Dear Lamar Jackson: The time is now to believe that

Dear Lamar:

Eight years into this and we’re still ready to believe that.

Another season, a different coach and a chance to finally deliver that Super Bowl parade down Pratt Street.

The Baltimore Ravens and everyone in the purple army have defended you for eight years.

Against the people who said you couldn’t throw. Against the people who called you a running back. Against the endless national television nonsense and noise about whether your style could “work” in January.

Even though it hasn’t…not yet, anyway.

And against anyone who somehow watched you play quarterback unlike anyone who has ever played quarterback and decided the problem was you. Just look at the record of the Baltimore Ravens with and without you? Their chances of winning any game, let alone a January game, with you injured or unavailable?

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You proved most of them foolish a long time ago.

Including this now-ousted after four decades of sports media “inside the purple ropes” member, who never enjoyed watching you run into linebackers in 2018 and 2019 and said so.

But the book shelf speaks for itself:

Two MVP awards. One of the most electrifying careers any Baltimore athlete has ever authored. You took over a 4-5 football team as a rookie in 2018 and essentially never gave the job back. You changed football not just here. You changed the way defenses had to play football everywhere.

You changed the way every down was played here under John Harbaugh, including every 4th and anything from anywhere.

They tell me you are a lock for Canton, so I guess the Hall of Fame isn’t the assignment anymore.

The Super Bowl is now the assignment, which seems a little backwards to the way I’ve talked about it on the radio for the last 35 years, even though John Elway and Peyton Manning were penciled into the hallowed halls longs after they “didn’t win Super Bowls” as well.

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And you know what? They punched that card for real, validated all of the regular season accolades not to mention the 1-1 hype that is quite frankly the opposite of your pedigree and pre-draft hype. You were no Kurt Warner or Tom Brady on draft night but you slipped for a reason: no one else wanted you.

There were 31 teams that didn’t believe that.

And at 29 years old, entering your ninth NFL season, with John Harbaugh gone, Jesse Minter installed, another offensive coordinator designing another offense around your extraordinary abilities and Steve Bisciotti and Eric DeCosta spending every available dollar trying to keep this championship window open, there really isn’t much left to discuss.

It’s time.

Not because you haven’t been great enough. Because you have.

Not because every playoff loss has been your fault. They haven’t.

And certainly not because football is some individual tennis match where the quarterback alone wins and loses championships.

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But you know how this business works.

You are No. 8.

You are the face. You are the money. You are the quarterback.

And now you are the veteran who has to lead this entire thing where Joe Flacco once led it in New Orleans.

All roads to Inglewood in February lead through Lamar Jackson in January.

But, now, about what happens from September through then…

Our own conversations all summer kept coming back to the same phrase: now or never. Derrick Henry isn’t getting younger. Ronnie Stanley isn’t getting better. Mark Andrews isn’t getting much love. Marlon Humphrey isn’t getting any attention. And Roquan Smith, who should also be in his prime, and this expensive, talented defense with Kyle Hamilton being the best player on the field on the other side of the ball are here to win right now. We said it plainly: 12 or 13 victories, win the division, earn the bye, play January football in Baltimore and get to Los Angeles for Super Bowl LXI. Those are the expectations.

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Otherwise, why did they fire John Harbaugh?

Why blow up an 18-year coaching reign if the standard remains winning 10 or 11 games, selling some purple jerseys and telling everybody what a wonderful regular season Lamar Jackson had after another January choke?

(That’s Marlon Humphrey’s word, not mine…)

Nobody needs another MVP trophy around here.

We need another Lombardi Trophy. We got two. Three if you’re my age, even though one has a horseshoe.

And Lamar, some of this belongs squarely on you now.

Last season was miserable. Your body betrayed you. You missed four games, finished with just 67 rushing attempts and 349 yards on the ground, and acknowledged afterward that your health prevented you from playing the way you needed to play. The Ravens missed the playoffs completely.

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A season that ended in Pittsburgh with you throwing three touchdown passes – and still walking off the field after a 26-24 loss with January disappearing.

Again.

Before that came Buffalo. Before that came Kansas City.

Before that came all of the January scar tissue that has followed this magnificent regular-season career: a 3-5 postseason record, one trip to the AFC Championship Game and zero trips to the Super Bowl.

Those aren’t anti-Lamar statistics.

They’re the Lamar statistics.

They belong on the résumé right beside the MVP trophies.

