I think when it comes to a matter like this—wondering whether an NFL player should be playing through an injury instead of imploring him to sit for the betterment of his long-term health—we have to ask ourselves whether it’s worth the while. We have to ask ourselves what it says about us. We have to ask ourselves what it says about the person who actually has to put their body on the line.
Lamar Jackson ended up inactive Saturday night, in a must-win game for the Ravens, with a back contusion. He was listed as doubtful going into the weekend, though on Friday, Baltimore coach John Harbaugh reiterated that Jackson could potentially play without practicing. He also added: “If he’s ready to go, he will go. If he can go, he will go. You can bet on that.” Jackson’s replacement, Snoop Huntley, was excellent. The Ravens scored on all five of their first-half possessions and put up 41 points total. Huntley has quarterbacked Baltimore for the team’s only two victories against clubs with winning records this season. It also helps that Derrick Henry (who had 216 yards and four touchdowns) is part Brachiosaurus.
Baltimore was aided in its path to a 41–24 victory after the Packers’ own backup quarterback—Malik Willis, who was also impressive in relief of Jordan Love—exited the game in the fourth quarter and gave way to third-stringer Clayton Tune.
The win did little to quiet the chorus of outside voices that mounted during the week suggesting that Jackson was not meeting the positional standard of grittiness—a bar of martyrdom that has risen to absurdist levels but has become cemented in our expectation of professional football players, especially quarterbacks. It’s a blood-spitting, fossil-buying, horse-breaking world out there. Act accordingly.
And, indeed, this is a bad season to be accused of not playing through something when so many other quarterbacks are behaving like the end of days is nigh. Aaron Rodgers was out there at age 42 with a broken wrist diving into a mosh pit for loose footballs against the Ravens. Gardner Minshew played drives with a torn ACL. Daniel Jones took snaps with a broken fibula. Love was handing off with the opposite arm thanks to a joint sprain. Carson Wentz had season-ending surgery after taking snaps with a “torn labrum and a fractured socket.” Justin Herbert played with a broken hand. Joe Burrow was thought to be lost for the season and ended up mounting a comeback from turf toe before Thanksgiving. Philip Rivers could have lived a life of retirement doing ads for Tommie Copper joint-healing sleeves, but instead walked into the live bullets of an NFL football season for the sick thrills of it all.
So what are we supposed to do with Jackson, really? Every shot of him on the sideline showed him with teammates, playfully in conversation (or wearing a gigantic foam cheese grater). Had Jackson abandoned his locker room—the one true mortal sin in football—there wouldn’t have been a single person within 25 yards of him. Certainly he would not have been allowed to don the cheese grater.
Do we blame the Ravens? Do we go back to October when the team had to pay a $100,000 fine for mislabeling Jackson on an injury report and plant the seed of conspiracy? Do we parse Harbaugh’s words throughout the week and wonder if the lack of some grand, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington speech professing Jackson as a warrior of the finest caliber who is more injured than we can possibly imagine, stoked our imagination or made us believe that, perhaps, Baltimore believed Jackson could play? Do we bundle all that with the emergence of a Baltimore Sun article accusing Jackson of staying up late to play video games and falling asleep in meetings (something Harbaugh did adamantly deny) and suggest that this was a team’s backhanded way of getting its pound of flesh for a disappointing season and a quarterback not putting in the effort?
Do we blame Jackson? Not for sitting out, but for enjoying a rare type of anonymity and a status as the NFL’s one true recluse at the position? If he had more of a presence, if he had a conduit to the masses, if he carried himself more like a political leader with matters of his own health disseminated to the public at the conclusion of each granular test, would the door even be open for such questioning?
Or do we blame ourselves? This is the tough one. The uncomfortable one. Do we blame our near-constant obsession with who is getting more than us while doing less? This touches on a nerve that travels to the very center of our being; one that frazzles our common sense and redirects our animus to the outside world. The neighbor logging white-collar hours with the shiny Mercedes while we’re pulling doubles. The churchgoer skimping on the collection plate who still gets a seat right up front during Christmas service. Part of our issue in letting the matter of Jackson go is that we cannot let any of this go. We are, by nature, accountants of everything. Collectors of slights.
At the end of the day, the facts are these: If Jackson wasn’t out there because of a contractual concern, or a lack of desire, he will be found out. He will be exposed. He will also have to live with that decision (again, something that, if it were true, he did a fantastic job of masking on the sideline Saturday). This is a pain far worse than public scrutiny.
If Jackson really was hurt—so hurt that, if you or I had felt the same kind of pain we would have been thumbing the nurse button to oblivion at the hospital—then the opposite should be true. We—anyone who fanned the flames of questioning Jackson’s integrity—should take responsibility.
Hopefully, there will be a moment of clarity that arises from this Jackson situation and nips this new phenomenon of questioning someone’s placement on an injury report in the bud (preferably a heroic return for the quarterback in Week 18 against the Steelers in a winner-take-all contest for the AFC North, but we can’t be that greedy). Because we can never know or interpret someone else’s pain. It’s far too complicated.
It’s more effective to wonder why we think we can have an opinion in the first place. It’s also the hardest route, which is why we’re in this situation to begin with.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Lamar Jackson Deserves the Benefit of the Doubt.
