Baltimore Ravens Head Coach John Harbaugh laid out the vision for Lamar Jackson is to become the greatest quarterback in NFL history.
With the final question at the podium, Baltimore Ravens Head Coach John Harbaugh was asked about how quarterback Lamar Jackson handles criticism. Harbaugh responded with a two-minute and 43-second response, detailing Harbaugh has read the articles and the clips on his phone. How they take it personally. But concluded with emphatic praise for Jackson as the vision for his two-time MVP is to become the greatest quarterback to ever play in the NFL.
“You ever heard the old saying, the guys who played sports, ‘don’t read your press clippings.’ We don’t really have press clippings anymore, we got the phones and the computers,” Harbaugh said. “Press clippings, at least if it was bad you could throw it up and throw it in the trash can. Now, I want to [throw it away but can’t]. I do flip through them, to be honest with you. I read the stuff. I see these guys say what they say on the shows. At least I get clips of them because they come up on your phone. And the good ones I just scroll past cause that’s just candy. That’s not real. But the bad ones, it’s like, I read it right away. I don’t let it go. And that’s okay, that’s part of the deal. And Lamar, for whatever reason—he gets a lot of good things said about him, Lamar. But there’s a lot of stuff that’s said that you’ve got to just scratch your head about and kind of wonder, ‘what’s that person even thinking?’ But we take it personally. Lamar’s a guy, all his life, Lamar Jackson has been a guy who has been answering those same questions. I’m talking about since he was a kid. Junior high, high school, college, the draft, the success he’s had in the National Football League, and it still comes up. Okay? And he’s still growing. He’s got a growth mindset, he’s going to get better and better, no doubt. But what does he have to do to prove himself to some people, right? And so the thing for me is it’s talking about vision again. It’s a vision. And I believe the Ravens and we’ve always had a vision for Lamar Jackson. It started with Lamar’s vision and his mom’s vision when he said he was going to be a quarterback. He’s going to be a quarterback in high school, he’s going to be a quarterback in college, he’s going to be a quarterback in the National Football League. And we bought into that, we embraced it. We built an offense for it in 2019. We’re building another offense for it in 2023 and 2024, going forward, right? The next iteration of our offense around Lamar Jackson. Because in my opinion, the vision—the vision for Lamar Jackson, and it’s a vision, it’s something that you see it like it’s already happened. You can see it like it’s already been done. The victory has already been won, when you pour into a vision. And the vision that we have together is that Lamar Jackson is going to become and be known and be recognized as the greatest quarterback to ever play in the history of the National Football League. That’s the vision. Alright? And it’s going to happen by Lamar, his work ethic and his brilliant talent. By all of us pouring into that effort together as a team. Teamwork, and by the grace of God and God’s good will. That’s how it’s going to happen.”