It wasn’t the return to action Baltimore Ravens QB Lamar Jackson had in mind when he took to the field on Sunday vs. the Buffalo Bills. After sitting out his team’s prior 3 contests, Jackson returned for a brief appearance under centre, before appearing to have his hand struck by Bills defender Greg Rousseau in the first quarter.
After initially being deemed questionable to return, the Ravens eventually ruled him out for the remainder of the contest. Now, he’s slated for surgery on what could be a season ending operation.
Making matters even worse still, back up quarterback Tyler Huntley also exited the contest with a turf toe injury, leaving Joe Fagnano to serve as the team’s signal caller for the rest of the afternoon against Buffalo. Huntley will undergo an MRI on Monday to determine the severity of the injury, but Baltimore won’t have long to recover as they’ll host the Thursday nighter against the Jaguars this week.
“We’ll do everything in our power to keep rolling, to keep this thing going, to get it back on the right side with whatever that looks like and whoever that’s playing,” head coach Jesse Minter told reporters. “It’s definitely my job to make sure that we stay together, that we don’t point fingers, that we have each other’s back, that we believe in the next man up mentality. It’s what we’ve talked about a lot. And sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn’t. So we got to really, really just pour into the belief and believe in the guys that we have and move forward.”
After starting the season 4-1, Baltimore has now dropped 3 straight contests and are in the basement of the ultra-competitive AFC North. Currently 2 games back of the division leading Steelers at the midway mark, the Ravens will have an interesting week ahead of them as they’ll need to weigh their immediate needs at quarterback against their long term draft strategy as the November 10th NFL trade deadline approaches.
Another interesting subplot in all of this is the fact that if Jackson does indeed miss the remainder of the season, he’ll be entering his final year under contract with Baltimore in 2027. However, unless a long term deal is reached, it’s unlikely that the 29 year old can be realistically brought back as he’ll feature an $84.34M cap hit which would have massive effects on the rest of the team’s roster building capabilities.
Jackson has both a no-trade and no-tag clause built into his current deal meaning that if the team does ultimately decide to move on from their franchise QB, he would need to sign off on any potential deals.
For now, Baltimore appears to be preparing for the possibility of Fagnano serving as their starting QB this week. While the club is holding out hope that Huntley’s injury isn’t as bad as initially feared, Eric DeCosta and the rest of the front office are likely kicking tires on free agent QBs to reinforce a suddenly paper thin position for the club.
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