SPARTANBURG, S.C. — The Thursday I was here, the big story coming out was Matt Rhule’s Panthers taking a step forward in their final hours of camp against the Ravens, who’d “won” the joint practice between the teams the day before. And punctuating that effort was a headline play—coming when Donte Jackson undercut a route, picked off Lamar Jackson and touched off a raucous celebration that ended with Carolina linebacker Shaq Thompson’s punting the intercepted ball into the sky and drawing a flag for taunting.
About 20 minutes later, I was standing with Ravens coach John Harbaugh, maybe 150 yards from where all that happened. He relayed a different view of his quarterback’s day, and of Jackson’s offseason in general.
“He’s always been a mature person. He’s never gonna change who he is or his personality, which is what you love about him. He’s always gonna be genuine,” Harbaugh said. “But he’s learning how to play the position, he’s learning what it takes to take it to that really elite level on a consistent basis, and you see it in the way he’s playing.”
Harbaugh then pointed back out to the practice fields.
“Like today, he didn’t run out of the pocket once,” he continued. “And he would’ve in a game five, six, seven times, and those would’ve been big plays. But that’s not what he’s trying to do. He’s staying in the pocket, he’s trying to make throws—and he’s making throws. He’s been super accurate all through camp, ball’s coming out quick, he’s throwing ropes all over the place. I think that’s probably through hard work in the offseason, he took the time.”
Whether it happens now, six days from now, or six months from now, Jackson will soon have generational wealth, further affirmation he never should’ve had to watch 31 players get drafted before he did three years ago. And while his production last year didn’t quite match his MVP year of 2019, he did manage to maintain a 99.3 passer rating, complete 64% of his throws, rush for 1,005 yards and win his first playoff game.
Yet, doubts still linger:
The interesting thing is that the question doesn’t get asked of many other quarterbacks like it does of Jackson, as if Jackson’s success is rooted in some sort of schematic shell game that’ll be up once defensive coaches figure out which walnut the pea is under. And as if Jackson can’t work, like other quarterbacks famously do, to stay ahead of all that.
“You know I don’t let anything like that bother me,” Jackson said, laughing, over the phone late last week. “They’ve been saying stuff like that, I’ve been hearing stuff like that for a long time. Everything we have going on here, I’m just trying to win games.”
The best way to do that, he knows, is getting better individually. And the blip in practice that ended in Jackson’s pick masked two days of work that had the Panthers people here walking away impressed, the same way the Ravens are, with Jackson’s progress.
So if you want to say the league’s figuring Jackson out, just know that he’s figuring out a few things, too, and the guys in Baltimore are quietly excited. About where it might take him and about where it might take .
