D4 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 , 2019
Brown’s presence adds to the
torment. On the Ravens’ first
touchdown, Brown lined up to
the left and motioned across the
field. At the snap, Brown contin-
ued running wide and never ad-
vanced upfield. Three defenders
locked eyes on Brown, the
Ravens’ first-round draft pick,
who has 12 catches for 223 yards.
Tight end Mark Andrews sprint-
ed past them down the sideline.
Jackson lofted an easy pass into
his hands, and Andrews jogged
into the end zone.
On the play that effectively
decided the outcome, Brown
showed why defenses must focus
on him. The Ravens faced third
and 11 on their 44-yard line with
3:05 remaining. The Cardinals
had no timeouts left, so a run
would have exhausted valuable
clock. Harbaugh considered run-
ning, but instead he decided to
put the game on Jackson’s arm,
not his legs.
“That’s a matter of trust,” An-
drews said.
Fullback Patrick Ricard en-
tered the game to force the Cardi-
nals to put a linebacker on the
field. He then went in motion
presnap, emptying the backfield.
From the man coverage the Cardi-
nals showed, Brown knew Jack-
son would be coming to him. He
shook Tramaine Brock at the line
and blazed down the field. Jack-
son hit him in stride for 41 yards.
The Ravens went on to kill the
clock.
“Lamar is a real quarterback,”
Ingram said. “People can say what
they want, but he can sit back
there and drop dimes.”
Jackson still has tests to pass.
He h as yet to play from behind, to
face a situation that forces him to
convert crucial third downs on
obvious passing downs. He has
yet to face an opponent with a
credible shot at the playoffs.
But he has already proved his
dynamism, how dangerous he
can be. The Dolphins forced him
to pass. The Cardinals invited him
to run. In both instances, Jackson
obliged and beat them.
The Ravens will face far better
competition this year, starting
Sunday. But Jackson will give
them a chance, and he plans on
getting better, too.
“It was good to see how much
he’s grown from last year,” said
Cardinals pass rusher Te rrell
Suggs, a longtime Raven. “He’s an
NFL quarterback now, and he’s
phenomenal.”
[email protected]the surface. On many plays when
Jackson can either hand off or
keep, the Ravens also attach an
option to pass. Jackson’s touch-
down pass on a short slant to
Brown against the Dolphins came
off play-action; had a defender
keying Jackson covered Brown,
Jackson could have kept the ball
and sprinted around the end.
“That just puts a lot of stress on
the defense,” Yanda said. “They
have to defend Lamar as a runner.
They have to defend the runner.
Then it’s also a pass on a lot of
those, attached to those. On a
given play, there’s three different
things you have to defend.”
Put more succinctly, as Yanda
later added: “You better be on
your s---.”
The Ravens’ deployment of
personnel and formations makes
that even trickier. Offensive coor-
dinator Greg Roman, who spear-
headed the ground-up overhaul
of Baltimore’s offense this offsea-
son, gives defenses headaches be-
fore the snap. On multiple snaps
Sunday, the Ravens lined up with
one wide receiver and still aligned
five skill players, four of them
backs or tight ends, out wide. The
Ravens may be the only team in
the league that announces three
tight ends in the starting lineup.— when it looks like he may pick
up a few yards, suddenly he is
dashing for a dozen or so.
“The quarterback being able to
move makes it to where the de-
fense has to defend 11 people, not
just 10,” Griffin said. “So it’s not
that defenses don’t know what to
do. It’s that whenever they decide
to do something, there’s going to
be a weakness somewhere that we
can exploit that teams that only
play with 10 on offense essentially
can’t exploit.”Stress for the defense
The Ravens’ first two games
showed the challenge Jackson
presents. Miami tried to keep him
in the pocket and prevent his
designed runs, and Jackson de-
stroyed the Dolphins through the
air while Ingram ran for more
than 100 yards. The Cardinals
tried to pressure him, and Jack-
son burned them on the ground.
“It’s just going to be a real
conundrum for them,” Harbaugh
said. “It’s going to be a real chal-
lenge for them to figure that out.
They’re going to have to figure it
out for themselves. As L amar well
knows, they’ll be chasing our
scheme.”
The Ravens’ attack is even
more insidious than it looks on“A s we talked about a lot over
the offseason, our offense is very
adaptable,” Ravens backup quar-
terback Robert Griffin III said.
