Lamar Jackson and I stood against a wall inside the Baltimore Ravens’ Owings Mills, Md., practice facility a few weeks into training camp in August, and the reigning NFL MVP grinned a few times over the course of our conversation, almost as if to He let me know something was coming that he couldn’t tell everyone about.
However, there was still a lot of room for growth in his heart. And that growth came in pursuit of 1 percent from spring to summer.
Now, of course, part of Jackson’s ability to operate from the pocket is enabled by the fact that the defense always has to account for him as a runner. But how does he win games almost strictly as a passer? That probably didn’t happen before this year.
This only highlights how his value to the Ravens somehow continues to increase.
If you start with the MVP vote, you’ll see that it’s not necessarily that different from what everyone else sees.
This is Jackson’s second consecutive MVP award and third overall (he won in 2019 and 2023), and it’s no surprise. It’s very hard to quantify how valuable he has become to the Ravens. As a passer, going into Week 10, he was third in the NFL in yards passing (2,379), second in yards per attempt (9.3), second in touchdown passes (20), 10th in completion percentage (68.2%) and first in passer rating (120.7). He’s worked his tail off, and the result is not just an uptick in those numbers, but also better chemistry with young weapons such as Zay Flowers and Isaiah Likely. And he’s still effective enough as a runner to allow the Ravens to run an offense that differs more from the average NFL scheme than any other. At 538 yards and 5.9 yards per carry, a third 1,000-yard season could be in the offing. Simply put, there are few teams constructed more around a single player. He, in turn, has made that setup sing—and proved to be more than worth the trouble to install.
After the Ravens’ Week 1 loss to the Chiefs, it looked fair to question the wisdom of signing Henry—as a ninth-year tailback, with a punishing style and a ton of mileage on the odometer. , he ran for 1,120 yards and 12 touchdowns, and had two additional receiving scores. The genius of his addition wasn’t just the fit. It was how that fit, and Henry’s Bigfoot presence could supercharge the long-held physical, punishing identity that the Ravens have developed. One Bengals coach, in the lead-up to Thursday’s game , told me it looked on tape like Henry had put the established Ravens ethos “on steroids.” The results make that a fair assessment. (Barkley, by the way, deserves the play he got here as well, particularly in how he stepped up amid a ton of skill-position injuries in Philly.)
This was interesting. I felt like our committee had a harder time voting on this than the others. And while I know how good Lawrence has been this season, the result of the vote surprised me. One voter texted that Lawrence’s impact is “similar to the Cortez Kennedy year, where Seattle was awful, and he was dominant.” For context, Kennedy had 14 sacks, four forced fumbles and 92 tackles in his DPOY season. Lawrence is up to nine sacks, 14 quarterback hits and 34 tackles in nine games, which are outside numbers for an interior lineman, even if they don’t come with the turnover stats that Kennedy posted in 1992. That said, he’ll really have to keep this up to outpace guys such like Watt, who are playing on better defenses and teams likely headed for the playoffs.
I don’t think a whole lot needs to be added here. You know the deal. He’s thrown for close to 2,000 yards at the midway point. And we all remember his Hail Mary against the Chicago Bears.
Winner: Los Angeles Rams OLB Jared Verse (19 votes).
Tampa Bay Buccaneers CB Tykie Smith (1 vote) is also voting.
Also receiving votes: Commanders GM Adam Peters (4.5 votes), Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah (2 votes), Rams GM Les Snead (2 votes), Chiefs GM Brett Veach (2 votes), Ravens GM Eric DeCosta (1.5 votes) .
