Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens Are Leveling Up (2024)

I want to show you a Lamar Jackson play.

This is a classic Lamar play. The pass rush doesn’t immediately move him off his spot, so he’s content to hang behind his line and put his receivers in the scramble drill. When pressure comes, he dances around it like a varsity player moonlighting in a JV game. And then, when he uncorks his throw, 40-plus yards downfield, the ball drops in the bucket.

I want to show you another Lamar Jackson play.

I don’t need to explain this one, right? This is just super dope.

One more? We can do one more.

Jackson has been doing this since 2019, when he won the NFL MVP award in a unanimous vote. It was only the second time in history that had happened. It was also only the third time in NFL history that the same player led all quarterbacks in passing touchdowns and rushing yards—the latter of which was and remains a record-setting number at 1,206. That’s how good the 2019 season was for Jackson—and he hadn’t even turned 23 yet.

It’s important to recall those accolades and recalibrate to that 2019 season. Josh Allen wasn’t good yet; Patrick Mahomes was just ascending to dominance; Joe Burrow and Tua Tagovailoa and Justin Herbert and Trevor Lawrence were not yet in the league. After that 2019 season, there was a good chance that Lamar Jackson would become the defining quarterback of the next generation of football.

Since then, Jackson has remained a top-10 quarterback and a nightmare to see on the opposite sideline on any given Sunday. But other young quarterbacks have risen to or exceeded his level, posting record-setting seasons of their own and making the deep runs into the playoffs while Jackson has yet to get past the divisional round. The top of the Young Exciting Quarterback hierarchy has never been more crowded than it is now.

Why did Jackson not make an Allen- or Mahomes-esque leap into that true tippy-top tier? Ask any Ravens fan or football film head over the last few years, and they’ve had a prime suspect dead to rights and ready to convict: Greg Roman.

Roman, Jackson’s offensive coordinator from 2019 to 2022, was long considered the league’s preeminent QB run game designer. Previously the coordinator for Colin Kaepernick in San Francisco, Roman pulled pistol formations and option running schemes from the college ranks into the pros, including for Jackson in Baltimore. With Roman, the Ravens running game was as multifarious and deadly as any in the league.

But the passing game suffered. Roman became a heel for the lack of complexity and detail in his passing attack, which often resulted in clusters of receivers and accordingly unstressed defenses.

And the players in those clusters of receivers? Because the Ravens were so invested in the running game, their pass catchers were often lacking relative to those that other top quarterbacks were able to target. From 2019 to 2022, only three players got more than 100 targets for Baltimore: Mark Andrews, who is definitely a top tight end; Marquise Brown, who is maybe a top-25 receiver leaguewide; and Devin Duvernay. Fourth on the list is Rashod Bateman (96 targets). Fifth is Willie Snead IV (94), man.

Yet somehow, with the design issues and the personnel issues, Jackson could still slap together an effective passing offense. Effective, but not elite—not what other top quarterbacks could muster, nor what play callers like Kyle Shanahan and Mike McDaniel were conjuring around quarterbacks far less talented than Jackson. It felt like the Ravens could do so much more with their star quarterback, if only they reprioritized their offense.

This past offseason, they finally did. Baltimore replaced Roman with Todd Monken, a longtime offensive coordinator at the NFL and college levels. They spent a first-round pick on Boston College receiver Zay Flowers and signed Odell Beckham Jr. in free agency—Flowers, Beckham, and the incumbent Bateman represent the best wide receiver trio in Baltimore since Jackson’s career began.

And through four weeks? Well, the Ravens are exactly the same.

Jackson is currently 18th in the league in expected points added per dropback. He was 23rd, 16th, and 16th in the three seasons prior. The Ravens are 10th in offensive DVOA. They were 11th, 16th, and ninth in the three seasons prior. It feels like the switch from Roman to Monken has done nothing.

Those are the advanced stats; a quick brush over the Ravens’ offensive performance bears the same result. Baltimore has yet to score more than 30 points this season—something over half the league has done at least once, and 10 teams have done multiple times. Jackson has yet to throw for more than 250 yards—something 26 passers have done at least once, and 14 passers have done multiple times. This passing game and this offense simply aren’t producing the way we hoped they would.

But just as we recalibrated to where Jackson was back in 2019, we need to recalibrate our expectations for this Ravens offense. The change from Roman to Monken was a pretty dramatic change in offensive philosophy, and the signs of that change are already visible. While the Ravens offense hasn’t been much better than it was previously, the reallocation of resources has changed how the Ravens move the ball down the field. By overall offensive success rate, this season is about on par with any of the last three; but passing success rate is way up, while designed-run success rate is way down. Running the ball is no longer king in Baltimore’s offense—passing is.

