ve been the four most impressive wins any team posted last season. And whenever things went wrong, they quickly got fixed. The Ravens haven’t lost back-to-back games that Jackson started and finished in the past four years, which underscores what Jackson looks back on fondly from 2023.

“I see a lot of guys that see me being MVP; I don’t talk about the MVP. A lot of guys look up to me. I’m seeing them look up to me, but at the same time, I still feel like a young guy. In this league, the quarterback is always the leader of the team, the leader of the offense, and I’ve just had to take a step forward, and step into doing what I’m supposed to do.”

- Lamar Jackson

“How we battled, just the team overall,” he says. “Things didn’t go our way sometimes throughout the season, but we battled. And we had adversity. Toward the end of the season, people were like, These guys are going to beat them. The Dolphins, 49ers. We went out there and we showed what we were capable of doing, showed them what Raven football is about. That’s what I’m most proud of.”

That’s another reminder that this isn’t a guy, or a team, that needs any sort of overhaul.

But in looking for a different final result, Jackson’s making his way down a new path, one he hopes will take him where the two MVP seasons didn’t. The way there, now more than it’s ever been, is to take his teammates with him—the same way Brady used to in New England and then Tampa.

Some quarterbacks see that as making a team, or an offense, their own, and that’s happening in Baltimore. But more than that, Jackson sees it now as his responsibility.

“I see a lot of guys that see me being MVP; I don’t talk about the MVP. A lot of guys look up to me. I’m seeing them look up to me, but at the same time, I still feel like a young guy,” he says. “In this league, the quarterback is always the leader of the team, the leader of the offense, and I’ve just had to take a step forward, and step into doing what I’m supposed to do.”

And in seeing him do so, the Ravens are pretty confident Jackson will take everyone where they’re trying to go.