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Heavy is the crown of the salary cap number and those who negotiate to their fullest to optimize such rich rewards for being a generational athlete in modern America during these halcyon and prosperous days of the National Football League.

This is all what accountability looks like when you become one of the greatest players in the history of the franchise, if not the league when it’s all over with and you do make us believe that.

And I actually love what I’ve heard from you this spring and summer.

You called the new coaching staff a “breath of fresh air.” You have apparently embraced Declan Doyle and a dramatically different offense. Minter has praised how much time you’ve spent learning it, and there is something genuinely fascinating about finally giving you a defensive-minded head coach who can sit with you and explain what the other side is trying to do to destroy you.

Great.

Use all of it.

Because I don’t want them bubble-wrapping Lamar Jackson, either.

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These conversations and spirited debates that Luke and I have had this summer matter because they’ve provided lots of reasonable ways you can be successful in this new system, which has been completely optimized for your strengths.

Your legs are not some embarrassing youthful habit that needs to be coached out of you. They are your superpower. Defenses must play and coach 11-on-11 against Baltimore every week because you exist. If anyone believes you’re merely another expensive quarterback standing in the pocket trying to throw 42 times on Sunday afternoon, they have completely missed the target of what this still needs to be.

And what really keeps the other team’s defensive coordinator up late for six nights prepping for you.

Protect yourself. Be smart. Slide occasionally. Live to fight another down.

But be Lamar in his prime, because that’s what this is – and needs to be – despite the two MVPs on the mantle and the third in a shadow box.

Run when the grass opens.

Break their spirit on third-and-11.

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Hand Derrick Henry the football until somebody screams uncle.

Throw it to Zay Flowers. Use Mark Andrews in whatever the best 2026 way will be in this new spread. And I hope you find someone to throw it over their heads to as well, because you have that ability with the right wide receiver who can fly.

Trust this Doyle offense that’s been constructed and the investments made in every direction that will sustain and create that contract we’ll all live to fight another day about the day after the parade.

And when January gets tight and weird and loud – because January always gets tight and weird and loud – be the calmest grown man in the stadium. The leader. The quieted mind with the plan, the play and the execution that will win the game.

That is the next evolution I need to see from you; not another highlight-reel season that ends with a tight end who dropped a ball running out the side door on a cold night.

I love the spin moves in October that break the internet. I’m cool with the holiday argument around your stats and about why you should be MVP (again), even after you got screwed once already.

But I wanna see much more “command” and control when the game is on the line – like I saw in Pittsburgh last year until the Loop dee didn’t do into the closed end of the stadium in the ouster to the Steelers that spawned all of this change.

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It’s your playbook now. Customized. Own the huddle. Own the sideline. Own the fourth quarter. Own the bad throw. Own the turnover. Own the comeback. Own the moment.

And yes, own your future here.

Because that remains strangely unresolved, too.

You signed the five-year, $260 million deal in 2023 after one of the strangest negotiations in franchise history. Steve Bisciotti came out in January and said plainly that he wanted another deal completed quickly because the organization needed another championship window around you. Clearly, that didn’t happen. The Ravens instead restructured the contract in March, created almost $40 million of room for this season and pushed your 2027 cap figure north of $84 million.

Four days before the season, DeCosta feigned optimism. Sunday morning awakened with the word that it’s all been tabled until after the Super Bowl parade.

You should get paid.

Of course you should.

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But we all would love to know if you really want to finish this here.

Do you want Baltimore to be the place where they put No. 8 on the Ring of Honor forever and folks tell their grandchildren about the January night when Lamar Jackson finally kicked the damned door down and the February Valentine’s Night in Los Angeles when you marched on Hollywood with the Lombardi Trophy?

Because that story is still sitting there waiting for you.

The Ravens have changed coaches for you. They have changed coordinators for you. They have drafted receivers, paid receivers, brought Derrick Henry here, rebuilt offensive lines and restructured hundreds of millions of dollars around the premise that the fastest route to another championship is maximizing Lamar Jackson.

And, of course, I agree with them.

Especially the part about Derrick Henry, which is well told.

You are good enough to win the Super Bowl. That has never been a question.

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Now comes the much harder question:

Can you finish it?

Baltimore already knows Lamar Jackson can do things nobody else can do.

This season, do the one thing Joe Flacco and Trent Dilfer did that you haven’t.

Walk into February. Win the last football game. Grab the Lombardi Trophy.

And bring the damn thing home. As a Valentine’s kiss to our city!

And, then, we’ll believe that…

After all, seeing is believing…