Mark Ingram, who was released shortly after Buffalo eliminated the Ravens in this year’s postseason, had a front-row seat to one of the wildest NFL games in recent memory, watching Baltimore squander a 14-point, fourth-quarter lead, only to win 47-42 in a Monday night thriller at Cleveland in Week 14. Baltimore’s slugfest with Baker Mayfield and the division-rival Browns offered no shortage of compelling storylines, though the plot point fans most gravitated to was Lamar Jackson’s mysterious absence during the fourth quarter. The Ravens insisted he was battling “cramps,” though a viral clip of Lamar making a mad dash for the locker room had many wondering if the star quarterback was having an “emergency.”
Jackson emerged from the tunnel in the nick of time (backup quarterback Trace McSorley had just suffered a knee injury), launching a heroic, go-ahead touchdown to an inexplicably wide-open Marquise Brown with 1:51 remaining. “It was like a movie,” recalls Ingram. “Our backup goes in there, Trace, and he kind of gets folded up, twists his knee up. I’m like, ‘Oh no, we have no more quarterbacks!’”
Speaking to reporters after the game, Jackson remained adamant his departure was cramp-related, though many were still unconvinced including Ingram, who admitted to his own initial skepticism. “He said he was cramping. But the way that they had the camera angle of him looking into the locker room, running to the locker room. It looked like he was just kind scooting, trying to make it to the toilet,” said Ingram, spilling the tea to Charlotte Wilder of Fox Sports. “I said, ‘Bro, why you back there scooting like you had to take a dump?’ Like he had Pampers on or something. We gave him a hard time.”
Despite what it looked like to all of us watching on ESPN, the former Heisman winner doesn’t think Jackson was pulling a “Paul Pierce.” “He had to be getting an IV, because there’s no way you take a 20-minute dump during a game when your team needs you,” the 31-year-old reasoned. “It looked like he had to take a dump, but I don’t think he was taking a dump.”
Wherever the truth lies, there’s no denying it all worked out in the end. “I don’t know what he did,” said Ingram. “But whatever he did, he might need to do that more often, because he came back out there and was just flawless.”
The Ravens cut Ingram last month to shed salary ahead of next year’s reduced salary cap (the result of revenue losses from COVID), though the veteran clearly made a lasting impact on his teammates, who left him signed jerseys with personalized messages.
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