The Ringer NFL Show - The Play Sheet [VIDEO]: Lamar Jackson Is Having an MVP-Caliber Season

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

The Ringer’s Ben Solak walks us through Baltimore Ravens QB Lamar Jackson's impressive film so far this season and makes the case that even at this stage of his career, his game is underappreciated. Watch 'The Play Sheet' every week at The Ringer's YouTube channel or on Spotify on the 'Ringer NFL Show' feed. Producer: Cory McConnell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Howdy? I'm Ben Solak. This is the play sheets. Our weekly Wednesday episode here on the ringer NFL show feed. So click into the Spotify app and watch the video pods. You can see all the film as we break it down. The opening script. That's crown an MVP.

Lamar. That's the whole show. Through the first seven weeks of the season, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson is the MVP. I would like to show you why we're going to play action. Watch, watch this throw. Play action fake. Amar stands tall in the pocket. He's looking.

downfield he uncorks it okay ends up you can't walk downfield can't walk downfield and put it in a better spot with your hand let's talk concept this is cool they're going to do zay on this like big deep-bo's clear-out route and then Ricard's going to kind of hit on a wheel here and then they're going to have a shot baitman cutting in on this dig and i think this dig is like probably your primary idea the problem with the design is that they don't actually have anything to like tie down these underneath defenders right and so when we run this There's your play action fake. Okay, Lamar gets to the top of his drop.

If you want to throw this, you got to have to throw up between these two players, which I think is going to be tough given where Bateman already is. Like, by the time he gets his head around, he's going to be right here. Or you have to try to throw it over this linebacker, drop it in this space. You have to worry about this player here. You also worry about the safety. We'll talk about him in a second. But because there's nobody, no route tying down these underneath guys,

I think this is a challenging throw, right? And when we run it a little more, like you can see Lamar's head kind of pop to that route. and at this point you see Logan Wilson linebacker hips open to this and you see the safety, deep middle safety driving down. So I don't think you can throw this. But if that deep middle safety is going to drive down, you can now reset to this throw and throw that deep, deep, deep, deep post

if you have the arm for it, which not a lot of quarterbacks do. Lamar, by the way, has the arm for it just one stepping into it, all right? Just, boop. Like, no hitch, no, like, let me load up and go. Just open the hips and go, which is stupid. The other thing that's stupid is that the Bengals,

what you're going to do here if you're the Bengals defense, we'll pull this back a little bit. When you're on a cover three look like this, cover three, deep middle safety. And you're worried about this in breaking route because it's a very popular route in the league. What you can do is you can have that deep middle safety nailed down.

He'll take that intermediate crosser, because that crosser kills cover three. And then you ask that corner who's giving the crosser away, you ask him to replace the, deep middle third player. It's drop kick. You're going to nail down with that deep middle safety, and he's going to drop, he's going to drop and become that new deep middle defender. So this is a common answer to this concept. So now when you throw this big post, you have to know and be conscious of the fact that that corner is coming in to be the deep middle safety.

You can't throw this thing out here as if there's all the space in the world. No, you still have to throw this thing narrow. You still have to throw this thing, assuming someone's going to come in and close on that opposite side of the field. And that's what makes this ball. placement perfect do you want to see some post snap processing some actually good quality post nap processing we are in third and five we're going to motion rashad bateman he gets followed by the safety and usually when we have motion and the player the player motion gets followed one for one by a defender we're thinking man coppitch right we're thinking he that's his man he's following him everywhere it is a little weird though because this is a safety and this is a corner and so like pre-snap

they were leaving a corner against a tight end and then they were moving the safety with bateman so it could be a little tricky but again like right before the ball all snapped. It just, this looks like band cover up here to the top. And then linebacker would take, safety would take the tight end, corner would take Rashad Bainman. And then you play the single high safety and you potentially rush this backer or it becomes a robber. Like cover one makes a lot of sense here pre-snap. But again, there was like some fishy stuff going on. Okay, well, if we have cover one, then we like this three receiver side. Isaiah likely it's going to sit down. Bateman's going to run the basic. And he's having to have great leverage on this corner or

