Lamar Jackson and the Ravens fell for the racial hoax that benefits Taylor Swift

Don’t blame Taylor Swift. Don’t blame Pfizer. Don’t blame Travis Kelce, the referees, or Roger Goodell.

Blame Lamar Jackson, Zay Flowers, the Baltimore Ravens, and racial idolatry commentators like Ryan Clark and Robert Griffin III who litter sports media. They platformed Taylor Swift on American television’s biggest stage: Super Bowl LVIII.

Jackson, Flowers, the Ravens, Clark, Griffin, and others handed the Kansas City Chiefs Sunday’s AFC championship game, 17-10.

When you misidentify your real opponent and latch on to the wrong motivation, it’s not surprising when you come out of character, abandon your identity, and perform poorly.

If you think Swift’s injection into the current NFL season has been a months-long psyop to inflate the pop star’s profile and influence so she can inevitably throw her weight behind the presidential campaign of Joe Biden or Michelle Obama, be mad at the right people today.

Focus your angst and anger on the race pundits. They baited the Ravens into one of the biggest choke jobs we’ve seen in recent sports history. The NFL’s best team played with no composure and implemented a pass-heavy offensive strategy intended to crown Jackson rather than to beat the Chiefs.

Jackson and the Ravens fell for a race hoax. It cost them their best chance to reach the Super Bowl during Jackson’s six-year career. Instead of crowning Jackson, Sunday further stamped Patrick Mahomes as being in a league of his own among the current crop of quarterbacks.

Mahomes elevated his playoff record to 14-3. Jackson fell to 2-4.

Don’t blame Taylor Swift for the Chiefs reaching their fourth Super Bowl in the last six years. Don’t blame the referees, either.

If the refs rigged the AFC championship, they did so in favor of the Ravens. A series of bogus holding penalties late in the second quarter and early in the third allowed Baltimore to stay in a game that was decidedly one-sided everywhere except on the scoreboard. Kansas City should have led 28-7 midway through the third quarter. Instead, it was 17-7.

If anything, it appeared the NFL wanted Lamar Jackson to advance to his first Super Bowl. Ever since draft day 2018, Jackson has been the lead actor in the league’s diversity, equity, and inclusion narrative. Black quarterbacks — the highest-paid players in the NFL — are allegedly victims of NFL-sanctioned white supremacy.

Jackson, the story goes, was the last pick of the first round six years ago because of racism. It had nothing to do with his awkward throwing motion or concerns about his downfield accuracy and ability to make plays from the pocket. Nope. Racism explained why Jackson was the 32nd pick.

It’s the same reason Tom Brady was the 199th player selected in 2000. Oh, wait. Brady is white. Maybe evaluating college quarterbacks is hard?

I digress.

My point is the NFL and its media surrogates were rooting hard for Jackson. The predominantly black officiating crew might have been supporting Lamar, too. The NFL has emphasized “racial justice” ever since Colin Kaepernick started wearing an afro and taking a knee during the national anthem to demonstrate his authentic Halfrican-American roots.

According to ESPN football analyst Ryan Clark, Jackson had a chance to be the first authentic black quarterback to win a Super Bowl. Doug Williams, Russell Wilson, and Patrick Mahomes do not really qualify. They don’t (or didn’t) wear cornrows or big gold chains or talk in a dialect that represents the so-called culture.

Unable to be provocative, interesting, insightful, or useful on any topic beyond shouts of “white supremacy,” black media elites have used Jackson and black assistant coaches as fodder and ammunition to justify their own existence.

The racial victimization narrative inevitably works against the chosen symbol of it.

Why did the Ravens wet the bed? Why did the best team in football implode with a lack of composure? Why did they come out of character and panic strategically and emotionally?

Jackson and the Ravens were swept up in the false belief that Jackson’s win on Sunday was a giant step for mankind. They put unneeded pressure on themselves.

The most physical team in football ran the ball just 16 times on Sunday. Jackson threw the ball 37 times. At least half of Jackson’s eight runs were scrambles when he was attempting to pass.

Jackson, Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken, QB coach Tee Martin, assistant QB coach Kerry Dixon, and backup quarterbacks Tyler Huntley and Josh Johnson all wanted to prove Lamar could go throw for throw with Patrick Mahomes.

Lamar can’t do that. He’s not on Mahomes’ level as a passer. In the first half, when the game was decided, Jackson completed five of 13 passing attempts. The Ravens wasted the first 30 minutes of the game.

By the second half, everyone on the Ravens was in full panic mode. The penalties and lack of emotional control reared themselves. With defenders around him, receiver Zay Flowers dove for the end zone with the ball exposed. That’s a breakdown in fundamentals, a byproduct of desperation. The Chiefs punched the ball loose. Jackson tossed a horrendous interception into triple coverage. Another panic move.

The Ravens reminded me of Deontay Wilder before his second fight with Tyson Fury. The fight was in Las Vegas. I attended the fight with a group of friends. We were all rooting for Wilder, the American versus the Brit. Wilder entered the arena and the ring to a racialized rap song and was wearing some sort of African warrior garb. We all thought it was strange, disconcerting, and needlessly divisive. Wilder approached the fight as if it were a Civil War re-enactment and he was the Denzel Washington character from the movie “Glory.”

Fury, who is white, proceeded to beat the brakes off Wilder, who is black.

When you misidentify your real opponent and latch on to the wrong motivation, it’s not surprising when you come out of character, abandon your identity, and perform poorly.

For 100 years, the identity of black Americans had been as strong Christians. As we’ve embraced politics and “racial justice” as our new religion and identity, we’ve come out of character and performed poorly.

Lamar Jackson is just the latest victim of this pattern. Taylor Swift, a liberal feminist influencer, benefitted from the Ravens’ mistake. No surprise.