Advertisement

Lamar Jackson Won His 2nd MVP Last Night. Whoop De Doo.

Todd Rosenberg. Getty Images.

So Lamar Jackson won his 2nd MVP last night. Damn near won it unanimously, earning 49 of 50 first place votes. Only two people have ever won it unanimously… some guy named Tom Brady and… Lamar Jackson back in 2019. Pretty ridiculous stuff if you ask me, and the one guy who didn't vote for him is one of those nerds from Football Outsiders who probably got cut from JV and ended up playing tennis in high school.

But the question I keep asking myself is…. how much am I really supposed to care right now? 

I could write the cookie cutter blog that seems to be the norm these days at Barstool Sports dot com…

"LAMARRRRR JACKSONNNNNNNN!!!!!!

THAT'S MY QUARTERBACK!!!!!!! TWO-TIME MVP LIKE YOU READ ABOUT!!!! 

NOT BAD FOR A RUNNING BACK!!!!!! WHO'S "QUARTERBACKY" NOW?!??!"

That would be lazy and the easy way out. And I would love to pour the praises on Lamar right now. This MVP is unquestionably earned. He played his balls off all season and he totally deserves to be the guy up on that stage holding that trophy. And for that, I am genuinely happy for him.

But it would be totally disingenuous for me to get on my laptop here and blog any sort of real excitement about this formality of an announcement. It would be totally fraudulent for me to do otherwise.

Lamar has essentially played 3 "full" seasons where he was healthy and ready to rock for the postseason. In one of those 3 seasons, he missed a critical game against Pittsburgh due to COVID, which led to RGIII starting on a Wednesday afternoon in a game that ultimately decided the division and made their playoff journey 10x more challenging. In the other two seasons, he won MVP and set the world on fire, forcing the AFC to come thru Baltimore.

Both times ended in incredibly disappointing defeat at home.

This last loss is one that I don't think I'll ever get over. They will never have the stars aligned the way they did this year to waltz right into the Super Bowl and they blew it. The Ravens are a better football team than the Chiefs in 2023 and they absolutely pooped their pants. You can say the same about the Titans loss in 2019. But I was always able to chalk that up to just being one freakish football game. Two times now? That suggests a pattern.

I don't even put that much blame on Lamar for either of the losses. He's certainly part of the equation, but I genuinely think if Zay Flowers runs into the end zone instead of diving, we're playing this week and the Chiefs aren't. And in 2019, Lamar put up a clean 500 yards of total offense. The real issue is that they totally got away both times from their bread and butter and hardly ran the football. We can dissect that til the cows come home, and I'll just leave it at that.

I guess my point here is that it's a fucking shame man. It's a fucking shame that we can't be fired up about Lamar Jackson going up on stage and accepting this trophy between film study sessions and practices for the biggest football game of his life. He deserves that scenario and I'm hopeful he's able to get that opportunity down the road… but man. I just can't muster or manufacture any excitement about this right now when the disappointment and pain still hurts so deep.

Sorry Lamar. Congrats, but sorry.