A Body In Motion

My very favorite thing about Lamar Jackson is a particular way that he moves.

This in and of itself isn’t very noteworthy - the entire Lamar Jackson experience arises from the way that he moves, and the way that every player on the field is forced to move around him. He is a supermassive black hole in that respect, crammed into a comparatively tiny 6’2” 205 lb vessel. And in terms of movement in a football game, it’s not all that difficult to argue that he is among the very best, if not THE very best, to ever play the game. 

To watch a Lamar Jackson play unfold is to suspend any and all preconceived notions about what is going to happen prior to the snap, to turn yourself over entirely to the unpredictable tides of chaotic action that he spurs. Every plan for how to deal with the Ravens offense that he has orchestrated since 2018 begins with the question of how to deal with him. On the offensive side, the plans typically begin with him too, but the action wouldn’t be all that chaotic if things went according to plan. 

Yes, he can impress you with a designed run that liquifies one or more defenders’ ankles as announcers trot out references to magicians or superheroes in order to try and put some kind of intelligible words to the jaw-dropping cuts and spins that might otherwise leave you speechless. And yes, he can stand tall in the pocket and shake off the few that manage to get within arm’s reach of him before tossing a bomb 40 yards downfield to hit his receiver in stride. He may not play the same sport as Dominique Wilkins (after all he is much more easily compared to a different former ornithological Atlantan athletes, but there is no player in any sport better described as a human-highlight reel today.

Even if you’re not witness to these plays, looking at the leaderboards since his debut 6 years ago creates the same kind of cognitive dissonance that one imagines any would-be tackler who has Jackson dead-to-rights must feel as their arms end up grasping at the empty space he occupied only seconds ago; just as that defender struggles to understand how they possibly could have come up empty-handed, our minds struggle to comprehend someone who is able to lead the league since his debut with 6 rushing yards/attempt while maintaining a passer rating of 99.7. Unprecedented hardly does it justice.

If you are a witness to an entire game’s worth of his magic, those highlight plays might even take a backseat to some smaller gains of 1 or 2 yards sprinkled throughout the boxscores: miniscule in the grand scheme of things, but representative of sacks for massive losses for any other human to have ever stepped onto a football field that he nonetheless manages to turn into a positive gain. It is a cliched truth that the scoresheet simply cannot capture the experience of watching him; that doesn’t make it any less true.

But for all of the excitement, for all of the shouts and cheers and expletives of varying tones that are forced from mouths that feel the need to react one way or another to the inexplicable acts that the eyes are bearing witness to, none of these are the thing that most stands out to me about the way that Lamar Jackson moves.

The very first thing that Jackson said upon being drafted at the end of the first round of the NFL Draft in 2018 was that the Baltimore Ravens would be getting a Super Bowl out of him. It was at the forefront of his mind then; it was at the forefront of his mind the next year, when he won his first division championship and reached the playoffs for the first time; it was at the forefront of his mind the following year, when he became the 2nd ever unanimous MVP in league history. At the risk of speculating about the inner mind of somebody we do not truly know, it is seemingly at the forefront of his mind at all times, day in and day out, year after year. 

And it is, to this point, something that has eluded him.

Now to be fair, a Super Bowl has eluded most players to have ever laced up in the National Football league; and despite the best attempts of the larger sports commentariat to define what does and does not make a player successful, this does not brand anybody without one an automatic failure. Maybe your mileage on that varies, but I personally do not want to live in a world where Trent Dilfer is considered a better player than say Dan Marino because of this one bullet point on their resumes.

But to listen to Lamar Jackson speak on a regular basis is to unavoidably feel some of the weight that he has put upon himself since entering the league. I’m careful to say “that which he puts on himself” here - while there is undeniable pressure from the ESPN or FOXSports morning shows talking about legacies and quarterback tiers and questions of elite status, it’s not hard to believe Jackson when he says that he shuts that all out. After all, he has supplied more than enough pressure and expectation on his own.

Watching Jackson play gives the illusion of effortlessness. Listening to him talk does away with that misconception immediately. The now 2-time league MVP, 2-time All-Pro, and 3-time Pro-Bowler is always the first to point out the plays he missed, the throws that didn’t connect, the work that is still needed to get to the pinnacle of optimization that by definition he’ll never reach. Sure, some of that is just classic quarterback speak, the kind of accountability taking that is expected from the member of the team that is making $52 million a year while his team fails to live up to (maybe unreasonably high) expectations.

