You can film Lamar Jackson, but don’t dare try to do it when he’s running an actual play.
A day after ESPN’s Jamison Hensley claimed the Ravens aren’t permitting media members to film Jackson when he throws the ball, the team took umbrage at the notion media aren’t allowed to film their oft-criticized franchise QB Lamar Jackson.
The team said its policy regarding recording team plays has not changed and media can film indeed film individual players.
“The reason is because you’re not us,” Harbaugh told reporters on Thursday. “We allow our in-house people to do that, because we trust them. We know what they’re going to put out and what they’re not going to put out. We open a can of worms with you and say, ‘You can film this, but can’t film that,’ then we have to spend all of our time policing whether you pushed it over the line or not and showed a two-man route combination, or showed a complete play, that we don’t want our opponent to see. So, why are we going to try to police the media when they don’t work with us and for us? That’s exactly why because we do have valuable information.
Lamar Jackson at Ravens minicamp on June 15, 2021. AP“If it were just going to be the one-man route you put out, it wouldn’t be a problem, but it never stays there. It never ends up being that. The envelope always gets pushed, the slope always gets slippery and then stuff goes out that we don’t want out and that we don’t want our opponents to see, or even personnel evaluators to see about our players in practice that we don’t need them to see. So, it’s a competitive-type issue that way. We can control our people; we can’t control you in terms of what you put out.”
Earlier this month, the Ravens posted a video on Twitter that showed Jackson throwing a wobbly pass downfield to Sammy Watkins. The clip irked a number of Ravens’ fans, who had hoped that Jackson would solve his throwing issues during the offseason. The particular throw certainly wasn’t what they had hoped to see.
Even with a prolific start to his NFL career, Jackson has drawn plenty of criticism for his throwing ability throughout his first three seasons in the league. The 2019 MVP has consistently struggled to hit targets downfield.
Despite the concern, Jackson had an impressive minicamp performance this week. The Baltimore Sun estimated that Jackson completed 75 percent of his passes during 11-on-11 drills on Wednesday.
“He did have an excellent day today,” Harbaugh told reporters. “I think I’ve seen him work at it with other guys so hard throughout the whole program here. We’ll know for sure when the games start getting played, but I think as a coach, you look for that every single day, and we’ve seen it every single day.
Jackson has a pair of new weapons to throw to out wide in Watkins and rookie Rashod Bateman, which could take some of the pressure off his run game. Fans will have to wait a little longer, though, to actually see if Jackson can throw them the ball effectively.