he's going to be one on with the safety. We like that either way. And then it's just the back to the flat, right? So we throw this on third and five and we get a first down. Snap the football. Look at the late rotation by the Texans defense. Watch deep middle safety suddenly gets outside of the hash. Corner gets a little bit wide. This safety gains depth. What do we got? It's cover two, right? This is cover two across the board. Five underneath defenders, deep half safety, deep half safety. Now, if we wanted to throw this route to Bateman here, we don't like what we have anymore because we have two zone defenders here to fill that window and the safety is low. It's not like he's filling from depth over here. He's going to be able to get on

this route pretty quickly, right? Again, play out the three receiver. side. This route is not as open as you want it to be. But the ball's already out. It's not the baitman. The ball's out to Zayflowers on the on the on the on the on the slot fade route, which again, you can like this combination, right? We have that little underneath curl and then the slot fade. You can like this against cover one against cover two and we get there. Right. I mean like Lamar looks through receiver side. Okay, this isn't the look I expected. So I'm going to get to the backside. I'm going to throw Zayflowers one on one. But it's not man coverage, right? You're going to have to throw this against a deep half safety. You don't like this route against a deep half safety.

You can't throw this down the field because he's going to get to it. You're going to have to throw this ball very quickly. Throw it right now from the pocket with enough velocity from the far hash to get it to the sideline before that safety can arrive. This is a challenging throw because of how quickly you have to get rid of this ball in the pocket. Look at Lamar snapped that thing beautifully down the field. End zone view. Watch firstly Lamar's head in the pocket, right? Get to that front side. That's not what I expected to see. I'm going backside. I'm getting there now. And then with with the trash in his pocket in his lap, right, with this rush getting dumped into his lap, watch how quickly this throw gets out. Beats the safety. He has such a fast whip of a release and he doesn't

need to step into any of these throws to get the velocity from the far hash to get this ball to Zay Flowers. Mm. While on the topic of arm strength, by the way, because Lamar's arm is unbelievably live. Zay Flowers to the bottom of the screen. We're going to threaten this route, right? That big post that they threw against the Bengals. Mink is going to stay low. They're going to rotate a single high. So this is what they're worried about right here. Meanwhile, what we're doing actually on offense is we're going to break Zay Flowers off into the sideline 20 yards down the field. Outbreaking throw 20 yards down the field. There is no like designed, schemed throw that challenges a quarterback's arm quite like this throw. Watch them are.

Top of our drop, right? Safety is low. And this corner, cover three corners, just sneaking in inside the whole way, right? Worried about that digs. They throw it a lot and they're worried about that post. Zayflowers are going to snap this thing. Lamar's already about to throw, by the way. I want to talk about a little anticipation, all right? Watch this throw. Money. End zone view. Hold middle of the field safety. Eyes to the route. Hit you in. All right, let's put it all together this week against the lions. Mark Andrews is going to run through and we're going to run a deep dig behind him, right? We are trying to mess with this deep middle safety because again, we're running that big, big, big, big, big post behind him, right? So this is a big, big stretch in the

middle of the field. We want to manipulate this player. Let's see what he does. It's now the football. Mark Andrew's eye candy works great, right? He's running through here right now. Linebackers had to step down for play action. Now this deep safety has to go take away this route right away. Now we have the deep dig, which will work in behind that deep safety or we could still potentially throw that big, big, big post if we're feeling cheeky. But corner's got good leverage on it. So as this runs out, yeah, I mean, this is the dig the whole way, right? This corner has a the potential to go and be that middle of the field player like we saw we're throwing this this is the route that we want we have two problems the first of these linebackers they've gotten some depth now right

now they're able to sink a little bit recover from the play action the second issue is right here john kaminski winning the rep on the inside look at the rush right into lamar's lap it just doesn't matter and and this this throw doesn't look as impressive from the sideline view so the camera zoomed out end zone view watch this stinking throw man play action fake right so we see Safety's nailing down. We just have to worry about these two sinkers. Throwing this dig right here. With, with color right in his lap, does not care.

