Nothing helps fill the slow time better than a good, old-fashioned Twitter beef. Especially when it doesn’t involve me.
On Wednesday night, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson and former Ravens safety Bernard Pollard got into an extended back and forth on social media, sparked by Pollard chiming in on the ESPN-generated talking point of the week.
Is Lamar Jackson a top-1o quarterback?
We won’t try to parse through the various punches and counter-punches that were thrown, primarily because there were too damn many of them. It just kept going, with Pollard questioning Jackson’s skills as a passer and Jackson questioning Pollard’s skills as a player.
Lamar comes off as being a little too sensitive to the criticism from Pollard. If, as Jackson seems to believe, Pollard wasn’t much of a defensive back, why would Jackson react so strongly, so persistently, to the things Pollard said? It would have been better for Jackson to ignore it or, at a minimum, to make a comment or two and just let it go.
He didn’t. Check his feed. Check Pollard’s. Again, there’s simply too much to fully digest.
It actually started on Tuesday, when former NFL safety and current ESPN analyst Ryan Clark argued that Jackson should be among the list of top-10 quarterbacks, as complied by an ESPN survey of unnamed executives. Pollard said this of Jackson: “He’s def a Top 10 talent, but as far a Top 10 QB I don’t see it. I believe he should get paid by the #Ravens and should get TOP dollar!”
That one didn’t spark a response from Jackson. This comment, posted on Wednesday night by Pollard, did: “No TOP Wr will ever come there while LJ is there. Plenty of WRs have been available to get in the off-season while LJ has been starting, but nobody wants to go. They give him the respect, but they don’t want to play with him. LJ is good but he’s not able to make the throws.”
Jackson told Pollard: “You sound dumb asf.” Replied Pollard: “We’ll wait and see if one signs.”
Making Pollard’s point even more delicate is the fact that receiver Hollywood Brown wanted to be traded out of Baltimore. Jackson, who according to Brown knew about his discontent, responded with surprise and frustration to draft-night news that the team had traded Brown to Arizona. Although former Ravens quarterback Robert Griffin III later claimed that Brown wanted out because of the offense and not the quarterback, the fact remains that, in Baltimore, Jackson is the offense.
And Jackson just wouldn’t let it go. He attacked Pollard for being largely unknown. (Tom Bray definitely knows who Pollard is.) He attacked Pollard for a missed tackle in Super Bowl XLVII. He attacked Pollard for a locker-room dance capped by a split, saying “I only thought cheerleaders did the splits not players too.”
Jackson is undoubtedly a great player. He was the MVP in 2019. He deserves a massive second contract. But this stuff just seems beneath him. Frankly, he has developed a recent streak of sensitivity to criticism that rivals the one exhibited for years by the guy who has won the MVP award in each of the two years since Jackson did.