Josh Johnson offers a steady hand at the right price.
The Ravens know many of their rivals, including the three other teams in the AFC North, have invested in younger, more decorated backup quarterbacks who have started games more recently than the 38-year-old Johnson.
Baltimore kicked the tires on the reserve market in the offseason but did not find the value it wanted, so it’s Johnson, with nine NFL starts for 14 teams over the past 16 years, who’s next in line behind reigning league Most Valuable Player Lamar Jackson.
One turn of Jackson’s ankle and pro football’s ultimate nomad could be at the controls of a Super Bowl contender.
That reality has unsettled Ravens fans who watched Johnson complete 4 of 12 passes for 62 yards in the team’s preseason opener against the Philadelphia Eagles. Suddenly, Johnson, the No. 3 quarterback behind Tyler Huntley last season, is a popular subject of local football chatter.
Not that it’s going to bother him, given all he’s seen.
“That’s part of playing in the National Football League,” he said after practice Thursday. “People love you if it’s working. If it ain’t working, they’re gonna criticize you. Lamar is one of the greatest quarterbacks, and people still got the nerve to criticize him, so me being who I am, do I think they’re not going to criticize me?”
Did the Ravens make the right choice sticking with a guy they trust for the low, low price of $1.15 million? Or should they call a late audible and pursue one of the prominent quarterbacks still available, led by longtime Tennessee Titans starter Ryan Tannehill?
Understand that they went through a deliberate, rational thought process on this issue.
First, they decided Huntley, their primary backup the past three seasons, didn’t play well enough to justify the expense of keeping him over or in addition to Johnson.
Then, they surveyed the market and concluded the $4 million or so required for a premium backup might leave them hamstrung at a different position.
Finally, they settled on a hybrid strategy: trust the veteran Johnson for the short term and use a lower-round draft pick on a quarterback, in this case Devin Leary, who might stick after a developmental year.
The Ravens won’t go deep in the playoffs without Jackson anyway — a reality that hit home when Huntley and Johnson had to start games down the stretch in 2021 and 2022 — so why waste precious cap space on an insurance policy?
Johnson is the no-frills plan, but he has virtues.
Offensive coordinator Todd Monken laid them out Tuesday: “Josh does a tremendous job of being ready. He’s the consummate pro — that’s why he’s been in the NFL for so long. He gets what we want to do, [and] he has a great feel for where we are and where we need to get to. I think he’s a great sounding board for Lamar and for us.”
The last point is important. When a team has a franchise quarterback, part of the backup’s job is to maintain a solid bond with the superstar.
“That’s like big bro to me,” Jackson said of Johnson. “He’s been around the league so long, he’s very, very intelligent. He’s a very smart guy. Even though he’s not the starter, he knows what he’s talking about and knows what he’s seeing. Certain things that I’m seeing on the field, he’s already on it. I can gravitate with that. I can learn something from that, and that’s a great guy to learn from.”
Jackson was also close to Huntley, but they were contemporaries. Johnson, who was drafted a decade before him (the same year as Joe Flacco), is a font of wisdom. As Monken said, there’s a reason so many teams, including the San Francisco 49ers in 2022, wanted him around.
“My job is to support him in any way possible,” Johnson said of Jackson. “Owners have general managers. Presidents have people who handle the things that they can’t, and for me in my situation with [Lamar], just bringing my knowledge from being around the NFL so long, bringing that value every day, is very important, because, mentally, there’s a lot going on. Just to being able to reflect ideas, thoughts, processes off one another, I think that’s very important.”
He also has to see the game through Jackson’s eyes, so he’ll prepared to run the offense that has been designed around No. 8.
Johnson said the relationship works because “we’ve just got similar stories in how we experience life. When we just share our personal stories with one another, it’s very relatable. We connect in so many ways on how we see things.”
Recall, too, that Johnson produced — 28 of 40 for 304 yards and two touchdowns — the one time the Ravens started him in a December 2021 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals.
That’s not to dismiss the Ravens’ offensive struggles with Johnson at the helm early in training camp or in the preseason opener. But they don’t have a better candidate on the roster. Leary, their sixth-round pick out of Kentucky, has made nifty throws here and there, but the Ravens would prefer to stash him on the practice squad and see if he grows into something.
If Leary doesn’t seem like a future backup candidate after this season, they’ll continue to draft quarterbacks and hope one sticks.
You never know how a top backup might arrive. Jake Browning was an undrafted Minnesota Vikings discard when the Bengals signed him to their practice squad in 2021. They kept him around for two years until he won the No. 2 job behind Joe Burrow before last season. After Burrow suffered a season-ending wrist injury in November, Browning stepped in and nearly led Cincinnati to the playoffs, completing 70.4% of his passes with 12 touchdowns in seven starts.
The AFC North presents a fascinating case study in differing approaches to the backup conundrum.
The Pittsburgh Steelers, still searching for a true heir to Ben Roethlisberger, essentially added two starters. Veteran Russell Wilson will begin the season as their No. 1, but they also traded for three-year starter Justin Fields in March, and the 2021 first-round pick could take the job at any time. Fields, who will cost $3.2 million against the cap, isn’t much more expensive than Johnson, but he’ll be a free agent after this season, so he’s not the developmental asset he might seem to be on the surface.
The Cleveland Browns, with an expensive, unreliable starter in Deshaun Watson, signed Jameis Winston, who’s started 80 NFL games, and Huntley in the offseason. Winston agreed to a $4 million deal with void years, Huntley to a $1.29 million deal, so Cleveland is spending considerably more on its backups than the Ravens.
For now, Johnson remains confident that his vast experience — younger teammates never let him forget how long he’s been around — will help him help Jackson. He doesn’t often pause during the season to contemplate how long he’s survived in this cutthroat world, but he does get a kick out of being the wise man in the room.
“When you’re young, everything’s an unknown,” he said. “You’ve got to rebuild that rapport each year, but having those experiences, it brings a sense of calm to your mind.”
Baltimore Sun reporter Brian Wacker contributed to this article.