Lamar Jackson sits at 14th in the daily QB rankings. Jared Goff is 13th. Neither quarterback started 2025 anywhere near this low. Both entered September as consensus Top 10 guys with legitimate Super Bowl aspirations. Now Jackson is hurt, Goff just threw five turnovers in an elimination game, and their franchises are asking uncomfortable questions about what comes next.
The 2025 season broke both of them.
Jackson Never Beat the Gatekeepers
Here’s the irony that should haunt Baltimore. Jackson’s playoff demons have always been named Mahomes and Allen. He’s 0-3 against them combined in January, including that AFC Championship loss to Kansas City last year. Those two quarterbacks stood between Jackson and everything he wanted.
And now? Mahomes tore his ACL in Week 15 and is done for the year. The Chiefs went 6-8 and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2014. Allen and the Bills are still around, but the biggest gatekeeper is gone. Jackson finally had his clearest path to the Super Bowl.
Instead, he’s sitting out with a back contusion while Tyler Huntley tries to save Baltimore’s season. The Ravens are 8-8. Jackson has played in only 12 games and won six of them. His passing yards per game rank 24th among starting quarterbacks. His rushing yards are a career low. This was supposed to be his year to finally break through, and his body won’t cooperate.
Baltimore should draft a quarterback in the back half of the first round this April. Let the kid sit behind Jackson in 2026. Learn the system. Watch how Harbaugh runs things. Then hand him the keys in 2027. Jackson will be 31 by then, coming off another injury-plagued campaign, with eight years of NFL mileage on those legs. The Ravens can’t keep waiting for a January breakthrough that never arrives.
| QB | HeyTC Rank | Playoff Record | Years with Team |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lamar Jackson | 14th | 3-5 | 8 |
| Jared Goff | 13th | 5-5 | 5 |
Detroit’s Collapse Was Predictable
Dan Campbell didn’t sugarcoat the Christmas Day loss. “The story of that game was six turnovers,” he said. “You can’t turn the ball over six times and win in this league.”
He’s right. But the turnovers were a symptom, not the disease.
The Lions went 15-2 in 2024, earned the NFC’s top seed, then got embarrassed by Washington in the Divisional Round. This year? Detroit finished 8-8 and got eliminated on Christmas Day by the Vikings. By a rookie quarterback named Max Brosmer. Goff threw two picks and lost three fumbles. The team had six turnovers total in a must-win game.
Campbell warned everyone this was possible. After the 2023 NFC Championship loss to San Francisco, he told his team something prophetic: “This may have been our only shot.” He said he didn’t believe it. He said he’d fight to get back. But he also said it would be twice as hard the next year. He wasn’t wrong.
“I’m going to be looking at a lot of things,” Campbell said after the elimination, “because I do not like being home for the playoffs.” He acknowledged that Brad Holmes and he have decisions to make. He even admitted something telling: “It doesn’t take much for things to get off-balance, not as much as you would think.”
Ben Johnson left to coach the Bears. Aaron Glenn took the Jets job. The defense got destroyed by injuries. The offensive line fell apart. Everything that could go wrong did.
The Money Problem Nobody Wants to Discuss
Goff carries a $69.6 million cap hit in 2026. That’s not a typo. Sixty-nine million dollars for a quarterback who ranks 13th in the current standings and just had one of the worst performances of his career when it mattered most.
The Lions can restructure. They probably will. Converting most of that salary into signing bonus would push the pain down the road and free up $40 million or so for next year. But that just delays the inevitable conversation. Is Goff the guy who can win a Super Bowl? Or is he a very good quarterback who needs everything around him to be perfect?
Amon-Ra St. Brown has a $33 million cap hit coming in 2026. No wide receiver is worth that. Brady and Mahomes proved it over and over again. Great quarterbacks make receivers, not the other way around. Edelman was a seventh-round pick. Kelce was a third-rounder who took years to develop. The best teams don’t pay premium prices for pass catchers.
Detroit has painted itself into a corner. Too much money tied up in contracts that assume continued excellence. Too many key players aging or injured. Too little depth when things went sideways.
What Happens Now
Jackson will probably play in Week 18 against Pittsburgh. It’s a winner-take-all game for the AFC North title if the Steelers lose to Cleveland this weekend. Baltimore’s season isn’t technically over yet. But watching Huntley beat Green Bay 41-24 while Jackson sat on the sideline said everything. The Ravens might actually be better with their backup right now. That’s a brutal realization for a franchise paying Jackson $52 million a year.
Goff has one meaningless game left against Chicago. Then the Lions spend the offseason deciding whether to run it back with essentially the same roster or make dramatic changes. Campbell says he and Brad Holmes will look at everything. He’s right that small tweaks can get things back on track. He’s also probably wrong that small tweaks are enough here.
Run the Super Bowl simulator as many times as you want. Neither of these teams shows up consistently in the results. That’s the harsh truth for two franchises that thought 2025 would be their year.
The window was open. They couldn’t get through it.
AI-Assisted Content (AIAC): Human ideas, drafts, and final edits—enhanced by AI.
