Why do Lamar Jackson’s injuries turn into medical mysteries? There’s a clear diagnosis.

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On Oct. 4, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson hurt his left ankle. For almost three weeks, that was almost all there was to know about the injury. Details from coach Jesse Minter were sparse. Speculation filled the vacuum as Jackson missed the Ravens’ next six practices and two games.

Not until Friday, when Jackson made his first public comments since the injury, did clarity emerge on the nature of the ankle ailment itself. Jackson was asked whether he’d suffered a deltoid sprain. Jackson said no, it was a high-ankle sprain. Curious, he asked who’d reported otherwise. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, Jackson was told — one of the NFL’s most established reporters.

“He part of the training staff?” Jackson deadpanned. He shook his head, adding, “He’s just reporting. Somebody probably told him that, too, though, so can’t blame him.”

The exchange underscored one of the great ironies of Jackson’s career. He is one of the NFL’s most accomplished and most popular players, a two-time NFL Most Valuable Player, a franchise quarterback and the face of a perennial AFC contender. And yet Jackson remains one of the NFL’s most inscrutable stars, his next steps eluding the league’s most well-connected insiders — and sometimes even Ravens coaches.

Jackson’s high-ankle sprain, which sidelined him for a third straight game Sunday — a blowout home loss to the Cincinnati Bengals — is almost as much a strategic-communications story as it is a health story. The Ravens want Jackson healthy; that is an advantage. The Ravens also want opponents to have to prepare for Jackson, even when he’s not healthy; that is an advantage, too, albeit a considerably smaller one.

But in the NFL, gamesmanship and transparency are rarely compatible. The mixed messaging on Jackson’s recovery this month has left Ravens fans lashing out — at Jackson, for what some see as an overly cautious recovery; at Minter, for what some see as a reluctance to acknowledge the severity of Jackson’s injury; and at team officials, who’ve kept quiet through another period of prolonged uncertainty.

The latest inflection point in Jackson’s injury narrative came Friday, when he met with local reporters after practice. Jackson called his ankle sprain “very, very, very, very, very painful” at first. He said playing with limited mobility would be “doing a disservice” to the Ravens. He said he was “headed in the right direction” after three days of limited practice participation. He also said the injury was a high-ankle sprain, which typically sidelines players for over a month.

The Banner previously reported that, based on video and pictures of the injury, experts suspected Jackson had suffered a medial or deltoid sprain (the terms are used interchangeably), and that high-ankle sprains can accompany medial sprains. So it’s possible this is all semantics (both medial and high-ankle sprains generally require longer to heal than typical sprains). But because it’s Lamar Jackson, the scrutiny is intense.

Nine days earlier, ahead of the Ravens’ AFC North opener against the Cleveland Browns, Minter called Jackson’s status “definitely day-to-day.” That was perhaps a generous characterization of his availability; Jackson himself said Friday that he “couldn’t run at all” the week Minter made those comments.

At his weekly news conference Monday, Minter was asked what responsibility he has for setting public expectations about when players will return to action.

“Again, when a player is healthy enough to play, they’ll play,” Minter said. “I think all players are like that. I do think there’s things that change sometimes with injuries, what you think right when it happens in a game and things like that, where the adrenaline and things are still going on. So Lamar has worked his butt off. He’s continued to work his butt off, and when he’s ready to play, he’ll play.”

Jackson acknowledged Friday that the discourse around his injury could be an annoyance, saying, “No matter what Lamar’s doing, there’s going to be something said, so it is what it is.”

Minter chuckled when he was asked Monday whether he maintained a dialogue with Jackson to keep the quarterback apprised of the Ravens’ public posturing.

“I think when Lamar and our training staff and our doctors and myself and everybody in the organization feel that it’s best for him to be on the field, that he’ll be on the field, and everybody will know when that is,” he said.

CBS sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson, who covered Sunday’s game in Baltimore and called Jackson’s unavailability a “shock” to the Ravens, said in a tweet Sunday that she’d been told Jackson was “confident” he would play Sunday against the Buffalo Bills.

By now, though, the Ravens know to be cautious with their optimism and careful with their words. Jackson has missed just seven games because of injuries over the past three-plus years — fewer than the Bengals’ Joe Burrow, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Aaron Rodgers and the Dallas Cowboys’ Dak Prescott, among others — but his absences have been unwieldy for the organization at times.