I don’t doubt that Lamar Jackson knows how good he is at this sport. I certainly don’t doubt that he knows how much of a star he has become, or the extent to which he’s beloved by both his own fanbase let alone the world at large. If I were to express any doubt, any real and genuine concern regarding any one thing about Jackson, it would be that he has to this point been so good that I worry he takes himself for granted. 

Football, along with all sports, is ultimately an entertainment product. If you want to make the case for there being a more entertaining player in the league right now, it is after all a subjective measurement. But given the number of players that have seemingly tried to fit into the mold he has created in just the few years since he took the league by storm, the number of teams that have tried to capture that lightning in a bottle for themselves, it feels safe to say what the general consensus on his entertainment value is at this point.

That being said, I don’t believe that Lamar Jackson is all that concerned with his value as an entertainment product. He’s too busy being concerned with exclusively one thing at all times: winning a Super Bowl. And I suppose that in the face of that one might worry that through the entirety of a months-long season that is statistically unlikely to end with confetti, it would be easy for him to lose sight of the moment-to-moment brilliance that he puts on display; not so much that he would forget what he’s capable of, but that he might forget what that means.

And so with all of that as preface, let me tell my very favorite thing about the way that Lamar Jackson moves.

Jackson has scored a lot of touchdowns since entering the league. To be more specific, he has been responsible for 171 touchdowns since the beginning of the 2018 season as of writing this. 31 of those have come on the ground, a number only exceeded by 20 players during that span, but those aren’t the scores we’re concerned with. Instead, we turn our eyes towards a subset of those 140 passing TDs to find the most magical of Lamar Jackson moments.

Picture, if you will, the Baltimore Ravens driving down the field but still some distance from the end zone - let’s say at least 20 yards out. The ball is snapped, and Jackson drops back as some combination of receivers enter enemy territory, looking to hit their marks. Jackson goes through his reads, finds one he likes, and lets it fly. 

With all the attention paid to his legs, keep in mind the immense arm strength that he possesses at this point in his career: in this hypothetical play, it’s all there on display, a perfect spiral that darts through the defenders before finding his man. Not necessarily his open man, Jackson and others like him don’t worry themselves with silly concerns like whether a receiver is open the way we mere mortals might, and given the placement he can put on the ball open is a relative term. If he thinks you can catch it where he is going to put it, and he will put it precisely where he means to, then you are open in that moment.

The pass is caught, because of course it is. Maybe it finds one of his fellow south Floridians who have been aware of his magic longer than any of us, like Marquise Brown or Zay Flowers; maybe instead it’s one of the Ravens rotating cast of veteran wideouts like Willie Snead IV or Nelson Agholor who don’t mind being on a team where there as likely to block for their QB as to catch a touchdown from him; maybe it’s a running back like Mark Ingram II or Justice Hill, freed from the usual confines of the backfield by the one-of-a-kind offensive schemes Jackson allows for; or maybe it finds a member of Baltimore’s stable of tight ends lead by the inimitable Mark Andrews, the player on the receiving end of more of Jackson’s touchdowns than anyone else to date with 36 of the 140. 

Regardless of the receiver, the ball is caught. The ref signals touchdown. Celebration ensues. And now that the play is dead, whatever camera person is nearest the pack of purple jerseys gathered in triumph is in perfect position to capture my very favorite thing about Lamar Jackson. There’s a lot of ground to cover to get all the way down to whomever just hauled in the pass, and he needs to get to them quickly before the kick team takes the field for the point after. But in this moment, one of the greatest rushers in modern history does not run to his teammate.

He skips.

This cannon-armed whirling dervish, this supernova with the gravitational pull of a neutron star, this man who has taken on the weight of expectations from himself and others with Atlas-like strength - he skips. 

When he skips, it’s really the only time that someone can watch this body in motion and realistically think “I can do that”. When he skips, it is an attainable movement: one that doesn’t shatter our pre-existing conception of the field of physics. He skips like someone without a care in the world, like a child learning to love the game for the first time, like the play that just happened is the most important thing he has ever been a part of. With this movement, the only kind that is guaranteed to never show up in his ever-growing unbelievable statistical body of work, he skips like someone unburdened by a constant burning desire to reach a mountaintop that has been within sight but still never yet within reach.

In other words, he skips like he doesn’t know that he is Lamar Jackson. And it’s my favorite thing about him. It is, dare I say, moving.