Lamar Jackson: What we should look for in the HOF Game
With the regular season quickly approaching, the Ravens get their first taste of the 2018 season Thursday night, and all eyes will be on Lamar Jackson.
The preseason isn’t exactly what we would call awe-inspiring football. Honestly, it’s a borderline snooze fest. The brand name players hardly take any snaps, and the games are even more meaningless than the Pro Bowl. But what gets fans watching is the incoming rookie class.
Fans want to see how their respective team’s draft class looks like on the field. The preseason allows day three picks to see significant playing team and allows the teams to see how they look off the training fields. More importantly for us, it allows the fans to see how their teams first round pick looks, and no first round pick has more hype for the preseason than the Baltimore Ravens’ first round pick, Lamar Jackson.
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Jackson, the 2016 Heisman Trophy winner, showed all-world talent and athleticism during his time at the University of Louisville. But rather than be talked about being a tremendous athlete, Jackson would rather show off how he’s grown as a quarterback.
With that being said, there’s three things Ravens fans will be looking for Thursday night during the Hall of Fame game against the Chicago Bears. Here’s what all comes to mind:
How comfortable does he look?
By far the biggest thing we should all be looking for is to see how comfortable Jackson feels in this offense. It will be detrimental to his development that he grows into an NFL style offense and away from gimmicky types of college systems.
This isn’t implying that Jackson 100% has to fit the offense Baltimore already has in place. Rather, we want to see Jackson operate smoothly in a new environment. It’s so early in his career that it wouldn’t be fair for us to expect perfection, but the better he looks, the better we feel.
Watching Jackson Thursday night, be on the look out for his feel for the game. The more frantic he looks, the more concerned we’ll be as fans. On the flip side, if Jackson looks seasoned then we are going to be extremely hopeful.
But it is only the first preseason game of his career, so don’t expect perfection.