BALTIMORE — It was one play in a game’s worth of them, and it’s not the snap on which the Baltimore Ravens built their 34-10 victory over the Houston Texans on Saturday at bone-chilling M&T Bank Stadium. But here was Lamar Jackson, the most dangerous and determined player in this game, taking a snap on fourth and one near midfield late in the third quarter. His top-seeded team was teetering in this divisional-round matchup. Baltimore led by just seven points.
“He’s one of a kind, man,” said Morgan Moses, the veteran offensive lineman. “You don’t see anybody like him in the NFL. The opportunity he has with the ball in his hand every play — you just never know.”
With that knowledge shared not only by the Ravens and the Texans but by every bundled-up member of a crowd of 71,018, Jackson faked an inside handoff to the right. He then turned to his left. He first ran behind left tackle Ronnie Stanley. But then downfield, there was Moses, 6-foot-6 and 320 pounds, coming from his spot at right tackle, blocking for his man.
“You want to get out there,” Moses said, “and do that for him.”
When the frost settled, Jackson had 14 yards when he needed one. And when he headed back to the huddle, he stopped to thank Moses for lugging his body into territory he might not be best suited for.
“That’s the kind of teammate he is,” Moses said.
What’s clear like never before: The AFC favorites are Jackson’s team.
AFC divisional playoff game
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Here is what Jackson accounted for on a frigid Saturday evening: all of the Ravens’ touchdowns (two passing, two running); 100 rushing yards on just 11 carries, a performance that shows why defensive coordinators view his game tapes as slice-and-dice horror films; and 16 completions on 22 attempts, good for a relatively paltry 152 yards but without an interception.
“Lamar just played out of his mind,” Ravens Coach John Harbaugh said.
Thus the Ravens’ status as favorites to reach — if not win — the Super Bowl remains intact. Jackson isn’t the only reason. A disciplined and dynamic defense held Houston, led by rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud, to 68 yards in the second half. Jackson led a rushing game that churned out 229 yards. This team has it all.
But when the Ravens sputtered into halftime tied at 10, still searching for themselves, their most important player didn’t roll his eyes and hope for better. He stepped forward.
Who spoke in a locker room Harbaugh described as “edgy”?
“I did,” Jackson said, thumping his chest. “A lot of cursing.”
It’s his team. That this game was a referendum in this city on Jackson was both slightly unfair and undeniably true. The Ravens’ pregame radio show opened with that idea a good 2½ hours before kickoff. He has been the MVP once and probably will be for the 2023 season as well. Yet he had started a game in this very round with the Ravens as the top seed, and that foray — a loss to Tennessee in January 2020 — dogged him all these years, and all those accomplishments, later.
So the stat that dominated discourse in the run-up to this game — a run-up basically three weeks in the making, what with the Ravens clinching the AFC’s top seed on New Year’s Eve, when Jackson threw five touchdown passes against the Miami Dolphins — wasn’t that the Ravens’ defense tied for the league lead in turnovers forced and yards per play allowed. It wasn’t that Baltimore rushed for the most yards in the NFL.
It was that Lamar Jackson was 1-3 in playoff starts.
“I seen it,” Jackson said. “I don’t even got to hear it. I see it, you know? But it is what it is. I don’t really care what people say. I’m trying to win.”
For a sport that considers itself the ultimate team game, the idea that wins and losses can be assigned to one person — the quarterback — is borderline ludicrous. Still, there were other numbers that haunted Jackson.
For his career, he completes 64.5 percent of his passes in the regular season but hit just 55.9 in those first four playoff starts. He has thrown for 125 regular season touchdowns against 45 interceptions; in those playoff games, three scores and five picks. His passer rating in the regular season is 98.0; in the playoffs, 68.3.
He is a different player now than he was when he had last started a playoff game, after the 2020 season. He is a better, more accurate, pure passer, a development that has not compromised either his unmatched speed or elusiveness as a runner. He is equipped with an offensive coordinator — Todd Monken, who most recently won back-to-back national championships at Georgia — who embraces the idea that Jackson is both brilliant enough and experienced enough to be handed the controls of the offense.
But reputations — particularly of the when-the-moment-is-big-he-comes-up-small variety — are tough to shake. In that sense, Jackson’s mastery of the regular season and the Ravens’ ascension to AFC favorites were burdens, and only that. The opportunity against the Texans was an expectation. Win, and the march continues, as it’s supposed to. Lose, and what misery the 2024 regular season would be. Gaining the No. 1 seed again, even being the MVP again, would be followed by: “Yeah, but …”
That feeling hung there when Jackson ended an unsteady first half by taking back-to-back sacks. Angst cut through the chill at M&T Bank Stadium. Given a wind that made if feel as though it was at 15 degrees at kickoff, that’s saying something.
Inside, Jackson burned. The Ravens had just 118 yards. So he spoke. “Inappropriate” is how he described his words, but that’s for public consumption. In the locker room, he was perfect. It was the latest development in his growth, part of being “locked in from Day 1,” as he has said, even if it’s Day 200-something.
“You can see it in his eyes,” linebacker Patrick Queen said.
Not to mention his legs. Not to mention his arm. The Ravens’ go-ahead touchdown came on the first possession of the third quarter and covered 55 yards. Jackson had a hand in all of them, the last 15 on a scamper up the middle of a defense spread wide to cover his weapons. The touchdown that essentially put the game away came at the end of a 93-yard drive, a 15-yard floater with a maestro’s touch to tight end Isaiah Likely.
In the AFC championship game a week from Sunday, Jackson will host Josh Allen’s Buffalo Bills or Patrick Mahomes’s Kansas City Chiefs. Each is a star who defines his team. To be clear, Jackson is capable of outplaying either of them. The Ravens are his team. It may just be his time.