BALTIMORE — What happens when the underdog becomes the favorite? When the chip on the shoulder dissolves?
How do you keep the underdog mentality when you’re no longer an underdog? I raised the question with Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson on Sunday after the Ravens demolished Miami 56-19.
“Because we know the favorites are only the favorites because of what they’ve been doing,” he said.
A week earlier, Jackson led the Ravens past San Francisco 33-19 on Christmas Day. Jackson and the Ravens went into that game as 5.5-point underdogs, and Jackson, according to much of the national media, was also the underdog in the MVP race to 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy.
It seems so incredible now. Jackson was magical that evening, while Purdy was exposed as game manager who functioned well, provided he was surrounded by superior weapons. Purdy threw four interceptions, and Jackson threw two touchdown passes.
After that game, Jackson summarized the Ravens’ collective mentality.
“I believe we got a bunch of guys who’s been doubted,” Jackson told reporters. “A bunch of guys who got things to prove on our team on both sides of the ball, so I believe in time we’re the underdogs, we going to always rise to the occasion, but we got to stay locked in to do that.”
After dominating Miami on Sunday, the Ravens seemed anything but underdogs. Jackson threw five touchdown passes and finished with a perfect quarterback rating. For the second game in a row, the Ravens’ defense exposed another would-be MVP contender: Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.
But in Jackson’s mind, the Raven still are underdogs.
“We’ve been an underdog all season, even in the offseason,” he said. “We’d like to keep it that way and just keep that on our mindset [so] we don’t fall into the narrative of things changing.
“Last week, we were about to get tore up,” he said, referring to Mike Florio of NBC’s prediction that Baltimore would be routed by San Francisco. “Our team, we take that to heart. We can’t go out there thinking [that] since we’re the favorites, teams are just going to bow down and play how we want them to play. We have to go take it, and that’s what we do.”
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Jackson will likely be the NFL’s MVP for the second time in five seasons. But he has to know that the doubts about him will continue until he leads Baltimore to a title — and they may not even stop then.
With Jackson, validation seems like a week-to-week proposition.
At one point in the season, he seemed to be outside of MVP consideration. Then he was considered a solid second or third behind Purdy and Christian McCaffrey. Even going into Sunday’s game against the Dolphins, there was talk that the game could be an MVP showdown between Jackson and Tagovailoa.
There are some — I’ll call them “purists” — who are not sold on the idea that a player as athletically gifted as Jackson should be playing quarterback. Former GM Bill Polian let that cat out of the bag in 2018 when he said that Jackson would be better suited to play wide receiver.
Just last week, Fox radio talk show host Monse Bolanos tapped into stereotypes around the position when she said she wanted her quarterbacks to be “quarterbacky” and that Jackson was too athletic for her tastes. “To me, Lamar Jackson’s just a great athlete,” she said.
The league has embraced mobility as a necessary evil at the quarterback position. Still, there continue to be distinctions: “mobile” quarterback, “running” quarterback, “dual threat” quarterback.
At what point will we just say “quarterback”? Regardless of what the voters say, Lamar Jackson has emerged as the people’s champion, notwithstanding his five-year, $260 million contract.
While media goes back and forth on Jackson, there seems to be unambiguous support among his peers. Throughout the season, the respect Ravens opponents have for Jackson is evident in subtle ways, sometimes helping him up after a run or tapping him on the helmet after he makes a play.
After Sunday’s game, Odell Beckham Jr. pointed out that much of what Jackson brings to the table are intangibles.
“He’s just a baller,” Beckham said. “He’s a gamer. He knows how to turn it on when we need him, and I think everybody looks for him to be that. It’s just, some people are born with it, and he’s one of those guys who was born with it.”
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Two weeks ago, after Jackson escaped a point-blank tackle from Jacksonville’s Dawuane Smoot and completed a near-impossible pass to Isaiah Likely, a kneeling Smoot stared at Jackson and appeared to ask, “How did you do that?”
When Dolphins defensive back Jalen Ramsey was asked which quarterback he hates to face, he said Lamar Jackson. “Just ’cause you can’t really do much,” Ramsey said.
Two seasons ago, Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett was even more demonstrative after Jackson threw a touchdown pass even as Garrett bore down and hit Jackson’s arm. As Jackson left the field, Garrett patted him on the back and told him it was a “hell of a play.”
Some Cleveland fans attacked Garrett on social media, but he explained: “I dapped him up, because I have sportsmanship. At least in my eyes, I help guys up, and I dap them up when they make a play like that. And I don’t think anything should come out of us having respect for our opponent. I don’t think there should be any doubt in our heart or who we are on that field.
“The guy is a baller. It’s a game, and he is one of the best at it. I appreciate greatness. It’s frustrating – everyone knows that. Anyone in the league will tell you [that] rushing against that guy is tough. And you are rushing against the tackle and him, because he is fast, dynamic and shifty. All the words apply. But you have to find a way.”
Before Sunday’s game, Dolphins coordinator Vic Fangio paid the highest compliment when he said he had faced a number of mobile quarterbacks.
“Then there’s Lamar Jackson,” he said.
“He’s unlike anybody else. The only other player that’s been like him in the last 50 years is Michael Vick. The pure definition of a great quarterback is there’s no one way to play him — because if there was, everybody would do it.”
There are statistics that suggest Jackson is having one of his best seasons since 2019. Going into Sunday’s game, Jackson led all quarterbacks in broken tackles on rushes. His 47 first downs from rush attempts ranked second behind Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts. But the stat that haunts Jackson is that he missed a combined 10 games in the previous two seasons due to injuries. For all of Vick’s greatness, he never won a title, never even reached the title game and reached only one conference championship game.
More than anything else, that’s likely what keeps Jackson in underdog mode.
Before Sunday’s game, Dolphins linebacker Bradley Chubb said the key to slowing down Jackson is to finish. “You got to focus big-time on finishing,” Chubb said.
“That’s the main thing this week — for myself, and this defense — it’s going to be the word ‘finish.’ “
The same can be said for Jackson this season as well. For all of the accolades he’s about to receive, Jackson knows he has to finish. That will be the only way to remove the doubts.