Come on! Catch and run, baby. Okay, so those throws are sick, right? We do not have a lot of quarterbacks in the league who have that big post throw to Zay against the Bengals, and then also the deep out against the Steelers, and then have the ability to get to the slot fade that he threw against the Texans, and then also with touch, throw that dig against the lions. Like to have all four of those throws in your quiver

and to be capable of making them and figuring them out on the field, the number of guys who can do that, you count on one hand. But we also started with those plays because at no point in those plays, do we say the word, scramble, mobility, on the move, escapability, rushing quarterback, option quarterback, should have been a running back,

going to the draft as a wide receiver, none of that nonsense. All of it's Cods Wallet, because what Lamar does just as a quarterback, what he does just as a past, from the pocket is MVP worthy alone this season. If we control for just reps in which the quarterback is in the pocket right now, Lamar's ninth in success rate and seventh in explosive play rate. This is one of the best pocket passers that we have in the league, and it's not even the

thing he does the best. Ridiculous player. Now, when he is outside of the pocket, it's best pretty good player out there too. Cool play. I like this play a lot. We're going to do play action fake, right? We're going to get zone flow from all these linemen here. And what we're trying to sell the Browns on is that after the fake Lamar's going to roll out and we're going to just going to run flood, right? We're going to have a deep route to this side of the field. Deep crosser there from Mark Andrews, then this quick outbreak route. And it's just a three level stretch over here. So we're trying to sell them on flood. What it really is is this deep route becomes big post and run a lot of these, yeah? And then this, this crosser from Mark Andrews actually becomes a pivot, right? They whip this

thing back out. And after Lamar fakes and he starts to roll out, he's just going to stop. And we're actually going to stretch over here to this side of the field. So a nice little concept. What happens? The Browns just have a blitzed out up, right? That end right there, spikes inside. And then Anthony Walker, the linebackers coming off the edge. And so when Lamar goes to roll out, it's an immediate unblocked pressure.

And if there was a metric for quarterback performance with an immediate unblocked dude in my face, Lamar would lead the league by a thousand years. I wish it existed so I could prove it to you. Instead, we'll just have to watch this. He's going to throw this route to Mark Andrews. He's going to throw to this player over here. against this look right now. And whoop.

Dumb. End zone view. My favorite thing about the end zone view is you can tell he still wants to throw the post. He's still trying to, right? So there's the fake. Again, he's supposed to always kind of stop like right hereish. But because of the immediate pressure, he's already off script right away. None of the routes have broken yet. So he has to buy time.

Watch his eyes. He's trying to find the post. Like even here, he's still, he's looking up. He's trying to see if he can find that throw. but he can't. And so with all of this going on, just again, body facing this direction, going to throw this over here. Sure, why not? Absolutely. Second and 29, 36 seconds left in the first half. How many plays you got in your playbook second and 29? Ravens got one. Dig. Dig. And they run like this kind of like cross or settle

route right here. I'm not even going to comment anymore. I just want you to watch the play. I get, okay, I said I wasn't going to comment. I'm going to comment. I guess you can throw this between these two defenders, right? Like if there's a criticism, it's like, hey, maybe just trigger on this, get to third and 13. You have these underneath routes, but why would you throw them get to third and 21? It's kind of useless.

So maybe throw this. Nope. There's not, the throw isn't even in the can't, the shot, because the cameraman didn't think he'd hit it. End zone view. Okay, snap the football,

maybe throw that dig, can't really throw that dick. I've been here for a long time. One of my linemen lost. Let me just get out of here. And then, oh, there's a obnoxious. Third and 18 this time. One minute left in the first.

You got to play for 1318. Ravens do. I'm not going to comment this time. We're going to watch it. Okay, I would have one comment. It's immediate pressure, right? Montravius Adams, Alex Highsmith, little game. There's pressure right here right away. So Mar's getting out of this pocket. Usually, Lamar outruns this dude. Like every single time he's outrunning this guy, go get a block, try to make a guy miss, pick up a first down, whatever. Alex Highsmith stays with him. Like this is, this is great word from Highsmith. Good athlete. So what does Lamar do? Dude, no one in the league, no quarterback in the league, it's not close, stops his feet while directly next to an unblocked defender to then go do something.

