The opening was small, about as wide as a kid’s-size hula hoop, which meant the throws had to be perfect. But in the late-morning hours of the Ravens’ final mandatory-minicamp practice earlier this month, as quarterback after quarterback dropped back to pass, the target might as well have been a ring toss carnival game.
From about 20 yards away, passes caromed off the target’s exterior, or landed short of the opening, or sailed over, or missed wide. Not until Lamar Jackson finally laced a throw into the net a few minutes into the drill did the thwang of a bull’s-eye ring out over the practice fields in Owings Mills.
“Oh, my God, we were, like, four of 1,000 today,” Jackson joked afterward. “I was like, ‘What the hell are we doing?’”
