Doug Gottlieb: “I’ll get these tweets all the time of people who say to me ‘WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO APOLOGIZE TO LAMAR JACKSON??’ What do I need to apologize for? The issue for Lamar Jackson is that you still hold your breath worrying that the guy is going to get hurt. He’s an outlier. There have been quarterbacks who have run before but never with the volume of carries of Lamar Jackson, and no one gets a clean hit on him… I’ve been realistic about Lamar, there are still limitations about him as a thrower, although he’s continued to improve as a thrower and they’ve embraced who they are. He’s not a ‘spread ‘em out five wide and throw’, the difference in the Ravens for the most part is that they’ve just stayed in their offense, and haven’t gotten behind and done what teams have done traditionally for 50 years in the NFL. [Acknowledging a Bengals player’s tweet saying Lamar Jackson is an ‘elite passer’]. He’s actually NOT an elite passer; we have to stop lying to ourselves. STOP IT, EVERYONE STOP IT. There are no racial implications to it and there are no naysayers. He is a ‘good’ enough passer to take advantage of being the greatest running quarterback ever, THAT’S IT. We need to stop this. The Baltimore Ravens are lying about it, they took two players in the first round ahead of Lamar Jackson. If they were so sure they had found a ground-breaking quarterback wouldn’t they have taken him earlier? It’s really hard to play against because no one plays that way. To say that it’s somehow a bad thing to say that he’s a ‘running back’… We always talk about how someone said he should try being a wide receiver; like he was BAD his last college game. He throws a great ball downfield but he struggles with some of the easy throws, the middle ones, and deep outside the numbers is not his strength. Let’s stop with ‘hE’s aN eLiTe pAsSeR!’ he’s NOT. What he is – he’s become a good enough passer and maybe even better than ‘good enough’, good and solid, and then a great, elite, special, unique, and incredible runner. Don’t tell me he’s an ‘elite passer.’ An elite passer is Pat Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers, and Tom Brady. He’s not, but he has a weapon that no one else in the NFL has ever had. YOU CAN’T CATCH HIM… We need to stop making everybody out to be the enemy and the bad guy and the denier of Lamar Jackson. He’s not perfect.” (Full Audio Take at the Bottom of the Page
Listen to Doug Gottlieb discuss the recent viral remarks by a Cincinnati Bengals player who called Lamar Jackson a ‘running back and a quarterback’, which seemed to then be manipulated into headlines titled ‘a running back who can throw’, drawing the ire of Ravens head coach John Harbaugh.
The player, linebacker Logan Wilson, then took to Twitter to say that he was actually complimenting Lamar, and went on to say that Jackson was an ‘elite passer.’
Check out the audio below as Gottlieb explains why calling Jackson an ‘elite passer’ is just a flat-out lie, and says we need to stop attacking individuals who offer legitimate criticisms to the reigning MVP.
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