Kansas City Chiefs vs Baltimore Ravens: The Formula to Contain Lamar Jackson
The battle of two latest MVPs, Lamar Jackson (2019 MVP) and Patrick Mahomes (2018 MVP), turns out to be a one-sided show from the Half-Billion Dollar Man.
Monday Night Football in Week 3 features a heavyweight matchup. The two latest NFL MVPs went head-to-head. The two teams still in 2–0 record coming into the game, one will leave the game undefeated, the other will have some homework to do. It’s the Baltimore Ravens, hosted the Super Bowl LIV Champion, Kansas City Chiefs in M&T Bank Stadium.
Patrick Mahomes and co. once again reigned supreme against Lamar Jackson, with a commanding 34–20 victory. Mahomes also improves his record to 3–0 when facing Lamar Jackson and the Ravens. Mahomes got off from the field with a stellar performance, 385 passing yards with three passing touchdowns and one rushing touchdown. Chiefs offense proved that you cannot guard one guy and leave the others, as Mahomes shared his targets pretty much equally. Tyreek Hill, Mecole Hardman, and Clyde Edwards-Helaire (it’s pronounced EEEE-lair) each with six targets, Travis Kelce with seven, and Sammy Watkins leads all targets with eight. Overall a perfect performance of the Chiefs offense and the Ravens are struggling to stop them.
But the one that caught my eyes is not just how the Chiefs offense performs in all cylinders. It’s their defense who needs more recognition and respect. Containing Lamar Jackson to only 97 yards and one touchdown through the air, and 83 yards from the ground. The first two games Lamar always peak 200+ passing yards, also today is his lowest completion percentage in the season so far with 53.6%. So, what did the Chiefs do right?
Early Lead and Control the Pace
First drive. It seems like all would be going well with the Ravens. They established their run game as expected, and the Chiefs were struggling to keep up. But their failure to score a touchdown and had to settle for a field goal cost them badly. Chiefs take the field for their first drive, score a rushing touchdown from Mahomes, take a 6–3 lead, and they never look back.
After scoring a single touchdown from a kickoff return by Devin Duvernay, Baltimore pretty much stuck. Meanwhile, Kansas City scores three more touchdowns, while controlling the time of possession. After that, Kansas City was unstoppable, and the Ravens failed to catch-up.
This is the list of drives for both teams in the 1st half. You can see that no Ravens’ drive that would go longer than three minutes, even five plays. While the Chiefs only missed out on one occasion where they had to punt. Keeping Lamar Jackson on the sideline while continuously being effective and score every time they had the ball was one of the Chiefs’ keys to win this game.
The second half was an improvement for the Ravens. Capitalizing on the Chiefs’ turnover, they scored the lone touchdown for the second half. But that’s pretty much it, as Mahomes continues to perform magnificently, even threw a Big Man TD to Eric Fisher, the Offensive Tackle, to seal the deal.
No Help for Lamar
Baltimore was forced to play catch-up since it looked like the Chiefs would score every time they had the ball. Yes, it’s true that the Ravens' defense was torched by Mahomes, but on paper, this offense led by Jackson is capable to do just the same. But the pass rushers of Kansas City were doing a great job to make Lamar uncomfortable in making passes. He completed just over 50% of his passes for a measly 3.5 yards per attempt, the lowest mark in a game this season.
Lamar was pressured when making passes. The Chiefs’ defense generated pressure on 23% of Jackson’s dropback, and the Chiefs’ secondary forced five incompletions. Lamar even got strip-sacked by Chris Jones, luckily the ball couldn’t be recovered by the Chiefs. But that’s the first time. The second time, Chris Jones got him again while Lamar was in throwing motion. The ball fumbled and recovered by Ben Niemann.
It seems like Lamar can’t make easy throws, and his receivers were not helping by dropping passes, total five dropped passes from Jackson’s favorite target, Mark Andrews (three drops) and Marquise Brown (two drops).
The run game still pretty much working, with Jackson having his best rushing yards so far this season with 83 yards. But down by approximately two scores every time, and the clock is ticking, passing the ball was the best option for this Ravens offense to score.
So, Lamar Jackson failed to lead this offense to score a comeback, his WRs were dropping passes here and there, and Mahomes just can’t stop scoring.
At first, I expect this game to be a shootout. Top offense vs top offense in the AFC, no, in the league. The two latest MVPs putting it all out on the field. Maybe the best game we got since the Chiefs vs Rams battled it out in 2018. Turns out, it was a one-sided game where all goes well for the visiting team.
The concept of how Andy Reid, with Steve Spagnuolo, Chiefs’ Defensive Coordinator, stopping this offense from having a game is simple in theory, but need perfection in execution. Make the Ravens threw away their identity. The run game has been the core offense of the Ravens. But by making them play catch up, the Chiefs also always methodical in their drive, make the Ravens be more aggressive, and the Chiefs defense capitalize on mistakes after mistakes. Chiefs executed their game-plan magnificently, in three phases of the game.
Lamar Jackson might be 0–3 vs Patrick Mahomes, their only “kryptonite”, as the reigning MVP said. But this is the matchup that will define the league in the future. There’s gonna be many more to come after this.
Is this a preview of the AFC Championship Game 2020? We’ll see.
Rafiandra Putra Andika is a writer, designer, video editor, photographer, content creator, or to sum up, a story-teller. He found his fond love for sports ever since a little kid, starts with Soccer, F1, Basketball, and now focusing his talent on growing the exposure of American Football, especially in Indonesia. He pledged his loyalty to Manchester United, LeBron James, and the New England Patriots.
You can follow him on Instagram: @rafiandra21 for his recent audiovisual works (photo, video, and podcast), and on Twitter with the same handle for his unfiltered thoughts.
