It has been clear for a while that Lamar Jackson would eventually break Michael Vick's record for most rushing yards by a quarterback.
Jackson did so on Christmas night in Houston, getting to 6,110 rushing yards in just his seventh year while Vick took 13 seasons to get to 6,109.
But it was 2019 when Jackson first set the world ablaze with one of his now numerous highlight-reel plays – his 47-yard "Houdini" spin touchdown on Nov. 10 in Cincinnati.
Head Coach John Harbaugh told his coaches in his headset at the time that, "they'll be watching that run for decades and decades." It's half a decade later, and we're still watching it.
Jackson kept on the zone-read play and darted between Bengals defensive end Carlos Dunlap and linebacker Jermaine Pratt. Once on the second level, he juked by an open-field tackle attempt by safety Jessie Bates III, then spun around linebacker Nick Vigil and safety Shawn Williams, sending Vigil tumbling to the ground. Jackson picked his speed back up and raced into the end zone with running back Mark Ingram II leading the way.
When going through the nearly impossible task of trying to rank his runs (we tried to do so here), that run still sits at the top for Ravens fans – though not everyone, as you'll read below.
Lamar Jackson
Jackson's first memory of the run was the play before it. After that play, a 7-yard run out of pistol formation by Ingram to the right, Dunlap started chirping.
Dunlap had been responsible for keeping Jackson contained on the edge, and he had just been duped into doing nothing on that Ingram run.
"Carlos Dunlap. He was like, 'You're not running this game. I want you to pull the ball,'" Jackson recalled. "I was like, 'Alright, just give me the look.'
"They gave me the look, I pulled the ball, he hopped [inside], so I just made a cut, got vertical. It was a linebacker and safety that came and I'm like, 'I can't do nothing,' so I just spun. I saw Mark running beside me and I was like, 'I've just got to go. Stay in front of him and I'm good.'"
Lesson learned. Don't tempt Jackson.
But the Ravens quarterback doesn't have that run at the top of his highlight reel. He said he'd been doing spin moves on opponents since high school at Boynton Beach, Fla.
"Is it [the best]? I don't know. I can't call it," Jackson said. "There's some that go unnoticed because they weren't touchdowns, but I have some runs that I did and it's not even highlighted, like people don't even notice. I made people miss in small areas that aren't highlighted. I don't know which is my favorite."
Nick Vigil
Vigil was leading the Bengals in tackles in 2019 when Jackson hit the spin move on him. After four seasons in Cincinnati, the Bengals third-round pick has bounced around to five different teams since then and is currently on the Dallas Cowboys' practice squad.
Asked if he remembers the play, Vigil chucked and said, "Yeah, I remember it."
"They ran a zone read play, I had bad eyes. I went with the running back initially. Then I was chasing down the field, pursuing him from behind. I go to make the tackle – I don't know how he saw me, but he felt me there in the middle of the open field and made a spin move, made me miss, and took it to the end zone. It was a great play."
The Ravens beat the Bengals 49-13 that day, dropping Cincinnati to 0-9. They were not a very good team. Jackson has had the Bengals' number over the years, going 10-2 against them with 784 combined rushing yards – the most he's had against any team, by far.
"He's obviously super hard to defend," Vigil said. "You can't replicate what he can do in practice – the speed that he plays with, the way he's been able to develop as a passer in this league and taken his game to the next level. I think that's why he's been the MVP what, twice?"
Marshal Yanda
Yanda was in his final season of a Hall-of-Fame worthy career. He won a Super Bowl with Joe Flacco, but he'd never seen anything like Jackson in the NFL.
"When he spins and makes one guy fall down and fall into the next guy, it was like a damn pile up on the highway," Yanda said. "That was a wow moment. Like, holy [crap]. That was definitely a moment that I won't forget playing with him."
Yanda said it reminded him of a play you might see when a power-five college plays a homecoming game against some small school. Except that's not supposed to happen in the NFL, where it's the best of the best.
"You're at the highest level in the world. And Lamar was just – physically and his athletic ability – that much higher than everybody else on the field," Yanda said.
"He's just so shifty and so explosive and his acceleration is so off the charts that he made those guys look not even average. He made them look bad. And it's no disrespect to the Bengals. It's just how impressive of an athlete Lamar is that you see plays like that. It's like, 'Wow, he is just a special, special player.'"
Nick Boyle
As was fairly common, bruising tight end Nick Boyle was a lead blocker on the play. He remembers the actual play-call: Dice right Y casper 12 slope.
Boyle was the "casper" portion of events, which signified the motion he would go into across the formation before executing a kick-out block. Dunlap was left unblocked as the "read" defender, and he read wrong by jumping inside, so Boyle's target was Pratt.
"Sometimes G-Ro [Greg Roman] didn't want me to throw cut [blocks], but I'm like, 'Screw it, I'm just going to try to cut the hell out of this guy. I'm just going to try to saw him in half.'
"So I ran over there, I didn't get him down, but I moved him out to the left enough. I threw my cut, and I look up, and it looks like he's going to run into me. Anytime Lamar has the ball, he could do anything, whether you missed your block or not. I kind of got out of the way, and I see him whizz by, and I'm like, 'Oh, we're going to get a good gain like 12, 15 yards.' And then I just remember looking at him or the Jumbotron and seeing him do that spin move and just keep going, and we scored."
Boyle didn't remember having an outsized reaction. He was mostly just happy they capped another drive with a rushing touchdown – not thinking he just witnesses something magical.
"So a lot of people look at that and that was obviously one of his best runs, I think, of his career. That iconic spin move, that really set it off. But I mean, with the ball in Lamar's hands, he could pop something like that anytime," Boyle said.
"We get that moment every practice. Even at a walkthrough, he'll do something crazy. To see him do that, was it like, 'Oh crap, he's really good like this?' Yeah, but I think all of our players, I don't want to say we don't expect that, but we're used to seeing stuff like that. It's like, 'Oh, Lamar's at it again.'"
Boyle said he tells everyone that asks about playing with Jackson that he made everyone else's job earlier. Boyle vividly remembers playing the Buffalo Bills and whiffing on a block against linebacker Matt Milano and turning around to see him break Milano's ankles.
"I'm like, 'Alright, I guess I'll just go turn around and find somebody else to block,'" Boyle said. "Obviously, you know he's super special, but when you say guys like Michael Vick, that's the person I was trying to be when I was playing against my brother on Xbox. I'm feel thankful for being on the same field as him and blocking for Lamar Jackson. No one's like him; no one's ever been like him."
Ronnie Stanley
Not many guys have played with Jackson as long as left tackle Ronnie Stanley, who was the first person to get a little block on Vigil.
"I just recall seeing Lamar run by, spin off that guy, and then it was just a blur down the field," Stanley said. "It looked very natural."
But add Stanley to those who believe Jackson had better runs.
"I feel like there were so many games where he shook people. I think that was just the first one where he spun on someone like that," Stanley said. "But the way he'll cut back on people, those are the ones I really like. When I see him stiff-arming people, that's more shocking to me. Seeing him juke people, that's more normal."
Mark Ingram II
Ingram was the decoy in the play, and he thought his job would be done when Jackson pulled the ball out of his belly and kept it himself.
But when Jackson spun around the two Bengals defenders, Ingram turned into a one-man convoy running into the end zone alongside him.
Ingram kept looking over at Jackson like he couldn't believe what he was witnessing.
"Man he's just special, bruh," Ingram told ESPN. "I've seen him do a lot of crazy stuff, but that game right there and that play right there? I wish I had a GoPro on my helmet for y'all to see that footage. It was probably the craziest thing I ever seen on the field in person."
