NFL Analysis
1/19/25
6 min read
Don’t Blame Lamar Jackson For This Ravens Playoff Exit
It’s no secret that Lamar Jackson has had his fair share of struggles in the postseason. His performance against the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game a year ago left a lot to be desired. He has had several other losses where he was the sole reason the Ravens didn’t advance, but you can’t blame him for what happened on Sunday against the Bills.
Jackson had some early struggles in the first half, throwing an interception on a deep pass to Rashod Bateman. He lost a fumble after being sacked that led Von Miller to picking up the ball and nearly returning it for a touchdown. But in the second half, there was no doubt that Jackson was the best quarterback on the field.
Baltimore had four drives in the second half and Jackson led the Ravens to points on three of them. The only possession where they came up empty-handed was when Mark Andrews fumbled after a 16-yard-gain that would have put Baltimore into Buffalo territory with a chance to take the lead (the score was 24-19). That play ended up being one of the biggest in the game because the Bills would then proceed to burn over five minutes of clock and add a field goal to extend their lead to eight.
Like he’s done several times this season, Jackson was his best when the Ravens needed him the most. He led the Ravens on a touchdown drive on their final possession of the game and did so without his top two receivers. Zay Flowers was inactive as he dealt with a knee injury, and Rashod Bateman got banged up early on the drive and didn’t return. There aren’t many quarterbacks in the NFL who could take their team 88 yards on the road in snowy Buffalo without his top two weapons. But Jackson did it anyway.
The touchdown to Isaiah Likely was a perfect example of why Lamar Jackson is so brilliant. Buffalo didn’t dare blitz because Jackson had been finding open receivers in the second half. Instead, he bought time in the pocket and waited for an open receiver before delivering a bullet to Likely for the 24-yard touchdown.
The two-point conversion was another play where Jackson executed the call perfectly and once again, he was let down by Andrews. The ball hit Andrews in both hands, but he was unable to secure it to the ground and that ended Baltimore’s season.
Jackson played about as well as you could expect in the second half and it still wasn’t good enough. He finished the game with a passer rating of 114.4, averaging 10.2 yards per attempt. He added another 39 yards on the ground and gave the Ravens every opportunity to steal a game on the road to advance to the AFC Championship Game for the second consecutive season.
Without Flowers and a banged-up Bateman, the Ravens could attack the Bills vertically on the sidelines. That forced Jackson to throw most of his passes in the middle field, and to his credit, he was able to accomplish that. Take a look at his passing chart via the NFL’s Next Gen Stats here in Round 2:
Jackson completed nearly 74 percent of his passes this postseason and averaged a whopping 9.3 yards per attempt through the air. He’s managed to drastically improve as a playoff passer despite his weapons being either unavailable due to injury or being unreliable in the case of Mark Andrews. There has been a noticeable growth in his play, and he is no longer a liability at all when it comes to his postseason passing.
It's fair to criticize Jackson for some of his postseason failures in previous seasons. But that’s not the case here during the 2024-2025 postseason run. This version of Jackson is the most dangerous we’ve seen, but until the Ravens can find some other reliable players in the passing game to help him, this could be the result for the foreseeable future. The hope is that Flowers, who made the Pro Bowl in Year 2, could develop into that player. But a knee injury in Week 18 forced him to miss the entire postseason. He could potentially be the player to help take this offense to the next level in the postseason, but he can’t do it alone.
Can Jackson be better in the postseason? Of course. There is always room for improvement, and he acknowledged that in his postgame interview. Jackson mentioned that he needs to take better care of the ball, and his first-quarter interception could easily have been avoided.
But that stuff happens in playoffs. No quarterback is going to complete every pass. Tom Brady has won double-digit playoff games despite recording two or more turnovers. In fact, Brady has won three playoff games when he threw three or more interceptions. You can’t expect a quarterback to play perfectly for all 60 minutes, especially on the road. But what you want to see is the ability to bounce back and make plays when they matter the most. And that’s exactly what Jackson did in the second half.
Jackson isn’t 100 percent blameless in this loss, as the first-half turnovers do count. But this loss isn’t like the others in previous seasons. He certainly played well enough to win, but it just didn’t happen. But that’s football. Sometimes, you can play really well, but it doesn’t result in a victory.
We don’t have to tear down every quarterback who doesn’t win the Super Bowl every year. It’s pointless, and it does nothing to advance the game. Instead, we should commend the Bills and Josh Allen for getting back to the Championship Round in the AFC and applaud the play and development of Jackson because everything else is just nonsense. These were two of the best three players in the league going toe-to-toe in primetime.
Jackson and Allen were both excellent and making big sweeping statements about their legacies just takes the fun out of these games. I would much rather live in a world where we can complement and appreciate awesome players even in losses than the alternative. Unfortunately, that’s not the current state of football talk. But one can dream, right?