ExtremeRavens Posted August 31 Posted August 31 It was late on a Friday night in May and the crowd inside The Horse You Came In On Saloon in trendy Fells Point was starting to stir. Finally, just after 10 p.m., the main attraction, Ravens star Lamar Jackson, made his way through a side entrance of the building that first opened for business in 1775 and settled into a cordoned off section of the bar. The quarterback and two-time NFL Most Valuable Player was there to promote a new horse racing team, the Maryland Colts, that he’d bought an ownership stake in, and he was joined by his small but tight circle of confidants. But there was also a surprise and notable figure among the group: Jackson’s mom, Felicia Jones, who, in a rare appearance at a public event in the city, took up residence on a corner stool and cast a watchful eye from underneath a bucket hat as the wanting audience began to swell around her famous son. Though she often stays at Jackson’s Owings Mills house during the season, Jones rarely attends games. Yet her pull remains significant if not paramount in her eldest son’s life. That was of course true in Jackson’s formative days, when she pushed him through pulverizing backyard football drills in South Florida, and remains so even now. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Baltimore Sun (@baltimoresun) Jackson, 28, is preparing to enter his eighth NFL season. He’s continuing his ascent not only toward the mountaintop of the biggest and most popular sport in the country, but his pursuit of an elusive Super Bowl title that on draft night eight years ago he promised to one day deliver to Charm City. So, when Baltimore suffered another disillusioning, turnover-filled playoff loss, this time in the divisional round to the Buffalo Bills in January, Jones had some motherly words of wisdom. “She’s been a voice to me all my life,” Jackson told The Baltimore Sun, a slight crack in his voice. “Anytime she says something to me, she’s adamant about it, and she was on me about it.” Jones told him, in short, that he needed to go back to how he was during his youth football days. “That’s when I was vocal,” Jackson continued. “When things weren’t happening, I’d tell people get the [expletive] off the field. “Now I’m kinda doing the same, and my guys are looking at me like, ‘He’s talking to me a certain way.’ Like, not no disrespect. We’re competitive out here. When I see you lacking that, get off the field and put somebody else in. They don’t shy away. They like to compete as well. But if I feel like you’re jogging out here and we going full speed, get off the [expletive] field. They come back to me and talk to me and I let them know we’re not having that this year. “We’re trying to get somewhere. I let things like that happen in the past, but I’m not having that no more.” The past is, of course, what haunts Jackson’s present and perhaps future, his postseason performances a giant spaghetti stain on Sunday best attire. Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson hugs running back Justice Hill during training camp. Wide receiver Rashod Bateman said that Jackson is "he's more vocal than he ever has been about what he wants from us." (Karl Merton Ferron/Staff) In the regular season, he has set several NFL records, including last season becoming the first player to throw for at least 4,000 yards and run for at least 900 in the same season and the first to throw at least 40 touchdown passes with fewer than five interceptions. He also holds the career record for most rushing yards by a quarterback and in 2023 became the youngest quarterback to twice be named MVP of the league. In the playoffs, however, Baltimore is just 3-5 with Jackson at the helm, has reached the AFC championship game only once (losing to the eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs in 2024) and has yet to figure out how translate regular-season mastery into postseason majesty. Jackson has often been at the nexus of those woebegone performances, completing 60.6% of his passes while averaging 219 passing yards, 70 rushing yards and throwing 10 touchdown passes with 11 turnovers (seven interceptions, four fumbles) in that span. As a result, he’s the only two-time MVP that has failed to reach a Super Bowl. Two of those turnovers came in that loss to the Bills, with Jackson throwing an interception on a pass intended for Rashod Bateman in the first quarter, then fumbling in the second as he tried to turn nothing into something with defenders closing in and the slippery ball sliding from his grasp like an ice cube on a snowy evening in Orchard Park, New York. “I feel like I did a great job controlling my hype at the end of the season,” Jackson told The Sun. “The costly turnovers, I can’t even tell you how they happened. Seeing the coverage, OK man coverage, me and him wasn’t on the same page. Then the fumble, I’m squeezing the ball to put it in, it fell out. That was some movie-type situation. That’s not supposed to happen.” Indeed. In fairness to Jackson, he hasn’t been the only Ravens player during his tenure with some dubious moments when the stakes were at their highest. In the AFC championship game against the Chiefs, Zay Flowers, then a rookie, had the ball poked away by cornerback L’Jarius Sneed as he dove for the end zone early in the fourth quarter after the receiver had been flagged for taunting following a long catch earlier on the drive. Then there was tight end Mark Andrews’ crushing drop of a would-be game-tying 2-point conversion with 1:33 