Pre-season opener for Ravens gives team chance to figure out Lamar Jackson's backup
BALTIMORE -- There's excitement to see some football in Baltimore, but it's not yet the top-level variety.
Ravens stars Lamar Jackson, Mark Andrews, Roquan Smith, and the rest of the Ravens starters will be watching from the sidelines. Still, the Ravens will be out there trying to win the game—and they usually do.
No team plays pre-season games as well as the Baltimore Ravens. Now, the games don't count, but the score is still important.
There will be winners and losers. It should be noted that for 23 consecutive exhibition games, the Ravens have come out as the winner. That's the longest such streak in NFL history.
It's a point of pride for the Ravens, but head coach John Harbaugh looks at it with perspective.
"Different things are important to different people, and I know that the guys who played in those games, the guys that made the plays to win those games in the fourth quarter—because most of those games were won in the fourth quarter with guys making plays—they'll remember it," head coach John Harbaugh said. "It's important to them for the rest of their life, and therefore it's important to me. So, it's meaningful in that sense, but we're playing a game. We have a lot of goals [and] a lot of things that we're trying to accomplish."
The end goal is to become a better football team by evaluating each player and helping them to improve, Harbaugh said.
Ravens quarterback Josh Johnson said that the goal is to win every time, whether the game is during the season or the pre-season.
"To my knowledge, it's a pretty long winning streak, but the focus is when you go out and step on the field no matter what the situation is, it's to win football games," Johnson said. "That's what we're all evaluated upon. That's the most important thing, and that's what makes this organization great because everything is about winning."