Last season, Jackson took a knee to the back in the second quarter of a crucial Week 16 loss to the New England Patriots, suffering a contusion that forced him from the game. Afterward, coach John Harbaugh called the injury a “bruise of some kind” but acknowledged that he did not know the severity. A day later, he said Jackson’s pain level was “legit” — “I don’t want to minimize the severity” — and labeled him day-to-day.

It wasn’t until two days later, however, on Christmas Eve, that Harbaugh explained why a “bruise of some kind” might prevent Jackson from returning to a must-win game or from the practices before the team’s next must-win game.

“It’s not like a black-and-blue mark,” he said. “These are deep-tissue contusions. ... The muscles lock up around it. You can’t really move very well. He’s in that process now of loosening all that up, hopefully. You can’t really say when it’s going to be right. He has to be able to play. He has to be able to be an athlete and be able to move.”

Other times, Harbaugh was premature with his prognoses. Last October, after Jackson had already missed two games with a hamstring injury, Harbaugh said that “our quarterback’s going to be back” after the team’s Week 7 bye. He acknowledged that he wasn’t certain about Jackson’s timetable, “but that’s the hope.”

Jackson did not return for the Ravens’ Week 8 game against the Chicago Bears. He came back a week later, for a Week 9 win over the Miami Dolphins. He said Friday that it was “dumb” for him to play through so many injuries last year.

During the 2022 season, Jackson’s recovery from a knee injury was so heavily scrutinized that he took to social media to provide health updates. In a series of tweets before the Ravens’ playoff game against the Bengals, Jackson said he had suffered a Grade 2 knee sprain — moderate ligament damage and partial tearing — that was “on the borderline” of a Grade 3 sprain, which involves a complete ligament tear.

That December, Harbaugh initially characterized Jackson’s injury as “not a season-ending type.” He later called his status “week-to-week.” On his radio show days before the Ravens’ playoff loss to the Bengals, which Jackson missed, Rich Eisen said that Harbaugh had told him weeks earlier that Jackson could’ve played with a knee brace — “but he doesn’t want to.”

One year earlier, in December 2021, an ankle injury sidelined Jackson. Harbaugh told reporters initially that it was a sprain. The injury was later revealed to be a season-ending bone bruise. Jackson didn’t return to workouts until February, after the Super Bowl.

All the while, Harbaugh was hopeful that Jackson would return in time to save the Ravens’ spiraling season. So, too, was Jackson, who hobbled onto the practice field in late December and went through a Week 17 workout with a pronounced limp.

“I’m really hopeful,” Harbaugh said before the practice. “I’m hopeful for all our quarterbacks, starting with Lamar. I really want to see him out there on Sunday. I know the fans do, and I know most of all Lamar does. He’s going to do everything he can to be out there. You can’t make a promise because we don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring.”

Jackson’s practice was his last of the season. He missed the Ravens’ final two games, extending his streak of consecutive absences to four. Harbaugh said after the season that Jackson had “assured me” less than two weeks after the ankle injury that he would return to game action.

“He worked really hard at getting back, but it just didn’t really heal,” Harbaugh said.

Conflicting reports from national reporters have only added to the uncertainty. Those reporters often rely on agents for information, and agents are paid by clients to help control narratives, but Jackson doesn’t have one; his mother acts as his adviser and de facto manager and has cultivated an impenetrable inner circle.

In December 2022, two weeks after Jackson’s Week 13 knee injury, NFL Network reported that Jackson was “expected to return soon” to practice and that the team was hopeful he would play in Week 16. Neither happened.

Two weeks ago, ESPN reported that Jackson had a “realistic chance” to play in the Ravens’ Week 6 game against the Browns. But he was held out of practice that week and ruled out two days before the game.

And on a Sunday morning appearance on NFL Network, two days after the news conference in Owings Mills, Rapoport said Jackson was “still dealing with that ankle sprain.” But even he was jokingly skeptical of the injury designation.

“He called it a high-ankle sprain; I was told it is not a typical high-ankle sprain,” Rapoport said. “It doesn’t matter. We love Lamar, but we also know he is not going to go today.”