NBC analyst talks Jackson vs. Mahomes
The Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs will take center stage Sunday night as the NFL puts a prime-time focus on the matchup between quarterbacks Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes for a second straight season.
As he prepared for the broadcast, NBC analyst Cris Collinsworth did an interview with Ravens beat reporter Childs Walker to discuss the Chiefs’ success in the rivalry, Jackson’s progress and the mounting injuries that have clouded the Ravens’ outlook for 2021:
The Chiefs have beaten the Ravens three years in a row and are favored to beat them again. Can one team have another’s number? Is there a psychological weight for the team losing those games?
The Chiefs have been beating everybody, so by that standard, they will have had everybody’s number for a while. Probably the best case in point was Cleveland [on Sunday]. Cleveland did everything to win that game. But a guy who never fumbles fumbled. A punter — after Baker [Mayfield] had one of his few poor throws of the day, underthrew a guy — the punter drops the ball. And then Baker’s trying to throw the ball out of bounds and he gets tripped and throws an interception. When you play Kansas City, you can’t make any mistakes and beat those guys. I guess the question is: can the Ravens beat these guys? And my answer would be they absolutely can beat Kansas City. They absolutely can
because they match up well running the football. They’ve always run the ball well. But you’ve got to be so good and so consistent and not make mistakes, and that’s hard because they’re going to answer everything you do.
The Ravens’ offensive tackles, Ronnie Stanley and Alejandro Villanueva, played really poorly in the opener against the Raiders,andnowthere’saninjuryconcern with Stanley. Would you be concerned about that situation going forward?
Yes, after the other night, yes. I’ve seen Ronnie Stanley play going back to college, and that was nowhere close to Ronnie Stanley. Alejandro, he’s used to playing left tackle, and he’s learning a new position. We’re seeing that more and more with tackles. People want to make them interchangeable, but it’s like going from being a righthanded pitcher to being a left-handed pitcher. It’s not that easy. But the Ravens, as a team, are not built to drop back and throw the football 40 times a game. That’s just not who they are. So if they can keep it to their style of play … one of the hardest things that’s happened to them is what’s happened with the running backs ... It’s not just a plug and play where you can lose [J.K.] Dobbins and [Gus] Edwards and you’re just going to be fine. It’s going to take some time to get that back. You don’t have whatever it is, 14 guys who’ve been on IR, and your quarterback missed all those practices at the start of camp, and your running backs are gone and Stanley’s coming back from an injury — you don’t do all that and say we’re just going to roll the ball and kick their butts on Day 1 on the road. And they almost did it anyway.
Did you see signs of progress from Lamar Jackson in the opener? What will you be looking for from him on Sunday night?
Lamar, the thing they did worst the other night was, the Raiders were playing a zone defense against them all night, and the connection between the quarterback and the receivers … not that the passes were bad, but knowing where the receiver was going to stop, knowing the depth of the route — there were just Day 1 things that I’ve seen this team do a lot of that they did really poorly. If they just connected on the layups against the Raiders, the Raiders would have had a really hard time beating them. Believe me, the Ravens are not going to miss layups all season. They’re just not. They’re too wellcoached. I always think the really wellcoached teams, after the first month of the season you see them start to separate. It’s the reason we get the same teams in the playoffs year after year. They’re good at it, and for the most part, they’re playing teams that fired their coaches and are starting over again. The Ravens are going to be fine, but they do have to come up with some answers. They can’t play the way they did the other night and beat good teams.
Do you attribute missing the layups to them just not having a ton of time together?
Absolutely. It’s a huge part of it. But it can also be from expanding your offense and not spending as much time on the simple things. These are NFL guys, and they’ve had an incredible record over the last several years with Lamar. You’re going to say: “OK, we’ve got that.” Well, they didn’t have that in the first game. But anybody who wants to predict the future based on what they saw in that first game is probably going to go broke.
Do you think the Ravens have done enough to surround Lamar Jackson with better weapons, even though injuries have derailed that to some degree?
Absolutely. Mark Andrews is as good as there is. Sammy Watkins can play with anybody. I like “Hollywood” Brown probably more than people in Baltimore do. If he were in an offense where they were throwing 50 times a game, if he were in Kansas City, how many balls you think he’d catch? It’s not how many you catch; it’s what you do during the really important times. They’re never going to get the number of passes other teams are going to get, but if you’re making plays on key third downs and you’re creating catch-and-run opportunities and you can run the ball the way this team’s going to run the ball eventually, that’s a hard combination to beat.