Chomps
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- Mar 18, 2019
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Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson continues to insist that his fourth-quarter absence from Monday’s epic 47-42 in over the Browns resulted from cramps. Those who have seen his been-there, done-that scamper to the locker room continue to believe that he had an impending intestinal requirement.
“I started cramping on the field,” Jackson told reporters after the game. “Right before those two passes I threw to Willie [Snead] and Mark [Andrews], the overthrow, I was cramping in my forearm. . . .
“I was on the sideline, Tyus [Bowser] ended up catching the pick, the interception, we go down and score. And right after that, I gave the ball to J.K. [Dobbins], and my legs just started cramping. I’m like, ‘I need something now to help me get better really quick, because this is a crucial game, right here. Both teams are playing their hearts out.’
“And we went to the back. Dr. [Andrew] Tucker, he was helping me out a lot, and [assistant certified athletic trainer] Kevin [Domboski] came back and started stretching me. Trace [McSorley] was doing a great job driving the ball down the field, then I saw my guy go down. And as I’m seeing him go down, I was still stretching. I was catching an attitude, because it wasn’t going the way we wanted it to. And then I saw him go down, and I was like, ‘We’ve got to start now. We’ve just got to go out there now.’ And I started running out there, Kev was running with me. It was fourth down, the offensive line blocked their tail off, and our guys just made great catches, and we came out with the victory.”
Asked later what he was doing in the locker room, Jackson said, “I was cramping. I didn’t pull a Paul Pierce. I didn’t pull a Paul Pierce. I was cramping.”
By “pull a Paul Pierce,” Jackson meant he wasn’t using cramps as cover for a bathroom break. On social media, Jackson had a more direct (and hilarious) response to the question of whether No. 8 had to No. 2.
Teammate Rober Griffin III got in on the act, with a twist on the DK Metcalf moment from earlier this year.
It’s great that Jackson sees the humor in the issue, and that he isn’t miffed about the widespread speculation that the only “cramps” he had were abdominal. The absence, frankly, was too long to be related to the thing many think it was for. Plus, when Jackson returned to the field, his arm was wrapped in the spot where he would have gotten the IV.
Unless the Ravens were engaged in a next-level effort to hide the fact that Jackson had to unload some cargo, there’s no real reason to think that he had anything other than cramps.