11/28/25, 1:15 PM Lamar Jackson looks like a shell of himself.
And he’s ticked off about it - The Athletic
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Lamar Jackson looks like a shell of himself. And he’s ticked
off about it
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Over Baltimore's last three games, Jackson has thrown zero touchdown passes, three interceptions and lost two fumbles. Phil Didion / The Enquirer
By Jeff Zrebiec
Nov. 28, 2025 Updated 7:29 am PST
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BALTIMORE — Lamar Jackson returned to his corner locker, sat down and allowed himself a brief
moment. He stared toward the ground, seemingly collecting his thoughts. He then got up and dressed
quickly.
As Jackson was finishing up, his longtime Ravens teammate Mark Andrews walked over. The two
embraced and had a short conversation, with Jackson doing most of the talking and even offering a brief
smile. They again shook hands before Jackson grabbed his headphones and walked briskly out of the
locker room and into the cold Baltimore night.
“Lamar is great,” Andrews said. “I have no complaints. He’s our guy, and I have full trust in him. Football
is a way of life. Sometimes bad things happen.”
The Cincinnati Bengals and their 32nd-ranked defense were supposed to be a tonic for what has ailed
Jackson and the Ravens’ offense in recent weeks. Instead, in a 32-14 beatdown of the Ravens in front of
an announced 70,066 at M&T Bank Stadium and a prime-time Thanksgiving audience, the Bengals
became the latest team to make the Baltimore offense look mistake-prone and inept.
At the center of the Ravens’ offensive struggles was Jackson, the league’s two-time MVP, who has looked
like a shell of himself for three weeks now. Jackson committed three of Baltimore’s five turnovers,
missed several open receivers and only led two scoring drives — both ending in long touchdown runs —
against a defense that was allowing a league-high 32.7 points per game coming into the night.
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0:00 / 1:35
“I’m ticked off,” said Jackson, who was badly upstaged in his home stadium by Bengals quarterback Joe
Burrow, who threw two touchdown passes in his first game in over two months following toe surgery.
“It’s not even frustrating. I’m just mad because — like I said, we can’t have that. And the turnovers are a
big part of winning/losing games. Turning the ball over, giving them an extra possession, this is the
outcome.”
The Ravens’ five-game winning streak, which took them from 1-5 and last place in the AFC North to a
share of the division lead with the Pittsburgh Steelers, was built in recent weeks despite the struggling
offense. However, the Ravens (6-6) were powerless to overcome a litany of mistakes Thursday, and now
all the momentum they built — and any margin of error — is all but gone. Their next two games, at home
against the Steelers and against these same Bengals on the road, are virtually must-wins.
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The good news is the Ravens
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haveTeams
a mini-bye week to rest and make some corrections, but there’s
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suddenly much to fix. The five turnovers were Baltimore’s most in a game since 2013. Isaiah Likely’s
second-quarter fumble came as he was about to score a touchdown. Jackson’s two fumbles came deep in
Baltimore’s own territory, and his interception came inside the Bengals’ 20.
“We had a bad game with that,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. “We did not protect the football. It’s
not good. It’s on me. I’m a coach, and my job is to make it clear to the guys that that’s not OK. You put the
ball away. You protect the football. … You catch it, you put it away, you finish the run. You do whatever
you have to do to protect the football because that’s job No. 1.
“That’s what wins and loses games. Our guys know that. Everybody knows it, and it’s my responsibility
to make sure they understand that and that we practice it that way every single day, and it carries over
to the game.”
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Harbaugh didn’t single out Jackson, but the Ravens surely know they’re going nowhere fast as a team if
their franchise quarterback continues to play the way he has for much of the last month. Since returning
from a hamstring injury to throw four touchdown passes in a Week 9 victory over the Miami Dolphins,
Jackson has thrown one touchdown pass compared to three interceptions and completed just 56 percent
of his pass attempts, while averaging just over 3.0 yards per rushing attempt.
Jackson has now gone three straight games without registering a touchdown throw or run. Before this
three-game stretch, that had only happened seven times in Jackson’s career — and two of those games
he exited early because of injuries.
Perhaps most concerning, Jackson, who has battled hamstring, knee, ankle and toe injuries, looked
healthier Thursday than he has in recent weeks and certainly was more aggressive using his legs. That
didn’t help him avoid myriad mistakes, from turning the ball over to missing open receivers to not
responding well to the Bengals’ pressure and blitzes.
