In Lamar Jackson’s next QB evolution, small details will make a big difference

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At some point early Sunday afternoon, something will go wrong for Lamar Jackson. The Ravens quarterback will drop back to pass and a lineman will miss a block, or a receiver will slip, or the Indianapolis Colts will have called the perfect play.

It happens. Offensive coordinator Declan Doyle can future-proof only so much of the Ravens’ season opener. Besides, Doyle will have an insurance policy inside Lucas Oil Stadium. That’s Lamar Jackson, too.

“He is one of the best second-play quarterbacks in all of football,” Doyle said last month. “You do not want to take that away from him at all.”

The Ravens’ hope as they rebuilt their offense this offseason, however, was that they will need less of it. Jackson is one of the NFL’s most gifted improvisers; Doyle wants a cast and quarterback who are word-perfect in every scene.

As Jackson prepares for his ninth season in Baltimore, and perhaps his next evolution as a quarterback, his grand ambitions will depend more than ever on the small things. The Ravens are comfortable with chaos, but they would prefer structure — Jackson’s feet and eyes synced up with his receivers’ routes and his line’s pass sets, a newfound harmony lifting their attack.

“That is what makes the offense,” Jackson said before practice Tuesday. “If one guy is off with something, it can pretty much screw up the whole dynamic of the offense, or whatever play we have drawn up. … If we mess up on one small, micro detail, now we have to move on to the next play. Do not focus on that play, focus on the next play now. But the detail, the detail, the detail — that is all he [Doyle] has been coaching us, pretty much.”

That was part of Doyle’s pitch for the job, his first as a play-caller. He knew Jackson could “put the cape on and go be Superman,” as he put it, when pass plays broke down. But at Doyle’s introductory news conference in February, he acknowledged that Jackson could be more consistent “with his eyes, with his footwork, within the system.”

Coaches and teammates have long raved about Jackson’s vision as a passer, his ability to process a defense’s changing picture. Former quarterbacks coach Tee Martin said last year that Jackson would sometimes notice details mid-play that eluded Ravens coaches until they reviewed his tape: “You’re like, ‘How do you see that?’”

Jackson’s arm talent and football IQ afforded him greater margin for error. Quarterback Robert Griffin III, who backed up Jackson for parts of his first three seasons in Baltimore (2018-20), told the team website in 2024 that Jackson’s mind was “beautiful,” but different.

On a typical drop-back with five eligible receivers, Griffin explained, a quarterback might cycle from the first read in his progression to the third read before ending at the fifth. Jackson sometimes would go in reverse.

“It’s never normally 5-1,” Griffin said, referring to the order of reads. “That doesn’t happen. You don’t go 5-3-1. That’s just not how the progression goes. But … sometimes he goes 3-2-1, and it works. And I don’t know how it works, but it’s a special trait that he has.”

Jackson has improved markedly as a passer in the five seasons since he last worked with Griffin, expanding his range to the sidelines and assuming more presnap control. But Doyle’s offense will be the best test yet of his ability to play on time.

In a June interview after a mandatory-minicamp practice, Doyle was asked about Griffin’s comments: Did they align at all with his own observations of Jackson’s pass game execution? Doyle’s response, covering almost 350 words in about 100 seconds, shifted the focus away from the quarterback.

“I would say, on every given snap, whether you’re playing quarterback, you’re the O-lineman, you’re a receiver or a back, everything is spelled out for what your job description is on that play — what we expect of you and the timing in which you end up in those spots,” Doyle said. “Pretty much all of our time is spent trying to perfect those details.”

Jackson’s dual-threat ability has made him one of the best quarterbacks of his generation, a two-time NFL Most Valuable Player whose dominance has straddled two distinct offensive eras in Baltimore. He earned unanimous MVP honors in 2019 in Greg Roman’s “medieval” run-first system. Four years later, in Todd Monken’s more modern, more balanced attack, Jackson claimed his second MVP. In 2024, he was even better, only to be denied a third such honor.

But Jackson’s struggles last season perhaps exposed the limits of his superpowers. The Ravens’ offensive line play regressed. Their receiving corps, propped up by Pro Bowl wide receiver Zay Flowers, was almost a one-man band. Monken’s credibility inside the locker room wavered.

And Jackson, hampered by injuries for most of the season, looked surprisingly mortal in moments of peril. He finished with the highest sack rate of his career (10.7%) and his highest rate of pressures that turned into sacks (23.1%) since becoming a full-time starter, according to Pro Football Focus. On pressured drop-backs, his on-target rate fell from 64.9% in 2024 to 53.8%. Among the 26 quarterbacks last season with at least 100 under-pressure attempts, only the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Aaron Rodgers was less accurate (52.8% on-target rate), according to Sports Info Solutions.

“The first half of his career was really built around this dynamic athlete, and he would make so many unique plays with his legs,” Dan Orlovsky, a seven-year NFL veteran and current analyst for ESPN, said in an interview. But with Jackson approaching age 30, Orlovsky said, his passing game would “really start to be the focus point” of his next evolution.

Jackson’s adaptations started early in the offseason, when he first experimented with a “left-foot open” stance in shotgun and pistol formations. The subtle change in posture, with the left foot staggered ahead of the right, is meant to better connect Ravens quarterbacks to the timing of receivers’ routes at the end of their drops.

Jackson’s work continued through offseason practices and training camp as he digested Doyle’s brand-new scheme. “It’s all ‘Dec,’” Jackson said. He called the 30-year-old’s attention to detail “mind-blowing”; Doyle was demanding in his expectations for how the offense huddled before the snap, how Jackson used his cadence at the line of scrimmage, and where the wide receivers and tight ends lined up.

Under Doyle, a disciple of offensive gurus Sean Payton and Ben Johnson, Jackson could enter a third distinct offensive era in Baltimore: more under-center snaps, more play-action concepts, more influences of the West Coast offense. But Orlovsky said Doyle would have to strike a balance in his embrace of Jackson’s out-of-structure brilliance and his desire for more in-structure execution.

“You also don’t want to make the player something that he isn’t and take away some things that are uncoachable traits or superpowers,” he said. “It’s the fine line of, yes, getting him to certainly live in that timing-and-rhythm element of that offense, while also not minimizing or squashing instincts. …

“That’s going to be the dance between coach and quarterback, is when and when not to. And making sure that we’re not trying to make Lamar Jackson this quote-unquote statue, pocket quarterback. That’s not who he is. That’s not what makes him really unique. You can do it at an incredibly high level. But you also don’t want to make him a robot.”

In Indianapolis, Jackson and the Ravens will start all over again. On Tuesday, he called the new season a “breath of fresh air.” He made clear his goals for the year: “Winning it all.” He said he was healthy. He said he was ready. And he said he was looking forward to another practice, to more details.

“The level of anticipation is really high,” coach Jesse Minter said Monday. “He’s in a great place both physically and mentally. ... That doesn’t mean it’s going to go perfect. There are going to be plays that you’re going to have to overcome. There are going to be plays where it’s a bad play and it’s ‘What happens the next play?’ But nobody you’d rather have under center than Lamar.”