On Christmas night, the two best teams in the NFL will play against each other. So, too, will the ghosts of quarterbacks we can’t seem to understand or quantify properly (both present and future). Put down your weapons, though, we’re not here to try to flesh out the argument du jour about just how great Brock Purdy really is. I can’t safely ingest any more Advil, anyway.
We’re here to make fun of all the teams that wouldn’t make a legitimate run at Lamar Jackson this offseason when the Ravens slapped the nonexclusive franchise tag on him, dangling him to the football world at a time when the quarterback market was hungrier for real talent than a Fast and Furious movie.
I feel like the football world has comfortably moved on to the point where Jackson is considered a legitimate MVP candidate. There he is, right behind Purdy in most sportsbooks. But wind the clock back six months and remember the very academic argument that existed for passing on one of the most maddening players of his generation to defend, simply because the one offensive coordinator Jackson had ever played for in the NFL chose to use him in one specific, semireckless way that ignored a very large and successful body of work at Louisville and did its best to compensate for lack of talent at the wide receiver position. Because of that, we somehow convinced ourselves that there was only one way to deploy Jackson.