“Most of it was due just to what
Arizona was doing and how they
tried to play coverage. They tried
to keep everything in front of
them. At the end of the game, we
knew they needed a stop, so they
were going to play man [cover-
age]. Te ams don’t play zone when
they need a stop. They played
man, and we burned them on it. If
teams want to play zone, they
want to play man, we’ve got a way
to attack that. He ran more today,
but that’s just based off what the
defense gave him.”
Guard Marshal Yanda ex-
plained one reason for the
change. Arizona’s defensive ends
frequently crashed down to stop
Ingram on handoffs rather than
staying put, as they had in Miami,
so Jackson kept the ball and
sprinted around the edge. The
Cardinals also rushed Jackson
with more urgency than Miami,
which gave him less time to pass
but opened more lanes for Jack-
son to scramble. He kept multiple
drives alive by squirting forward
through a seam in the pass rush
and bolting downfield. Jackson
turns those openings into chasms“I could have been a lot better,”
Jackson said. “There’s some pass-
es I want back, some sacks I want
back.”
The notion of Jackson develop-
ing is both realistic and scary for
the rest of the NFL. Using a
creative, diverse scheme, the
Ravens have built their offense
around Jackson’s exceptional
composite of passing acuity and
electric running. In a season-
opening romp over Miami, Jack-
son posted a perfect passer rat-
ing. On Sunday, he unleashed his
speed and left Arizona confound-
ed.
The Ravens may not be the
second-best team in the AFC. But
Jackson’s singular talent, and the
way Baltimore wields it, will en-
able the Ravens to threaten any-
body — even the New England
Patriots. Jackson does not play
quarterback like the Kansas City
Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, but he
is Mahomesian in the hope he
provides his team: If the Ravens
have him on their side, regardless
of the opponent, they have a
chance.Either way
The Ravens visit Kansas City
on Sunday for a quarterback duel
worth drooling over. The meeting
will give the Ravens and Jackson a
chance to validate their 2-0 start
against a Super Bowl contender
after facing two winless teams to
start the year.
In the Ravens’ Week 1 demoli-
tion of Miami, Jackson ran only
three times for six yards, a depar-
ture from the Ravens’ run-heavy
approach last season after Jack-
son took over as a rookie midsea-
son following an injury to Joe
Flacco. He ran 16 times against
Arizona, a mix of designed keep-
ers, option plays and scrambles.
“Not bad for a quarterback,”
Coach John Harbaugh joked,
playing off Jackson’s Week 1 barb
to critics that his perfect passing
day wasn’t bad for a running
back.
The difference was not a func-
tion of Baltimore’s plan. It was an
illustration of what makes Jack-
son so deadly. The Ravens entered
their first two games with roughly
the same strategy of how to ex-
ploit Jackson’s talent. “I just had
to take what the defense gave me,”
Jackson said, shrugging. “It’s the
same offense.” The Ravens didn’t
change; they only reacted, in a
fashion that Jackson allows.RAVENS FROM D1who looks far less mature than
Jones, learn slowly behind a
consummate pro in Keenum. But
this isn’t a team with sound
management.
In fact, every young
quarterback in the league should
study Keenum if only for one
quality: how to handle the
varieties of pressure and the
vagaries of the league. Over the
past few years, the 31-year-old
has become one of the best
pressure players in the game. In
2017, while guiding Minnesota to
an 11-3 mark, he was a league
leader in quarterback rating
while pressured, according to
Football Outsiders. He is a
supreme evader who seldom gets
sacked — he took a sack on just
13.3 percent of his pressures with
the Vikings — and he never
fumbles. He just delivers.
Still, Minnesota let him go
despite reaching the conference
championship game — “I don’t
even know where I’m going to be
in two weeks,” he said at the time
— and then the Denver Broncos
traded him away, too, because
teams always are looking for
someone more electric. Another
thing Haskins can learn from
watching Keenum is just how
quickly front offices become
disenchanted with good
quarterbacks.
Quarterback play is a matter
of a thousand unseen nuances as
well as dependencies on other
players. But ultimately it comes
down to this: being a
consistently positive difference-
maker. Keenum is that. It’s one
of the few positions on this team
you can say so about right now.
