Baltimore Ravens fans who think it’s time for the team to move on from Lamar Jackson need to confront an uncomfortable reality: that moving on from Jackson means starting over.
The Ravens aren’t going to get a comparable QB back in a trade. They’re not going to find anybody with Jackson’s talent on the free-agent market.
It’s pretty much either Lamar Jackson, Tyler Huntley or someone like a Derek Carr – who, no offense to Derek Carr, isn’t, at this stage in his career, anything more than a placeholder.
If the team goes in another direction, it means an overhaul for the offense, which has been built around Jackson’s singular skills.
Jackson has run for 1,000+ yards twice, and was on pace this season, with 764 yards on the ground in 11 games and part of a 12th game, before he went down to injury in Baltimore’s 10-9 win over Denver on Dec. 4.
That he missed the final seven games of the season, including the Ravens’ 24-17 AFC Wild Card game loss at Cincinnati on Sunday, and missed the final four games in 2021, is the rub for his detractors.
Maybe the fear of injury was what had the front office holding back on committing to Jackson long-term before the 2022 season, leading to him playing the season without a safety net.
It started well – Baltimore was 8-4 when Jackson was lost for the season, and still managed to win three of its last five to get into position to get into the playoffs, and was on the verge of a massive upset of the defending AFC champion Bengals before a Huntley goal-line fumble was returned 98 yards for a tie-breaking TD in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s loss.
The question for the front office, then, is, do we give it at least one more run with our current group, which could be done if the team were to franchise-tag Jackson, allowing the Ravens to sign him to a one-year deal, or do we blow it all up and start over?
It’s either/or. Even plucking someone like Carr, late of the Las Vegas Raiders, isn’t a plug-and-play kind of thing for the Ravens, who would need to overhaul the offense to fit a more conventional QB.
Which isn’t to say that the notion of moving on is the worst idea of all-time. It could be that the front office looks ahead to 2023 and doesn’t see a window at a Super Bowl, in which case, the smart move would be to put Jackson on the market, try to get what they can for him in terms of a package of draft picks, along the lines of what Seattle did with Russell Wilson in the 2022 offseason, and build for the next Super Bowl run.
But don’t get this wrong: moving on from Jackson this offseason means, this is a rebuild.
The fan base has been at the least in the playoff hunt every year but one since 2008.
Your time, Ravens fans, may be coming due.
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Chris Graham
