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Jamison Hensley
Multiple Authors
In the Baltimore Ravens’ season finale in Pittsburgh, Lamar Jackson looked like his two-time NFL Most Valuable Player self again, putting together his best quarter in what had been a frustrating year.
Jackson launched touchdown passes of 50 and 64 yards to Zay Flowers and even turned a near-certain sack into a magical escape. This marked the second time in NFL history that a player threw two go-ahead touchdowns of 50 yards or longer in the fourth quarter, according to ESPN Research.
It was a performance that would have carried Baltimore to an AFC North title, if not for Tyler Loop’s missed 44-yard field goal as time expired. Instead, Baltimore’s 26-24 loss to Pittsburgh led to an offseason filled with questions, starting with a difficult one: Where was this Jackson all season?
“I don’t think it’s any one thing when you look at him,” said Rich Gannon, a former NFL quarterback who is a host on SiriusXM NFL Radio.
Three past NFL MVP QBs — Gannon, along with Matt Ryan and Kurt Warner — weighed in on the issues that impacted Jackson’s tumultuous season, from his reduced practice time to poor pass protection and a decline in rushing attempts.
The biggest ramification of the Ravens’ 8-9 season was the surprise firing of John Harbaugh, who was the franchise’s winningest coach after 18 seasons. Now, for new coach Jesse Minter, the priority is to get Jackson back on track. Minter recently told the Ravens’ website that he wants an offensive system where Jackson doesn’t have to feel like he’s “Superman” every time the ball is snapped.
Jackson is one of the NFL’s all-time unique talents due to his ability to win games with his arm and elusiveness. He is the league’s career leader in passer rating (102.2) and rushing yards by a quarterback (6,522).
But last season, Jackson struggled with his accuracy, consistency and explosiveness. With a 6-7 record, which became his first losing season as a starting quarterback, Jackson averaged 196.1 yards passing per game and threw 21 touchdown passes — his fewest since 2022.
“As I was watching film, I couldn’t put my finger on anything that said, ‘Oh, OK, here’s what he’s doing different’ or ‘He’s making bad decisions now that he didn’t make before,'” said Warner, who was the NFL MVP in 1999 and 2001. “It wasn’t that. It was more just missing plays that he’s made a million times before.”
WHEN JACKSON LEFT the Week 4 game in Kansas City with a hamstring injury, he and the Ravens’ offense were never the same for the rest of the season.
In Jackson’s first three starts, Baltimore was the highest-scoring team in the league, averaging 37 points per game. After Jackson returned from his hamstring injury five weeks later, the Ravens scored fewer than 30 points in each of Jackson’s 10 remaining starts, which was the longest single-season drought of his career.
“Even coming back [from injury], I think what often gets discounted is you’re available to play, but it’s just hard to be sharp when you’re not practicing and you’re missing time during the week,” said Ryan, the current president of football for the Atlanta Falcons who was the NFL MVP in 2016. “And even when you are [practicing], you’re laboring to get through it. So I think that makes it a little bit more difficult.”
Jackson endured the worst slump of his career in November and December, which coincided with a reduced amount of practice time. For six straight weeks, he missed the first practice of the week with a string of injuries (including knee, ankle and toe). He also missed time with an illness.
Over that span of six games, Jackson averaged 177 yards passing, throwing three touchdown passes and five interceptions. During this stretch, he didn’t record a touchdown in three straight games for the first time in his career.
“He’s had the ability in the past to go out and have fresh legs and do what he does, but eventually it can catch up to you,” Gannon said. “Look, it’s not just that he’s missing practice time. It’s the guys around him that are missing those opportunities with him. It’s the red zone throws you’re not getting. It’s the two-minute shots. It’s the third-down packages that you’re not getting as many reps with.”
This all led to Jackson’s most inaccurate season since his rookie year in 2018. His precision pass rate, which is the percentage of pass attempts that hit targets in stride, was 48.7% in 2025. In comparison, Jackson’s two highest precision pass rates came in 2019 (54.9%) and 2023 (56.1%), which were his MVP seasons.
But Warner was hesitant to chalk up Jackson’s struggles to fewer practice reps. He said he believes less practice time shouldn’t significantly impact Jackson, who had enough familiarity with the game plan and supporting cast (10 of 11 starters returned on offense last season).
“One missed practice day, especially early in the week, is kind of like, OK, you’re going to have plenty of days to make up for that and get back into the rhythm,” Warner said. “So I don’t think that’s something that I would point to and say, ‘Oh, that’s the reason he’s missing these throws.'”
ONE POINT WHERE Ryan, Warner and Gannon all agreed: No one can put all of the blame on Jackson. It’s a challenge for any quarterback to perform at a high level when his supporting cast is faltering, especially when it’s the offensive line.
Gannon has a saying that, when great quarterbacks get knocked around, they become good quarterbacks. And, when good quarterbacks get knocked around, they become average ones.
“My point is nobody’s immune, and it’s not just the sacks,” Gannon said. “It’s the hits, the hurries, the knockdowns. Eventually it can speed you up. I don’t care how tough a guy you are, it can have an effect on your ability to sit in there and trust the protection.”
