Talk about beating the Browns: Lamar Jackson returns from locker room to win NFL Game of the Year
Jackson was busy early in the game, running for 124 yards and two touchdowns, before he left the game with reports of cramps. Backup Trace McSorley had to replace him.
Lamar Jackson went from being the reigning NFL MVP to the Baltimore Ravens‘ new superhero.
In one of the NFL’s most dramatic finishes, Jackson surprisingly raced out of the locker room and saved the Ravens’ season Monday night, delivering an unbelievable comeback in the Ravens’ 47-42 victory in Cleveland.
Returning for the final two minutes after a bout with cramps, Jackson threw a 44-yard touchdown pass and then calmly moved Baltimore into position for Justin Tucker‘s winning 55-yard field goal with two seconds left. Jackson was praised by teammates after his second career fourth-quarter comeback, and wide receiver Dez Bryant tweeted from home: “Superman showed up right on time!!”
The Ravens (8-5) are now considered a heavy favorite to earn their third straight postseason berth after nearly watching their playoff hopes fade against the upstart Browns (9-4).
“It was just ‘Go Time’ for us, and it was our time, I feel,” Jackson said. “We’re where we want to be right now. We’re excelling right now.”
Jackson, who returned last week after testing positive for COVID-19, began experiencing cramps in his right arm with five minutes left in the third quarter. Then, after handing the ball off to J.K. Dobbins on a 1-yard touchdown run, Jackson felt cramps in his legs and hurried to the locker room with a trainer. Ravens coach John Harbaugh acknowledged there was no indication that Jackson would come back.
While Jackson was getting intravenous salt solutions, Baltimore saw a 34-20 at the start of the fourth quarter turn into a 35-34 deficit. To make matters worse, the Ravens were ready to go with wide receiver Willie Snead as their quarterback on fourth-and-5 with two minutes remaining. Backup quarterback Trace McSorley had his left knee buckle on a run, which led to Snead taking practice snaps.
“I was catching an attitude, because it wasn’t going the way we wanted it to,” Jackson said. “And then I saw [McSorley] go down, and I was like, ‘We’ve got to start now. We’ve just got to go out there now.’ And I started running out there.”
On his first play, Jackson scrambled to his right and heaved a 44-yard touchdown pass to a wide receiver aptly nicknamed “Hollywood” (Marquise Brown) to put Baltimore back ahead at 42-35 with 1:51 remaining. It was Jackson’s latest career go-ahead touchdown pass.
When the Browns retook the lead on Kareem Hunt‘s 22-yard touchdown catch from Baker Mayfield, Jackson marched Baltimore 38 yards on four passes in 62 seconds. Tucker then nailed the winner to increase Baltimore’s playoff chances to 86.5%, according to ESPN’s Football Power Index. With a loss, the Ravens’ projected odds would’ve dropped to 37.9%.
“It’s a game that’s going to go down in history,” Harbaugh said. “With all the things that went on with this game, the timing like you’re talking about of that right there, if you wrote a movie about this, people wouldn’t believe it. They would say it could never happen. ‘Reality is stranger than fiction,’ or whatever that saying is. That’s kind of what it is here — it’s crazy.”
In what was supposed to be the Browns’ coming out party — their best team since the Ravens relocated from Cleveland to Baltimore — the Ravens stole the stage to show how much adversity they can overcome. It was a couple of weeks ago when the Ravens endured one of the biggest COVID-19 outbreaks in professional sports, where at least a dozen players, including Jackson, tested positive in a 10-day span.
Although Baltimore routed the last-place Dallas Cowboys a week ago, this prime-time game in Cleveland represented the Ravens’ last chance to prove they could not only make the playoffs but make noise in it. Baltimore had been 1-4 this season against teams with winning records.
The Ravens are No. 8 in the seven-team AFC playoff field, but they are positioned for a strong finish. Baltimore’s three remaining games are against the Jacksonville Jaguars, New York Giants and Cincinnati Bengals, all of whom are a combined 8-30-1 (.218).
“We definitely needed to have this one,” said Tucker, who is 14-of-14 on field-goal tries in the final minute of regulation. “I think ultimately what the world saw on Monday Night Football is a Ravens team that played with faith and guts.”
Jackson carried the Ravens in the first three quarters with his legs, setting the Monday Night Football record with 124 yards rushing and two touchdowns. With wide receivers dropping passes and the offensive line struggling to pass protect, Jackson was 6-of-11 passing for 81 yards when he left for the locker room.
After returning, Jackson produced more passing yards in the final two minutes than he had in the first three quarters. He completed 5-of-6 passes for 82 yards and a touchdown.
“He’s resilient. He’s resilient in everything he does,” Ravens tight end Mark Andrews said. “I think the proof is in the pudding — I think when you see everything that he’s done, and how he plays, and the way the team fought. We’re not a team that gets down and come back. I think we’ve shown that this year. We’ve shown time and time again that we could come back from being down in deficits. Obviously, this was a great game, and he showed it again.”
After Cleveland tied the game at 42 with 1:04 left, Jackson completed a couple of 14-yard passes to Andrews before hitting him on a four-yard pass to get to the Browns’ 37-yard line. As soon as Tucker hit his 16th winning field goal, Jackson leapt onto the field, grabbed Tucker in a bear hug and lifted him in the air.
“That was a true movie, Hollywood script,” Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey said. “Lamar has a unique way of being able to lead guys without having to say much. This week he was a little more vocal, and I felt like he was going to bring his best game tonight. It just matched up all so well with how the week went, with him being a little more vocal as far as addressing the whole team on Zoom calls. It just all went together, and I was super pumped when that happened. It was just crazy.”
WHO IS LAMAR JACKSON
Lamar Demeatrice Jackson Jr. is an American football quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League (NFL). In 2019, he was the NFL Most Valuable Player, the second player to receive a unanimous selection for the award, and the fourth African-American quarterback to be named MVP. While in college, he won the Heisman Trophy, Maxwell Award, Walter Camp Award, and was unanimously selected as an All-American during his sophomore year in 2016.
Jackson was selected with the 32nd overall pick by the Ravens in the first round of the 2018 NFL Draft. He began his rookie season as a backup, but became the team’s starting quarterback following an injury to starter Joe Flacco. During the season, Jackson helped the team clinch the AFC North division title and became the youngest quarterback to start a playoff game. In 2019, his first full season as starter, Jackson set a record for the most rushing yards in a season by a quarterback, led the league with 36 touchdown passes, and become the second unanimous MVP award winner in NFL history.
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