Why the narratives about Ravens QB Lamar Jackson are wrong

Let’s have a real conversation about Lamar Jackson

This article might come across to many as a homer piece, and they would not be completely wrong. Lamar Jackson is my favorite athlete that I have ever rooted for and he has allowed me to enjoy football in a way I never would have imagined during the latter Joe Flacco years.

But I want to stress that I am not trying to give a ranking of Jackson, but rather a passionate plea for the football world to stop with the double standards.

While I do have Jackson in my top 10, I would not put him in my top five right now because there are real concerns and areas of improvement that I wrote about at the beginning of this piece, things which for now are keeping him out of the very-top-tier.

I also believe that as long as Greg Roman is the offensive coordinator, there will likely be a ceiling to the production of Baltimore’s passing offense.

But for some reason, any real discussion seems to get lost in the mix when it comes to Jackson and everyone goes back to the same worn-out points.

Quite frankly, I don’t care where anyone ranks Lamar Jackson. As long as everyone is operating in good faith and agreeing on basic notions of truth, I am more than happy to disagree with anyone in one direction or the other and have good substantive conversations, because that is part of the fun of being a sports fan.

Most people in football media tend to be honest with Jackson, but their voices wind up getting drowned out by evaluations like those given in the ESPN list, which makes the entire exercise a futile circle of people talking past each other.

And that is the real issue.