“Once we get everybody
healthy, I think we can compete
and go toe to toe with anybody,”
Gruden said.
If that’s true, and not just silly
optimism, if there’s i ndeed a
chance for the Redskins to turn
things around, it’s because
they’ve got at least one guy they
can trust, and he’s under center.
[email protected]For more by Sally Jenkins, visit
washingtonpost.com/jenkins.still-beating heart, the reason
they had brief leads in two
games.
“We traded blows with ’em,”
he said after the loss to the
Cowboys.
If this season deteriorates the
way it’s threatening to, watch:
The calls will come to start the
prized new toy, rookie Dwayne
Haskins, to throw him out there
to see what he’s got. The New
York Giants already have gone to
rookie Daniel Jones. But the
Giants have a legitimate
question as to whether Eli
Manning’s play has been a large
part of their problem, with just
two touchdown passes to two
interceptions. Keenum has been
the best and only thing going for
the Redskins. A good team with
sound management would resist
the pressure and temptation and
understand that the best thing
for everyone is to let Haskins,questions the Redskins always
entertain, because the
managerial water is never quite
clear.
That makes Keenum’s play all
the more valuable for Gruden or
for the next man who gets hired
to clean up this mess. It liberates
them to focus on the real
problems. With Robert Griffin
III, you wondered if his owner’s-
pet ego and failure to learn were
corroding the team from the
inside; with Kirk Cousins, you
worried that his productiveness
came with a fool’s-gold
propensity to turn the ball over;
with Alex Smith, you wondered
if he was truly a good fit for the
offense or just a desperate hire.
With Keenum, you know he is
going to fire good throws, make
right decisions and commit few
mistakes. It’s fun to watch him
sling, and his hard-punching
mentality has been the Redskins’this one? Is it a function of the
suspicion that Gruden and
Manusky aren’t really calling the
shots or are already lame ducks?
And then what to make of the
strange decision to leave Adrian
Peterson in street clothes in
favor of young Derrius Guice?
Then there are the penalties.
The Redskins have been flagged
18 times in two games. They’re
the league leaders in offensive
holding, with eight calls, and
throw in three false starts. All of
that is looking very much like a
repeat of last year, when they
finished second in the league in
both holding and false starts. Is
that a function of sloppy
coaching, or is it a reaction to
being overwhelmed and
manhandled up front because
Williams refuses to play and
Allen knows jack-all about
building a good team?
These are the sort of circularis performing like a top-10
quarterback even as his team
falls to 0-2.
Keenum’s play is so good, in
fact, that it has shifted the
spotlight elsewhere: squarely
onto imperiled coach Jay Gruden
and the untrustworthy front
office, with its long history of
sabotaging its own team. Gruden
is undoubtedly a creative
offensive coach and a likable
man whose squads have clawed
to remain competitive, but it’s
hard to judge his true quality, to
know how many of the team’s
problems are his, or whether he’s
just doing the best he can with
what he has been handed.
And there’s an indication he
has been interfered with by
owner Daniel Snyder and his
henchman, Bruce Allen. It was
more than a little unsettling to
hear Gruden on Monday call his
assistant Greg Manusky’s
defensive scheme against the
Cowboys “too vanilla.”
Remember that Snyder, early in
his tenure as owner, tore apart
Norv Turner’s staff by
complaining that then-defensive
coordinator Mike Nolan’s
schemes were “too vanilla” and
sending gallons of ice cream
with notes that said, “I’m not
kidding.” No coach has been able
to defeat Snyder’s toxic
undertow in 20 years.
Are the Redskins 30th in the
league in total defense because
of “vanilla” schemes, or are they
suffering from a telltale lack of
fight from untrusting players
who don’t want to make extreme
sacrifices to dysfunction? Here is
a truly damning statistic: This is
the worst defense in the NFL
when it counts most, giving
opponents a success rate of
64 percent on third down.
“Our third-down percentage is
not good enough — in any
league,” Gruden said frankly.
Is there a souring of loyalty
after the release of D.J.