Should we be worried about the running game suffering from this shift in organizational thrust? I don’t think so. Their explosive run rate remains strong relative to seasons past (14 percent, just above average), and they hurt their success rate with a lead-nursing second half against the Browns’ scary front. Also: They have Lamar Jackson. Their running game may not be what it was in seasons past, but I’d be shocked if it ended up being bad.

The prioritization of passing is also reflected in Baltimore’s personnel usage. Roman was famous for his usage of multi-back and multi–tight end sets, and by adding those bodies to the core of the formation as extra blockers in the running game, he’d condense the field. Twenty percent of the Ravens’ offensive snaps from 2019 to 2022 came in “22” personnel—that’s 2 backs, 2 tight ends, and one receiver on the field.

Monken has largely removed that heavy personnel from the Ravens playbook, opting instead for more 11 personnel—that’s 1 back, 1 tight end, and three receivers. Even the investment in 20 personnel—that’s 2 backs, 0 tight ends, three receivers—is a bit of a misnomer, as offensive chess piece Patrick Ricard is classified as a back, but will often play as a tight end, making snaps of 20 personnel with Ricard really just a version of 11 personnel. Here’s how that looks graphically (with odd formations, like when a team brings in six offensive linemen on the goal line, removed):

As the personnel has changed, so go the formations. The Ravens are inherently more spread out under Monken than they were under Roman—per Next Gen Stats, they have the fifth-widest formations this season, after sitting at dead average the last four years under Roman. Spread formations are inviting quicker throws, too: Jackson’s time to throw is down more than 0.3 seconds compared to his pre-Monken average, which is a testament to both easier throws, and to Jackson’s trust in his receivers and his offense. The foretellings of a working passing offense are there.

The differences between Roman’s personnel usage and Monken’s are even more dramatic when you exclusively look at plays on which the Ravens called a pass. Monken is not messing around: When he wants to throw the football, he makes sure there are at least three actual wide receivers on the field.

This sounds dumb, but it is a big deal. Even if Jackson’s passing numbers haven’t skyrocketed just yet, he is very likely to experience a bump in passing production by virtue of the fact that there are more dudes who are employed first and foremost to catch footballs on the field whenever he drops back.

And recently, those dudes have been Duvernay and Nelson Agholor, as Bateman and Beckham have both missed time with injuries. Andrews, Jackson’s star pass-catching tight end, missed time earlier in the season. The Ravens have played just 13 snaps with Bateman, Beckham, Andrews, and Flowers all on the field together. We haven’t even really seen the new-look Ravens pass-catching corps just yet.

We also haven’t seen a healthy Ravens offensive line yet. Left tackle Ronnie Stanley and center Tyler Linderbaum, the Ravens’ two best offensive linemen, have each missed multiple games; Morgan Moses, the right tackle, got hurt and left the game against the Browns.

So the first four weeks of the season haven’t actually been about what’s new—they’ve been about what’s old. Even as the formations have changed and the personnel groupings have changed, the fact that the Ravens passing game has stayed afloat—and maybe even marginally improved—is a testament to the same thing we’ve always celebrated with the Ravens passing game: The superstar heroics of Lamar Jackson, working with shaky receivers, in a scheme that isn’t yet running on all cylinders.

Did you forget what they looked like? Let’s watch another one.

This isn’t bad news at all—it’s good news. Jackson is still Jackson: a sensation, a walking big play, as gifted a passer as there is in the league. He can still strap this thing to his back and carry it quite a ways. It would have been just grand, certainly, if all the newness—Monken and Beckham and Bateman and Flowers—immediately rose to Jackson’s level, meeting him at the pinnacle and pushing the peak of the Ravens passing game to new heights. It didn’t happen. But there’s still plenty of time. Four games down, 13 to go.

And the Ravens didn’t even take any water over the bow in the first four games of the transition. They’re 3-1 with divisional wins over the Bengals, who are absolutely reeling, and the Browns, whose defense looked unstoppable until they ran into Baltimore. The Ravens are the favorite for the AFC North title even as they figure out the offense.

Until then, one of the league’s best quarterbacks will keep playing football at an impossibly high level. If he doesn’t get much help, as he didn’t in the past few years, the story will stay the same: Great team, tough playoff out, but probably not a top AFC contender. And if, by January, the Ravens offense has figured this out? Watch out.