Because Lamar's so quick, he knows he can accelerate and decelerate and get away with stuff like this. No other quarterback in the league, I'm telling you, finds this throwing platform. Maybe one of them while they're on the move, like flips their hips and tries to throw this, but they'd still be moving towards the sideline. The Mar just stops. And that allows him to set an actual throwing hallway and just put the ball directly over Cole. Holcomb and drop it into Zayflower's chest why I can't believe he finds this throw I'm yeah pressure yeah pressure it's the fact that he finds Zay right now under these conditions he's like

I wonder who's open down the field first down I want to end on this Lions play the same way I ended the first section on Lions play and that's because I want I want you to see how like he was incredible in the Lions game and and it was his best game by EPA for dropbacks in his 2019 it was it was unbelievable but the idea that like this was somehow a peak game like Lamar had like seven crazy plays in this game and it was his best game of the season whatever like sure it was but he's been up to this nonsense since week one man this is what it's always been looking like for the guy and it's just it's finally realized by the entire offense by the offensive design by this winning against the lion's third and three from the 12th this route is the route they want from

zay i think it'll do a little post that breaks at the goal line i think it's a good uh a turndown from lamar i think it's good that he actually doesn't throw this when he gets the top of his drop here like you're worried about this zone defender here and this deep middle safety. You can throw this right now, but Zay hasn't actually gotten into his break it. It'd be nicer if his head was already turned. The timing is just tough.

Like, this is a hard window to throw it into. He's already dropping his eyes by the time Zay has turned. Like, this looks open, but with this player, I'm not sure. So, okay, he drops his eyes, pressure in the pocket. What does he do? All right, okay, I'm out. Cool. Now, watch.

Again, he doesn't know what he's, stops like this. Nobody gets like two, look at just this picture. The number of quarterbacks in the league who would panic and lose their mind. But Lamar just, okay, I'm just going to stop my feet. And then these are, this is scramble drill rules, right? Work to the side of the, the quarterback scrambling to. Rashad Bateman actually can't. He stepped out of bounds, right? The breath through his hat. So Bateman does a good job like kind of eliminating himself. He just kind of steps back. Usually scrambles where you're throwing this. So all the defenders are flowing this way, Nelson Aglow, the veteran knows, listen, I've seen Lamar make this throw. I know he can throw across.

his body. I know that Lamar can can even get back out here because he can make these guys miss. So Aguilar just, I'm going to work the opposite direction. And Lamar says, yeah, good idea. That's step. So there we go. Like eight of just like the coolest best quarterbacking plays that we've seen to this point in the season. And those last four, he was out of the pocket. And he was on the move. We talked about throwing premier platforms and the gumption and the arm talent to attempt some of these throws and the vision to still see the concepts, even as you're dealing with unblocked pressures, like all of it's unbelievable. And we still have not gotten to a play where he tucks the football and runs.

The thing that like everybody, when Lamar was in the draft and it was scouts and it was teams, he's a 30 second overall pick. Oh, it's a running offense. It's going to be a Russian quarterback, an option quarterback. In 2019, even when he won the MVP and they're using him as a quarterback run in this college offense. All anybody cared about was the guy tucking the football and running. This dude just throwing the football is one of the best quarterbacks in the league. And then he has a second superpower that nobody else does.

He's leading the league in yards per carry at 5.3 among all quarterbacks. Jalen Hertz is second at 3.7. Success rate per rush. He's second to Hertz because Hertz has the quarterback sneak tush pushes to juice his stats. Lamar is on pace for 3,900 passing yards, 800 rushing yards. It's only been done once in league history. Man! We don't have like a paradigm for quarterbacking in the NFL that fully appreciates and measures how valuable Lamar Jackson is.

We just don't. It's not that he's as good as Mahomes is. It's that he plays the position so differently than everybody else, like even differently than Jalen Hertz who runs the ball a lot, and Josh Allen who runs the ball a lot. Just the threat of Lamar on the field allows the Ravens to play a brand of 11 on 11 football where you have to be terrified of 17 different rush threats and also terrified that the guy just sits in the pocket and dices you up.

It is a stress on defenses that no other quarterback in the league presents. Mahomes also presents an insane stress. And so does Allen. But their stresses are different in character, different in tenor, in the way that they stress you. Lamar is singular. He is unique. He is unbelievably talented.

He's playing the best ball of his career. He's already won an MVP. He should win one again. I'm done with the episode. Thank you for watching. He's the best. Thank you. We're watching this week's episode of The PlaySheet.

Sorry, I got fired up. Thank you to Lamar Jackson for firing me up. Thank you, you guys, for firing me up. Thank you, Corey McConnell, for firing up Adobe. That's a good wordplay in editing this episode. And subscribe to the videos and watch the videos, subscribe to the channel, and it's good.