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At this point, I think it's fair to say or at least arguable, that John Harbaugh and the Baltimore Ravens were more concerned with killing the narrative around Lamar Jackson as a RBQB, than they were with winning the game and going to the superbowl.
The Ravens didn't even begin the football game trying to run the football. In total, there were 8 rushes, including 2 designed runs by Lamar Jackson, and totalling 6 carries for their running backs.
It was like Harbaugh went into the game thinking that Lamar was going to put the football up 40+ times, against the leagues best secondary.
Why? To try to catch us off guard by playing right into our strength? I don't think so.
Baltimore never tried to establish the run at any point. Either they really shit the bed and panicked horrificly early (a fair point considering the early 4th down attempt from their own 30) and completely abandoned the thought of the run going forward, or they really wanted Lamar to be the guy to take them over the hump.
It just doesn't appear that the Ravens ever planned to lean on the run to try to win this game.
In the end, all they did was cement the fact that Lamar is more RB than QB. He's a highlight reel guy, 2 time MVP with 2 playoff wins in 6 years. Not only that, but they've called into question just WTAF was Harbaugh doing signing off on a gameplan that ended with just 8 rushes on the day by leagues best rushing offense.
Lamar and Pat became starters in the same year.
While Patrick has made his legend largely coming roaring back to drive daggers through the hearts of opponents that go up 2,3,sometimes 4 scores on him, even in post season, and maintaining around an 80% win rate in those games, Lamar Jackson has yet to win a single one in which his team goes down a couple scores at half.
It rarely ends well when you have the ability to run, but you want your QB to be the one getting the credit. Pete Carrol knows a little something about that, and we can probably add John Harbaugh to that list as well.
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