Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson made a rather surprising admission this week: his team simply didn’t take the Tennessee Titans seriously enough prior to their playoff loss in January.
Jackson said on Complex’s “Load Management” podcast that the Ravens were caught looking past the Titans, and that it would be a lesson learned for 2020.
“That’s what happened in the playoffs, and we end up losing to the team people had us favored over,” Jackson said, via Nick Shook of NFL.com. “It’s any given Sunday. You can’t underestimate no team, no opponent and that’s what we did.
“So I’m looking forward to this 2020 season playing the Browns first. … Don’t underestimate your opponents. They caught us by surprise. That’s all it was.”
The Ravens were 14-2 and 7-1 at home before losing by two scores to a 9-7 Titans team. It was one of the more shocking playoff upsets in recent NFL memory, and Jackson makes it sound like it was entirely avoidable if his team had simply had a better mentality.
John Harbaugh has said he wants the Ravens to learn from that upset and use it to be better in 2020. Based on Jackson’s comments, it sounds like the players are doing just that.