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“I just have to play consistently,”
NFL
Jackson said. “I can’t have turnovers … not just this game, butSubscribe
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in any •••
game. We’re putting our defense on the field too much. I can’t have that.”
Jackson denied that this is the worst stretch of his eight-year career, but his numbers and the eye test tell
a different story. Some of his errant throws on Thursday, like the swing pass to Keaton Mitchell that he
spiked in the ground and the simple out for a first down that he sailed over Zay Flowers’ head, are
straight out of his rookie season in 2018.
This version of Jackson looks unsettled and tentative, doesn’t appear to be seeing the field well or feeling
the pressure, and is missing layups regularly.
Jackson also doesn’t appear to have any answers at the moment. After the offense struggled Sunday
against a vulnerable New York Jets defense, Jackson repeatedly pointed to poor “execution.” On
Thursday, his buzzword was “consistency.” He used some version of the word 10 different times in a 13-
question news conference. Yet, when he was asked why the offense is struggling so much in recent
weeks, he didn’t have an explanation.
“I can’t call it,” Jackson said. “I don’t want to make anything up. I felt like we were doing things pretty
well on the field. We got first downs, we drove the ball down the field sometimes, and then a turnover
would happen — a mishap — here and there. We just have to be on the same page, be consistent. Like I
just said, that’s the biggest key right now — being consistent throughout the game, first quarter to fourth
quarter, and not putting our defense on the field as much as we did.”
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At least for the first half, the Ravens’ defense held strong despite being on the field for more than 20
minutes, holding the Bengals to four Evan McPherson field goals and getting a crucial fourth-down stop
after Jackson fumbled at the Baltimore 2-yard line. But the Ravens’ top cornerback, Nate Wiggins, went
down with a foot injury, Burrow heated up and Baltimore couldn’t get off the field defensively in the
decisive third quarter.
Burrow connected for 14- and 29-yard touchdown passes to Tanner Hudson and Andrei Iosivas,
respectively, turning a 12-7 game at halftime into a 26-14 Cincinnati lead. All told, the Bengals scored
points on four consecutive possessions from the second to fourth quarters. The Ravens, meanwhile, went
six straight full possessions after their rare first-drive touchdown without scoring.
“It’s one of those days that you have, and defense had a lot of those days early in the year,” said Ravens
safety Kyle Hamilton. “We aren’t pointing the finger at anybody, not pointing the finger at Lamar, not
pointing the finger at skill guys, O-line, whatever it may be. We’re all one family. We have to roll with the
punches and get through the lows and the highs at the same time. …
“He is on point and on time in practice, and it just doesn’t go that way sometimes in the game. But he’s a
competitor, and he’s one of the best. A two-time MVP for a reason. Even LeBron (James) has an off
night.”
WHAT YOU SHOULD READ NEXT
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Bengals-Ravens takeaways: Joe Burrow shines in return, CincinnatiSubscribe •••
defense dominates in win
Quarterback throws two touchdown passes in his first start since Week 2 as Bengals rout struggling
Ravens.
The problem with the Ravens is that the offense is having too many “off” nights. In fact, a case could be
made that the last time the Ravens played anything close to a complete game offensively was against the
Dolphins on Oct. 30, and even then, they got off to a relatively slow start.
The Ravens have had a good quarter and a good drive here and there, but they’re not doing anything
consistently well — there’s that word again — on the offensive side of the ball.
Left tackle Ronnie Stanley voiced his belief that the Ravens’ identity needs to be the run game, and
Derrick Henry got off to a strong start, scoring on a 28-yard run in the first quarter. But the Ravens
didn’t have too many opportunities to run the ball in the first half because they were either in second- or
third-and-long, or they were in their two-minute offense.
“It’s very frustrating, especially being around football for a little bit, playing for a while and just
understanding the type of personnel we have, the type of people we have,” Stanley said. “That’s just not
our standard, especially speaking for the offense. I thought the defense did a great job, but offensively,
that’s not our standard.”
By Jeff Zrebiec
Senior Writer, Ravens
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Jeff Zrebiec is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Baltimore Ravens. Before joining The Athletic in 2018,
he spent the previous 18 years as a writer for The Baltimore Sun, 13 of them on the Orioles or Ravens beats. The
New Jersey native is a graduate of Loyola University in Baltimore. Follow Jeff on Twitter @jeffzrebiec
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