It’s been run into the ground at this point, but it bears repeating again.
Ahead of the 2018 NFL draft, Bill Polian, a retired Super Bowl-winning, Hall-of-Fame team-builder, said that Lamar Jackson should change from quarterback to receiver.
It didn’t matter that Jackson accounted for over 10,300 total yards and 96 total touchdowns in his final two seasons at Louisville, winning the 2016 Heisman Trophy along the way. It also didn’t matter that Jackson was always predicted to be taken in the first round, signaling that at least one team not only considered Jackson a quarterback but one who could turn around their franchise.
Even still, Polian said that Jackson wasn’t big enough nor accurate enough to be a quarterback in the NFL. “Exceptional athlete, exceptional ability to make you miss, exceptional acceleration, exceptional instinct with the ball in his hand and that’s rare for wide receivers,” Polian said on ESPN. “That’s [Antonio Brown], and who else?”
Nearly seven years after those comments were made, Jackson is a generational quarterback. Since the Baltimore Ravens drafted him as the final first-round pick of the 2018 draft, he’s revolutionized the quarterback position with both his legs and arm. He’s already won the MVP award twice and is neck-and-neck with Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, his opponent for Sunday’s divisional round playoff game, to win a third this season.
There’s no doubt that Jackson’s running ability is his superpower — his 6,713 career rushing yards are the most all-time for a quarterback — but we’re years removed from his legs being a crutch for him as a passer. The baseless and racially coded assumptions about Jackson as a quarterback were wild back then, but now, if you think that you’re doing nothing short of hatin’.
Take this season for example.
In just the second year under Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken, Jackson attempted more passes (474) in a season than he’d ever done in his career while being the second-most accurate (66.7%), just under last season (67.2%).
This is all happening while defenses do everything in their power to rattle Jackson as a passer. According to TruMedia, Jackson was blitzed the second-most (33.5%) of quarterbacks who played in at least 15 games this season. Whether facing man coverage or zone, being blitzed or not, or facing pressure, Jackson was one of the most productive passers in football this season.
He’s doing this while running the ball less.
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Jackson’s 139 rushing attempts this season were the least he’s run in his career when he’s played at least 15 games. Part of that is having a mountain of a man as his new running back: Derrick Henry ran for over 1,900 yards this season. But, it also speaks to Jackson’s improvement and his coaches’ faith in him.
“The credit goes to him,” Monken told reporters earlier this month. “He’s an unbelievable playmaker, wants to be coached, wants to be great, and he’s about as humble as you can ask for a star player.”
According to TruMedia, during Jackson’s 2019 MVP season, nearly 77% of his rushes were designed to run plays, meaning the play call was intended for Jackson to run the ball rather than him deciding to take off on his own. Over the past two seasons, that number has dropped to 61%. When Jackson takes off running these days, it’s more because he wants to rather than being told to or forced to.
The view of Jackson as anything less than a quarterback isn’t new in professional football. Until recently, Black and mobile quarterbacks were looked at as inferior and gimmicky, respectively, compared to white and stationary quarterbacks, and god forbid a Black quarterback be fast. Warren Moon, the only Black quarterback ever voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, intentionally ran the 40-yard dash at a slower pace coming out of college so as to not be asked to switch positions. Vince Evans, the MVP of the 1977 Rose Bowl as USC’s quarterback, was told by NFL scouts that he’d be drafted higher in the coming draft if he switched positions.
“I hope it’s not the Black quarterback syndrome,” Evans is quoted as saying in Louis Moore’s 2024 book, The Great Black Hope: Doug Williams, Vince Evans, and the Making of the Black Quarterback. “Because really I like to think it doesn’t matter whether you’re Black, white, Chinese, or purple, a guy should get credit for doing a particular job at whatever position it might be.”
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And despite the Ravens selecting Jackson in the first round, they clearly knew he was a limited passer in his early years. Jackson completed just 57% of his passes during college and had a similar rate (58.2%) during his rookie season in 2018.
That year, Jackson ran the ball 147 times, the most by any quarterback, even though Jackson had only started seven games. He threw the ball just 170 times.
Of those 147 runs, over 88% of them were designed run plays. From 2018 to 2022, nearly three-fourths of Jackson’s rushing attempts were designed runs, by far the highest percentage of any quarterback during that span.
Whether it was isos, zone reads, or run-pass options, the Ravens made it clear that their best chance of success was with Jackson running the ball rather than passing. A common criticism of mobile quarterbacks is that they take off running at the first sign of trouble on a play rather than find a receiver to throw the ball to. For Jackson, he was rarely given a choice: the coaches called plays that forced him to run.
And that system worked for Jackson and the Ravens. The team won six of the seven games Jackson started at the end of the 2018 season. He ran for 1,206 yards the following year, scoring 43 total touchdowns and winning his first MVP award. His production and durability (he missed nine games) were up and down from 2020 to 2022, but Jackson still consistently ran the ball: his 404 rushing attempts were the most of any quarterback in that timespan.
The running and exceptional playmaking made Jackson look more like a fad than a football unicorn. At one point an anonymous executive basically said Jackson’s time was up: “There are a lot of people around the league that I speak to that are talking a little slick,” ESPN reporter Jeremy Fowler reported in 2021. “They say this might be the year that everybody figures out Lamar Jackson.”
He won his second MVP two years after this was said.
Jackson came into the league as a flawed passer, but it was always Grade-A hatin’ to say he couldn’t make it in the league. When you’re as fast, smart and innovative as Jackson is, it’s a failure of the system if he doesn’t succeed. Over the past two years, Jackson has shed the running-back-who-can-throw label forever.
But it’s been obvious for way longer.
In the season-opener of the 2019 season against the Miami Dolphins — nearly a year removed from Polian’s comments and a few months before winning his first MVP award — Jackson completed 85% of his passes for over 300 yards and five passing touchdowns. He ran the ball just three times for six total yards.
“Not bad for a running back,” Jackson said after the game.