In 2024, Jackson produced career highs of 4,172 yards passing and 41 touchdown passes when he had the best pass protection of his career. He was sacked on only 4.3% of his dropbacks (23 sacks on 538 dropbacks).
This past season, Jackson had the worst pass protection of his career. He was sacked on 9.8% of his dropbacks, and he faced a pressure rate of 37.1% (percentage of dropbacks where the quarterback was sacked, under duress or hit), which was the second worst in the league in 2025.
“Oftentimes you have to trick yourself that regardless of what happened before, you’ve got to trust that people are going to do their job and people are going to pick up the protections,” Ryan said. “And so you’re constantly fighting that. But to say it doesn’t affect you, it does. And the great ones find ways to, even when the numbers are down or even when the sacks are up, they still find a way to keep their team in the game and give themselves an opportunity late in the game.”
After the season, Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta pointed out that the offensive line has to be more consistent and “didn’t jell quite as much this year.” Baltimore has decisions to make with the offensive line, where Pro Bowl center Tyler Linderbaum is a free agent and the team likely has to upgrade at both starting guard spots.
“We can talk about the high-flying teams and the teams that throw it all over the field, but the best teams in the league continue to be the ones that win up front and the ones that prioritize, ‘We’re going to build it this way and that’s where we’re going to have our success,'” Warner said. “It still comes back to the teams that win in the trenches.”
WARNER REMEMBERS AN interview with Harbaugh a number of years ago about the dialogue between him and Jackson on the sideline during games.
Jackson would often tell Harbaugh, “Hey, Coach, I’m just playing ball. I’m just doing what I do.”
“That always stuck in my mind, because sometimes that’s kind of the nature of some guys is just kind of like, ‘I’m just reacting to what I see and I’m just playing. I think whatever I have to do, I’m just doing it. I’m not overthinking anything,'” Warner said. “And maybe that is an aspect of where it’s at now after the injury is maybe he is overthinking it a little bit, maybe he is like, ‘I don’t want to take off and run. I don’t want to get hurt or I don’t want to put myself in harm’s way.'”
The most drastic change in Jackson’s game in 2025 was the deep decline in rushing attempts. He carried the ball only 5.2 times per game, three attempts per game fewer than any previous season.
By Jackson not running as much, it created less stress for opposing defenses and took a chunk of production away from the Baltimore offense. Prior to last season, Jackson averaged 59.9 rushing yards per game. In 2025, he totaled less than half of that per game (26.8).
“As you age, as you get older, you realize your availability and being able to go week in and week out is almost just as important as your ability to take off and go,” Ryan said. “So I think finding that balance for the remainder of his career, that’s going to be what they have to figure out. But I just don’t think stripping him of that, because I think that I’ve often said, I thought when he is at his best, he’s probably the most difficult player in the league to game-plan for for defensive coordinators.”
Ryan added, “And I do think when you take a little bit of that away, it’s one less thing for a defense to account for and maybe doesn’t open up some of the other things that when he’s rolling like that, it does.”
Former Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken often called Jackson’s ability to run his “superpower.” In Monken’s first two seasons in Baltimore, he called an average of 4.4 designed runs for Jackson. Last season, there were an average of two designed runs per game.
Last season, Jackson chose to buy more time throwing the ball than taking off to run, scrambling 40 times for 213 yards. He was also not as explosive when he did run, failing to produce a run over 20 yards for the first time in his career.
“I think the natural reaction would be, ‘Yeah, I think it’s smart because the older he gets, the less he’s going to be able to do that or the more his body’s going to break down,” Warner said.
WHEN JACKSON WON his first NFL MVP award in 2019, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that he would eventually get to a Super Bowl and win one. Seven years later, there are questions about whether Jackson will ever play on the game’s biggest stage, especially considering the Ravens’ track record of postseason failures.
“He’s on the fast track to the Hall of Fame without a doubt,” Warner said. “But if he never plays his best in that moment and never gets to a Super Bowl or gets to a couple of them, that will be something that will always kind of be there hanging over him.”
To reach the Super Bowl, Jackson’s main obstacles in the AFC used to be beating the likes of Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. Now, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult in the AFC with the emergence of Drake Maye and Bo Nix, who led the New England Patriots and Denver Broncos to the top two seeds in the conference.
“I still think he’s going to have an opportunity to win a Super Bowl,” Ryan said. “I just think he’s that great of a player, but it’s getting crowded. That has to be taken into consideration.”
One of the reasons Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti fired Harbaugh was the team underperforming in the playoffs year after year. Baltimore has three postseason victories in Jackson’s eight seasons.
In recent years, Jackson has watched Flowers fumble near the goal line in the 2023 AFC Championship Game and saw tight end Mark Andrews drop a 2-point conversion attempt in the 2024 divisional playoff game. But Jackson hasn’t lived up to expectations either with 11 turnovers, which are the most by any player in the playoffs since 2018.
“I think there’s only a handful of quarterbacks in the NFL that have the ability to take over a game at this level or put a team on their shoulders and carry them to the finish line,” Gannon said. “I think of Josh Allen, I think of Patrick Mahomes, I think of Lamar Jackson. There’s only a handful, and he’s one of them.”
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