Lamar Jackson out six to nine weeks with thumb injury but tells Ravens he will return
Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson will miss six to nine weeks after surgery on a fractured and dislocated thumb, NFL Network's Ian Rapoport reported on Sunday — but Jackson has already told his teammates he intends to play again this season.
Jackson hurt his throwing hand on the Ravens' first offensive snap at Buffalo on 1 November, his hand striking Bills pass rusher Greg Rousseau's arm on the follow-through of his first pass back. He went straight to the locker room after one play, was placed on injured reserve, and is undergoing surgery to repair the thumb.
The timeline is the story. Six weeks puts Jackson back around Week 15, when Baltimore plays Pittsburgh; nine weeks shrinks his return to the Week 18 finale, also against Pittsburgh, or to the playoffs themselves. Injured reserve carries a four-game minimum on its own, and the six-to-nine-week projection runs well past it.
The reporting here is consistent across outlets: Rapoport's timeline and Jackson's message to teammates — paraphrased as "just stay alive, and if you do I will be back" — were carried independently by NBC Sports, TSN, theScore and the New York Post, and Pro Football Rumors confirmed the return intention from the same sourcing. What remains a projection rather than a promise is the recovery itself: thumb surgery on a throwing hand has to heal, then grip, then velocity, in that order, and a team that has fallen out of the race by mid-December may make a different decision than one playing for a seed.
Jackson, 29 and a two-time MVP, had already missed three games this season with a high ankle sprain, in which Baltimore went 1-2 and fell to the bottom of the AFC North. The Ravens, now 4-5, have their bye in Week 13, which folds one free week of healing into the calendar, and Jacoby Brissett — acquired in a trade — is the likely starter in the interim.
Baltimore's next test is whether it can stay in the playoff race without him; the short end of the timeline points to a return in mid-to-late December.