remaining against the Bills last season. Still, the blame, much like the praise, goes to Jackson, much the way it did so long for Peyton Manning. Like Jackson, he was twice named NFL MVP in his first seven years. Like Jackson, the Indianapolis Colts were just 3-5 in the playoffs with Manning in that span. Like Jackson, he put up similar postseason numbers, completing 60.4% of his passes for 2,172 yards with 14 touchdowns and eight interceptions. Like Jackson, whose path has been blocked in part by three-time Super Bowl champion quarterback and Chiefs star Patrick Mahomes, Manning’s path to the final game of the season was often impeded by the New England Patriots’ Tom Brady. Which is perhaps why, among other reasons, optimism remains. Manning reached, and won, his first Super Bowl in his ninth season, 2006, and appeared in two more with the Denver Broncos, winning his second title in 2015. “Lamar is young,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. “So, his window to improve is pretty big. “First of all, he works really hard. Secondly, he really wants to get better, and he’s already great. He’s not one of these guys that says, ‘I’m there, I’ve arrived.’ He never looks at it that way. He always looks at what [he can] do to get better. If there’s something that happens on the field, even when it’s not ‘his fault,’ it’s his fault in his mind. ‘What can I do to make it right?’ And I know he has done a good job of communicating that with the team as well with that kind of mindset. So, he’s grown in every way.” But Jackson also knows the opportunities can be fleeting. So he said he watched film of Baltimore’s losses from last season. He connected with fellow South Florida native Flowers for a few offseason throwing sessions. And he has the best collection of talent that he’s ever had, with three-time All-Pro receiver DeAndre Hopkins added to an offense that includes running back Derrick Henry for a second straight year along with the burgeoning Flowers and Bateman along with Andrews and the ascending (albeit injured for now) Isaiah Likely. Jackson is also entering his third year in offensive coordinator Todd Monken’s scheme, and with that comes a certain degree of comfort. “It started [to jell] last year after the first year in the offseason with [Harbaugh] saying here’s what we did, here’s what I think is us,” Monken told The Sun. “Where do we take this to 2.0 and where do we take for this Lamar? “The second year was a big part of that. We had some guys mature as players — Flowers, Bateman — and we got Derrick. So this year, how do we drill down on the things that bog us down? Early in the year it was penalties, games where we turn it over in bunches. We turn it over like that, I don’t give a s—t who we play we’re going to lose. Those little things fighting our operation — time at the line, getting in and out of plays, Lamar having more of the offense, an awareness of where we want to end up as an offense. Where can we get better at these few things that will help us in critical times?” Mentally, Jackson is in a different place now, quarterbacks coach Tee Martin said. “The next level is just taking the things that he already improved in and continuing to improve in those areas,” Martin said. “But also consistently doing them every day, every rep.” A hyper-detailed daily grading system that is blasted across screens throughout the Ravens’ training facility is just one reminder of the progress, for the quarterback and the rest of the team. Jackson’s voice is another. “Lamar, he’s more vocal than he ever has been about what he wants from us, even to the staff and the offensive linemen,” Bateman said. It’s intentional. “Certain guys, they need to hear from me more,” Jackson told The Sun. “They don’t know what I’m thinking. Some guys just look at me like, ‘Lamar’s going to make something happen.’ I need you guys to play your part as well. “We got a lot of young guys on our team, [but] even the vets sometimes like to hear from me on certain things to know what I’m thinking on certain things so we can have the same chemistry out on the field.” It’s why Jackson, a buoyant presence in the locker room but often taciturn with most teammates away from the facility and especially in the offseason, has tried to be more communicative. He speaks up more in meetings. There are more text messages. “I think he understands what we’re trying to accomplish against what we’re seeing every day, and I think every day he feels more comfortable voicing his pleasure [and] displeasure, in terms of what we do or how he wants to see,” Monken said. “That’s probably strong, but just being able to communicate, because everything goes through him. “He’s still coming. He’s still a young player, really, at quarterback in my mind.” Jackson’s mind, meanwhile, can’t help but go back. First to hearing his mom’s voice. “She’s gonna coach me like she’s Harbaugh, like she Coach Tee or Coach Monk,” he told The Sun. “She’s always been my coach and I listen to her.” Then to his own, in the locker room at Highmark Stadium during halftime of that chilly night against the Bills just over seven months ago. “I told my guys everybody just play your part I’m gonna put us back in the game,” he told The Sun. “We can’t have those type of mistakes in the playoffs.” Especially Jackson, now more than ever. Have a news tip? Contact Brian Wacker at bwacker@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/brianwacker1. View the full article Quote
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