BALTIMORE (AP) — Lamar Jackson's experience with “Monday Night Football” growing up sounds pretty relatable.
“My mom used to make me go to sleep because I had school,” the star quarterback said.
If parents nowadays are any more lenient, their kids should be in for quite a treat this Monday, when Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens host the Detroit Lions. It's a matchup of two of the league's most entertaining offenses — and Jackson tends to play his best in this particular showcase game.
In nine starts on Monday night, he's thrown 22 touchdown passes and no interceptions while producing a passer rating of 124.3.
“Probably that extra rest day. I’d say that. ... Extra film," Jackson explained. "Get a good feel for who we are playing against and go from there.”
For a team that gets criticized for not advancing far enough in the postseason, the Ravens have been pretty darn good in certain spotlight games in the regular season.
Under coach John Harbaugh, they're 22-3 in prime-time home games, with Jackson producing a 10-1 mark. The Ravens have won five straight Monday night games.
Last season, Baltimore won road Monday night games against the Buccaneers and Chargers. The Ravens haven't lost on Monday night since Las Vegas beat them in overtime to start the 2021 season. The most recent time they lost a night home game with Jackson in the lineup was against Kansas City back in 2020.
Although they've played their share of prime-time home games and games on Monday night, Baltimore (1-1) hasn't hosted a Monday night game since Oct. 11, 2021, when Jackson rallied the Ravens to two touchdowns and two 2-point conversions in the final 10 minutes of the fourth quarter to force overtime against Indianapolis. Baltimore ultimately won 31-25, and Jackson finished with a couple of career highs that still stand — 37 completions for 442 yards.
“We’ve done pretty well on the road on Monday night,” Harbaugh said. “The home games, you have your crowd. That’s really what it boils down to. You have your crowd, and I hope they’re out there. I expect them to be out there like they always are and be really into it, be loud and really make it tough.”
The Lions (1-1) enter this matchup at Baltimore with a three-game winning streak in Monday night games. They played two of them last season — a sign of how much more of a draw they'd become under coach Dan Campbell.
Detroit beat Seattle 42-29 last September, and the Lions went on the road and beat San Francisco 40-34 on Dec. 30.
Jared Goff completed all 18 of his pass attempts in the Monday night game against the Seahawks. He's 7-2 as a starter on Monday night with a passer rating of 105.6.
One of Goff's first Monday night starts was an epic 2018 matchup between his Los Angeles Rams and Kansas City.
Goff threw for 413 yards and four touchdowns as the Rams outlasted Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs 54-51.
Goff says playing on Monday night is still special.
“We’ll be the only thing on TV and on the road in a raucous environment, against a team that’s got the history they got,” he said. "It’ll be fun.”
The previous time Detroit faced Baltimore was in 2023. That was a home game for the Ravens — although not at night — and they scored touchdowns on their first four possessions and won 38-6. Baltimore was up 28-0 before the Lions managed a first down.
“I want to see us improve on the road against a really good opponent," Campbell said. "There’s a lot of things I feel like are similar between us. It’s not a mirror image necessarily, but yet, the principles I feel like are very much alike. And so, you want to see us go in there and really improve under that environment against that team. I think that’s the biggest thing.”
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