Lamar Jackson on Ravens’ latest playoff frustration fueled by turnover and Mark Andrews’ fall – ‘Tired of this s***’

ORCHARD PARK, NY — As Lamar Jackson spoke Sunday night, the Baltimore Ravens quarterback kept clapping his hands together as if he were awake but trying to snap out of a bad dream.

“I tried to squeeze the ball, it slipped”…TASTE... “out of my hand.”

“Tonight, the turnover, we can’t have that s***”… TASTE … “do you know?”

“That’s holding onto the damn ball. I’m sorry for my language”… TASTE …”but this s*** is annoying. I’m tired of this s***.”

It seemed like a short-lived physical tick born out of angry energy. Or disappointment. Perhaps a combination of disbelief and frustration. And it was undoubtedly appropriate. Almost all of those emotions — and maybe all of them — painted the right picture of the Ravens after a 27-25 AFC playoff loss to the Buffalo Bills that was nothing if not a compilation of mistakes and missed opportunities in the divisional round.

A dropped pass by a wide-open Derrick Henry with room to run. A bad snap to Jackson, who snowballed into a fumble. A misread security and a costly wiretapping. A wildly rare catch-and-fumble by tight end Mark Andrews — only to be eclipsed by infamy when he dropped a 2-point conversion that should have tied the game late in the fourth quarter.

When it was finally over, Jackson noted that in undercutting themselves, the Ravens never punted Sunday. They didn’t need to. Instead, they worked at peak efficiency giving the Bills the ball for free.

Taken as a whole, with all the necessary and gruesome context of what might have been, this will end up standing as yet another addition to the annual media anthology detailing how Jackson’s elite status as a quarterback continues to be dogged by a playoff record . He is now 3-5 in the postseason, growing the ugly wart on his resume that will not be ignored by his critics.

Of course, the humiliation is rarely accompanied by the fact that one of our era’s Mount Rushmore quarterbacks, Peyton Manning, went 3-6 in his first nine playoff games. Or that during that stretch of Manning’s futility, there were laments about how he sometimes couldn’t grab wins in the biggest moments, especially in losses to the New England Patriots and Tom Brady.

In that regard, Jackson is not alone in his playoff woes. He’s just taking the arrows now because he hasn’t yet done what Manning did rest of his career: going 11-7 in his last 18 playoff games and winning two Super Bowls in the process. With Sunday’s loss to the Bills — who now advance to the AFC title game to face their own familiar foil in the Kansas City Chiefs — the Ravens go home.

They leave with a loss that can’t be entirely blamed on Jackson. He made mistakes. Two expensive. But when time came to take control late in the game, he masterfully led Baltimore on an eight-play, 88-yard drive capped by Jackson conjuring a 24-yard touchdown pass that suddenly had a raucous Bills crowd on Highmark Stadium to meander into. their seats, if not almost completely suffocated.

On the next play, Andrews’ wild backward momentum and his own freezing forearms led to a perfectly catchable ball from Jackson that ran off the chest of his tight end and straight into Ravens fans’ nightmares. The groans of disbelief would have been heard all the way from Maryland had they not been washed out by a Bills crowd that exploded in jubilant relief.

Afterwards, of course, the pressing question was whether Jackson had a moment to speak with Andrews in the wake of the error. And like the teammate and leader he is known to be in the franchise, he stepped in front of the narrative.

“We’re a team,” Jackson said. “S***, first half I had two costly turnovers. I didn’t hold the safety – I just knew the coverage and I knew it was a man, threw a bs interception. It was 7-7 at the time, I think they scored after that. A fumble, tried to make something happen, so I couldn’t really throw the ball to (Isaiah). Likely. The offensive line was downfield. I tried to squeeze the ball out of my hand. I think it led to points to them.It’s a team effort out there.

“(Mark has) busted his butt. He makes plays happen out there on the field for us. He came up short. Like I’ve said all season, any time we’re in a situation like this, turnovers play a factor, penalties play one factor tonight the turnover we can’t have that s*** that’s why we lost the game I’m sorry for my language but it’s annoying I’m sick of this.

It was the aforementioned monologue that had Jackson clapping his hands. And it didn’t end there.

“I’m just as hurt as Mark,” Jackson said. “We all played a part in the game. It’s a team effort. I just don’t want to put it on Mark. … We didn’t do what we needed to do. Protecting the ball, that’s the number one priority. We didn’t. Especially me. I’m the leader. I have to protect that ball. So I’m hot.”

He was not alone. Head coach John Harbaugh also painted it as a team loss that deflected attention away from Andrews and just touted the realities of football this season for the Ravens. And it’s this: For the vast majority of the season, the Ravens protected the ball as well as any team in the NFL. Sunday night they didn’t. Why it happened on this day for Baltimore is the fabric of the game that ends up unraveling for 31 NFL teams every single season.

“It’s football,” Harbaugh said. “That’s how football works. If you want to draw some big cosmic thread, you draw it for every single team in the league except the team that wins. It’s hard to win. It is a big challenge. That’s why the (Kansas City) Chiefs, you have to admire what they’ve done. It’s hard to win playoff games. It’s hard to make the playoffs. Then it’s hard to win playoff games. Now you need to stack four playoff wins to win a championship. Then if you don’t win it, you go and want to start drawing threads. There is no thread. It’s football. This fight went the way it went.”

And for the Ravens, the way it went was a step back from last season’s No. 1 seed and a trek to the AFC Championship Game. This leaves Baltimore once again picking up the pieces and dealing with the inevitable hypothesis of what will prevent it from breaking through to the other side of this postseason logjam. It’s a problem the Ravens tackled in the offseason by giving Jackson an elite running back in Derrick Henry to ride as his partner and take some of the load off his shoulders.

Now? Only the Ravens, Jackson and all the remaining parts of this team can figure out what comes next. Just like it was last season, when the Ravens were haunted by a 17-10 loss to the Chiefs and a costly fumble by wideout Zay Flowers. Not long after it was over, Jackson’s inability to power the Ravens in the Super Bowl became the overriding theme of the offseason. And maybe that’s how this one will be remembered too – as much for his turnovers as for the mistakes from the players around him.

Whether it is or not, it’s clear that this one affected Jackson emotionally. You could see it in his tumbling and feel it in his energy on Sunday night. The frustration is there. For the fans. For each part of the team. And certainly for the quarterback who will likely still have this loss attributed mostly to his two turnovers rather than what happened after them. But as frustrating as it can be, it’s getting close that might stick out the most for Jackson.

As he said Sunday night: “I’m tired of being right there. We’ve got to punch it in. We’ve got to punch that ticket in.”

TASTE.