What are the best performances a Ravens player has had over the course of a season?
All stats are collected for this post from pro-football-reference.com
5. Elvis Dumervil’s 2014 season:
Well if you set the Baltimore Ravens franchise records for sacks in a season, you have to get on this list. Elvis Dumervil was unstoppable in the 2014 season. He had 17 sacks that year and forced two fumbles. He had six games with two sacks or more. Dumervil gave the Ravens elite play that season. He got constant pressure on the quarterback and was a player that the opposing team would always have to game plan for. That’s saying a lot when you have Terrell Suggs tearing it up on the other side.
Dumervil and Suggs were the best pass rushing duo the Ravens ever had at outside linebacker. Suggs had 12 sacks and benefited greatly from Dumervil getting so much attention. Getting 29 sacks out of your top two outside linebackers is an incredible boost to the defense. Everything the Ravens did defensively that season generated from the front seven. The secondary was going through the most difficult season imaginable. If it were not for Dumervil being the best play-maker on the entire team, that season could have gone dramatically different. Dumervil made the Ravens defense better than it was that year.
While we’re only talking regular season here, Dumervil played a big part in the Ravens beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs. Dumervil’s two sacks against Ben Roethlisberger give him some extra credit here. There was no way to keep Dumervil off this list, just like there was no way to stop him in the 2014 season. This was one of the best pass rushing seasons you’ll ever see from an outside linebacker in the NFL. Dumervil had a serious case for being the Defensive Player of the Year. It went to J.J. Watt, but Dumervil was arguably the biggest difference maker that season.
4. Derrick Mason’s 2007 season:
I don’t care that he only had five touchdown receptions, Derrick Mason’s 2007 season shouldn’t have been possible. The Ravens had three quarterbacks. Steve McNair got hurt. Kyle Boller was awful. Troy Smith was just as bad. Mason caught 103 passes for 1,087 yards. It’s incredible that in a very bad year for the Ravens, with very bad quarterback play, Mason had 100 grabs. Everything was working against Mason that season. He was the main target of an offense that didn’t have a ton of weapons too; everybody knew he was getting the ball and nobody stopped him from being the most productive player.
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Mason had eight 1,000 yard seasons. That’s just what you expect out of a very solid and consistent receiver. His 2007 season was special. It wasn’t astronomical numbers that he put up. It wasn’t record breaking stuff. It was a golden sliver of goodness in a bad season. The fact is that the 2007 Ravens team needed Mason more than any other squad he’s been on. The fact of the matter is that he had his career high in receptions with the worst quarterback situation of his career.
That’s got to be recognized. That has to be on this list. Mason holds the franchise record for most catches in a season. Every person on this list has at least a franchise record of some significance from their performance. If you think Mason’s 2007 season is too high on this list, than you’re not accounting for how hard it was to do what he did that year. You have to see Mason’s 2007 season as a defining moment of his career. He was reliable. He stepped up his game when the team was going through a year where playoffs got off the table early. Mason was tough and gritty and he outdid what you could have expected from a number one receiver in this situation.
3. Ed Reed’s 2004 season
I don’t know what is crazier. Is it that Ed Reed had nine interceptions or is it that Ed Reed had two seasons with nine interceptions? Ed Reed could honestly fill this whole list. It’s a lot like Justin Tucker on my Top 5 greatest game winning plays rankings, I jut had to pick one kick. Let’s go with the year that Reed won the title NFL Defensive Player of the Year. I could even argue that the 2008 season where he had eight interceptions was just as good as the 2004 season where he had nine.
Reed had an interception in eight games of the season. That’s insane. In half of the games, Reed got a pick. Quarterbacks were practically horrified to throw the football down the field. They knew that Reed could make them pay, even when they didn’t even make a bad decision. There may be no defense to a perfect throw, but there was know way to avoid Reed when he saw an opportunity.
In week three, he picked off two passes against the Cincinnati Bengals. Reed had 358 interception return yards. He scored two defensive touchdowns, one on a pick, one on a fumble recovery. His interception return for a touchdown was a record breaking 106 yard interception return.
Reed made plays all over the field. He had 64 solo tackles, two sacks and six tackles for a loss. Reed was such a hard hitting player and when he was young and injuries hadn’t taken that much of a toll, he played the game like he was wrecking ball. He wasn’t just an interception guy, and people tend to forget how incredible of an all around player he was in his prime. This was his prime. This was Reed announcing to the world that he wasn’t just one of the best players in the NFL, he was going to be an all-time great.
2. Jamal Lewis’s 2003 season
Jamal Lewis had 12 games over 100 yards rushing in 2003. He had two games over 200 yards rushing, including a record at the time, 295 yards against the Cleveland Browns. Lewis was the definition of a workhorse in the 2003 season. The Ravens gave him 387 carries. The Ravens wanted to run the ball and they weren’t shy about it. There were three games where Lewis had over 30 rushing attempts. Lewis took a beating that season, but he doled out more punishment than he took.
He made good use of being handed the rock so much and that’s an understatement. Lewis had 5.3 yards per carry as his season average. In that record breaking game against the Browns he averaged over nine yards per carry. Lewis was unstoppable. Lewis may not be an all-time great like Walter Payton or Jim Brown. That season though, he was the best running back I have ever seen.
He was fast, he was powerful and he was so hard to bring down. When you talk about Lewis’s case for the Hall of Fame, you have to throw longevity out the window. He had over 300 carries in his first three seasons and in 2003 he picked up 2,066 yards.
Lewis is one of six players in NFL history to have over 2,000 yards in a season. This season wasn’t just one of the greatest by Ravens standards. We’re talking about a season where Lewis averaged almost 130 yards a game. That’s almost unheard of. This would be a top five season for every team in the NFL. The main talking point is the yards he gained but think about this from another perspective. He scored 14 rushing touchdowns. That’s a lot of points he put on the scoreboard. You could make an argument that this is the best season a running back has had in the modern era.
1. Lamar Jackson’s MVP 2019 season
Lamar Jackson led the Ravens to the best regular season record in franchise history, rushed for over 1,000 yards, led the league in touchdown passes and was the MVP of the NFL. This is the best season any Ravens player has had. Jackson is the only player in franchise history to win the MVP. When you combine his passing yards and rushing yards, you get 4,333 yards. Getting 4,333 yards from the quarterback position is phenomenal, it just happens that Jackson got it in the most unique way in NFL history. Jackson topped Michael Vick’s rushing record for a season as a quarterback and I repeat he led the league in touchdown passes. Jackson changed the game, playing the most important position on the field differently than we’ve ever seen before.
Jackson was amazing all season long. He opened the season with a five touchdown pass performance against the Miami Dolphins. He had three games with five touchdown passes and two games with a perfect passer rating. Jackson could beat you with his arm and his legs and he did whatever he had to do to get the win. The Seahawks game was the moment that sticks out from this season. Jackson and Marshal Yanda pleaded with John Harbaugh to go for it on fourth down. The Ravens ran a quarterback power play and Jackson got the Ravens a touchdown. Jackson had to carry the team on his back. On a day where he only threw for 143 yards he still found a way to be the difference maker.
Jackson gets the top spot not because of recency bias but because I can’t remember a more fun season of football. I can’t remember having my jaw drop so many times because of one player over the course of a 16 game season. I can’t give the top spot to anybody else. What Jackson did in the 2019 season is unbelievable. Jackson is the biggest superstar the Ravens have ever had, at least on offense. This was a magical season by a quarterback who makes magic happen every Sunday.