Ravens rookie head coach Jesse Minter kept Lamar Jackson’s status tightly sealed Wednesday, and that silence may have told the biggest story of all.
A week into Jackson’s absence because of an ankle injury, Minter offered only a few carefully chosen crumbs after practice. He said the quarterback “was able to get some work in,” but refused to go much further, steering reporters back to the injury report and leaving the public picture of Jackson’s workload as cloudy as ever.
“Um, yeah, I think the more you are able to do, and respond from and feel from raises your optimism but, again, we’ll kind of see how it goes through the week,” Minter said when asked how much Jackson did.
Pressed again, he added: “I think the injury report will kind of say how the practice went.”
That caution lines up with how the situation has been handled since Jackson went down at the end of the first half in Week 4 against the Titans. He did not return to practice until last week, and then only in a limited capacity. Minter had spent three weeks calling the injury “day-to-day,” even after Jackson described it last week as a high-ankle sprain that was “very, very painful.”
Wednesday’s comments came with the usual injury-report fog, but there were still some clear signs around Jackson’s availability. Minter would not say whether the quarterback did more or less than he was able to do last week, and he never directly described the session as anything close to full participation. Jackson was also not made available to the media Wednesday, which is typically the day he speaks when healthy and expected to play.
The Ravens now sit at 4-3 and head into a crucial trip to Buffalo, where they are plainly a different team without Jackson. Baltimore has continued to cough up double-digit leads at a ridiculous clip, and the cracks have only widened while the quarterback has been out. With a short turnaround and a Week 9 home game against Jacksonville in prime time looming, there is a growing sense Jackson’s return could be targeted for Week 9 instead of Sunday, which would stretch the timeline to nearly five weeks since the original injury.
There were other absences worth noting as well. Kyle Hamilton, the best performer on a shaky defense so far, did not practice Wednesday, and rookie guard Vega Ioane also sat out with a knee injury that is expected to keep him sidelined for a while. Minter said he “felt pretty good” that some of the players who missed Wednesday’s work could still be back for Week 8.
The Ravens’ bigger problem remains the same: they have now lost 17 games since 2019 when leading by 10 or more points, including two straight against AFC opponents and three this season. With the trade deadline approaching and the roster again looking far from finished, the questions around Jackson’s ankle are only part of a much larger mess.
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