The Baltimore Ravens officially ruled out starting quarterback Lamar Jackson for another game, announcing that he will not play in their Week 18 meeting with the Cincinnati Bengals.
This makes five consecutive games that Jackson has missed, while he has yet to resume practicing after suffering a sprained PCL in early December against the Denver Broncos.
That would mean another start for backup Tyler Huntley who is also dealing with an injury. If Huntley can’t go, the Ravens would be down to third-string quarterback Anthony Brown who has only thrown five passes this season.
If the quarterback situation was not already a concern for the Ravens, it should be getting there now.
When Jackson was initially injured the Ravens insisted it would not be a season-ending injury but refused to give a definitive timetable. They still are not offering a timetable, only saying that he continues to work his way back and that they are “hopeful” for the playoffs.
He is very quickly running out of time as the Ravens’ first playoff game is now just a week away.
The fact that Jackson has not even practiced with the team in over a month is not painting a promising picture for what might be ahead come playoff time because it is going to be asking an awful lot for him to return for a winner-take-all game after not even practicing for more than a month.
The Ravens have managed to win two of the four games without Jackson, but the offense has been a mess for a while now. Baltimore has averaged just 14 points per game since its bye week seven weeks ago, and it even had Jackson in the lineup for a couple of those games. The two wins since Jackson’s injury have also come against Atlanta and a Pittsburgh team that was playing with Mitch Trubisky at quarterback. They scored 17 and 16 points in those two games respectively.
As good as Baltimore’s defense has been that sort of offense is not going to cut it when the competition gets tougher. And it is about to starting this week with Cincinnati and then followed by the start of the AFC playoffs where another matchup with the Bengals is possible.