Swearinger to end last season
and the revolt of linchpin
lineman Trent Williams to startJENKINS FROM D1Professional Football
SALLY JENKINSKeenum deserves more credit than his journeyman label suggests
Ravens’ Jackson is on the rise as showdown with Mahomes looms
TONI L. SANDYS/THE WASHINGTON POST
Case Keenum has bounced around from team to team throughout his career, but he keeps performing.ERIK S. LESSER/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK
Lamar Jackson passed for 2 72 yards and ran for 120 more during Sunday’s victory over the Cardinals.BY MARK MASKE
The NFL’s decision about
whether to place New England
Patriots wide receiver Antonio
Brown on paid administrative
leave via the commissioner’s ex-
empt list remained pending Tues-
day after league representatives
met for 10 hours Monday with a
woman who is accusing Brown of
rape a nd s exual assault.
Monday’s lengthy meeting be-
tween the NFL and Britney Ta ylor
was confirmed by a person famil-
iar with the case, who said there
was “nothing imminent” as of
Tuesday afternoon on the league’s
decision on Brown’s status.
It’s unclear whether a decision
will be made this week. The per-
son w ith knowledge o f the deliber-
ations said there is “no timeline”
for the decision to be made be-
cause it depends on what the
league’s investigation f inds.
Brown made his Patriots debut
in their win this past Sunday at
Miami. The Patriots host the New
York Jets this S unday.
Through his attorney, Darren
Heitner, Brown has denied the
allegations made by Ta ylor in a
lawsuit in Florida.
[email protected]
l JAGUARS: Jalen Ramsey ar-
rived for the season in the back of
an armored truck, sending a clear
message to Jacksonville about his
worth.
It would be fitting if he depart-
ed in a dump truck, assuming the
Jaguars (0-2) unload their dis-
gruntled defender.
Without saying why or provid-
ing much insight, Ramsey con-
firmed Tuesday that he wants out
of Jacksonville a nd said he doesn’t
want to be a distraction as Jack-
sonville prepares to host Te nnes-
see ( 1-1) on T hursday n ight.
l PANTHERS: Cam Newton’s
status for Sunday’s game at Ari-
zona is uncertain after the 2015
league MVP aggravated a mid-foot
sprain.
Newton did not practice Tues-
day and Panthers Coach Ron Rive-
ra gave no timetable for his quar-
terback’s potential return, saying,
“He’s going to get his treatment.
We’ll see how he feels and we’ll
adjust to it as we g o through it.”
Rivera said backup Kyle Allen
would make his second career
NFL start for the Panthers against
Arizona if Newton isn’t able to
play.
l JETS: New York’s quarter-
back woes j ust got worse.
Trevor Siemian will be side-
lined f or the r est of the season with
an ankle injury, a nd third-stringer
Luke Falk will start for the Jets at
New England on Sunday — and
beyond until Sam D arnold returns
from illness.
Coach Adam Gase announced
that Siemian has ligament dam-
age, which he suffered in the 23-3
loss to the Cleveland Browns on
Monday night.
Siemian was starting after Dar-
nold was d iagnosed with mononu-
cleosis last week.
Darnold says he i s feeling m uch
better and hopes to return to the
field in Week 5 against the Phila-
delphia Eagles.
l LIONS: Detroit signed quar-
terback Jeff Driskel to add depth
behind Matthew Stafford.
Detroit added Driskel and re-
leased quarterback Josh Johnson
on Tuesday. The Lions also have
rookie quarterback David Blough.
l PACKERS: Green Bay
claimed cornerback Tremon
Smith off waivers from the K ansas
City Chiefs.
The second-year player out of
Central Arkansas was a sixth-
round pick of the Chiefs last year.
He a ppeared in 14 g ames with one
start during the regular season
and played in both postseason
games for t he Chiefs.
l PATRIOTS: New England
placed left tackle Isaiah Wynn on
injured reserve, marking the lat-
est blow to an already injury-rid-
dled offensive line.
Wynn suffered a foot injury in
the first quarter of New England’s
43-0 win at Miami on Sunday and
did not return to the game. The
Patriots filled Wynn’s roster spot
by signing veteran lineman Caleb
Benenoch.
l CHARGERS: Los Angeles
signed tight end Lance Kendricks
and d efensive end C hris Peace.
The addition o f Kendricks gives
the Chargers a receiving tight end
to take the place of Hunter Henry,
who is out for an extended period
after suffering a knee injury in a
Sept. 8 overtime win over Indian-
apolis.
— Associated Press
NFL NOTES
Brown’s
accuser
met with
o∞cials