2026 Baltimore Ravens Fantasy Preview: Will Lamar Jackson rebound?

· Yahoo Sports

The Ravens were loaded for bear and entered 2025 with the highest win total over/under in the league at most sportsbooks. Instead they underachieved to a lost season, with Lamar Jackson banged up thoroughly and not playing well when he was active. Tyler Loup's bricked field goal in Week 18 kept them out of the playoffs and forced a major reset of the coaching staff.

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▶ 2025 Baltimore Ravens Stats (Rank)

  • Points per game: 24.9 (11th)
  • Total yards per game: 332.2 (16th)
  • Plays per game: 57.3 (16th)
  • Dropbacks per game: 31.5 (32nd)
  • Dropback EPA per play: 0.04 (22nd)
  • Designed rush attempts per game: 28.1 (3rd)
  • Rush EPA per play: 0.04 (3rd)

▶ Ravens hire Jesse Minter, Declan Doyle to oversee new vision

With John Harbaugh out the door, the Ravens will be counting on new head coach Jesse Minter to lead them through the new defensive meta. Minter was almost unanimously interviewed by teams with a head-coaching vacancy, which is always a good sign.

But the real question here for fantasy purposes is what to expect from new offensive coordinator Declan Doyle, who oversaw Chicago's offense last year even though he didn't call plays. Coming from the Ben Johnson and Sean Payton trees is pretty promising even if it doesn't guarantee anything. The Ravens already ran the ball plenty last year with Derrick Henry, so that probably won't change much barring Henry hitting a major decline. How much can Doyle do to get Jackson some easier throws? That's the real question ahead of this offense as the receiving corps looks weaker than it has in some time.

▶ Passing Game

QB: Lamar Jackson, Tyler Huntley

WR: Zay Flowers, LaJohntay Wester

WR: Rashod Bateman, Ja'Kobi Lane

WR: Devontez Walker, Elijah Sarratt

TE: Mark Andrews, Durham Smythe

To say that Jackson looked uncomfortable last year would be an understatement. My favorite nerdy stat about this is that, per FTN Almanac 2026, his DVOA under pressure was minus-104.2%. He was one of the best in the league when not pressured, but his decline under pressure was the second-highest in the league behind only Geno Smith. Jackson's DVOA under pressure in 2024? It was +14.5%, the best rating in the entire league.

The place this mostly shows up? Broken tackles and sacks. Jackson led all NFL quarterbacks with 21 broken tackles per FTN in 2024. In 2025? He had 13 and finished behind several quarterbacks. Even Jacoby Brissett. He had the highest sack rate of his career at 10.6 percent, a far cry from the 2024 rating of 4.63 percent.

Jackson's asking price has settled in an interesting place this offseason. He's at the head of the second tier of quarterbacks, well behind Josh Allen. Depending on the site he can be found anywhere from about 35th to 60th overall in ADP. I'm more of the opinion that we should be on the lower end of that spectrum just because Jackson is a premium athlete that has relied on speed, and if that speed doesn't come back from injury after the down year, I have a hard time understanding how his fantasy value comes close to a top-two quarterback. But injuries are the great black box of the NFL, and one the Ravens have never been very forthcoming about. It wouldn't be surprising if Jackson giga-nuked the entire field at quarterback again, as he did in 2024. You're getting a decent discount on those odds. There are other things that matter here: The new offense, the supporting cast sort of stagnating. But I think 95 percent of Jackson's value is going to be determined by how healthy he is, and that's something we're going to come into this year mostly blind on.

Elsewhere, this is a surprisingly bleak field of passing game targets given how often the Ravens ran the ball last year. The Ravens could add one of the major available free agent wideouts per Jeff Zrebiec, meaning it's hard to give you a recommendation on buying Devontez Walker's ascension. Rashod Bateman was a consistent fantasy bagel last year and even at his best in 2024 was mostly a matchup-play deep ball winner. Neither of those players warrant more than a bench spot in most leagues, and in normal 12-team leagues are probably just waiver wire fodder. About 80 targets are out the door with DeAndre Hopkins, Isaiah Likely and Charlie Kolar leaving, but you have to imagine rookies Sarratt and Lane will eat some of them.

That leaves us with Zay Flowers and Mark Andrews. Flowers quietly cracked 1,200 yards last year, but only finished with nine or more targets five times in 17 games and needed a big finish to erase the part where he had one touchdown through the first 14 weeks of the year. Some of his value is probably underrepresented because of four games with backup quarterbacks, and there's probably extra upside here in the form of some disastrous Baltimore runouts leaving them without other real targets to throw to. I still have a hard time elevating the WR1 on a team that wants to run the ball a lot and play defense as more than a mid-tier WR2 for fantasy purposes.

Andrews' extension was one of the more inexplicable transactions of the 2025 season. He got a three-year, $39 million deal on December 4 after being the subject of trade rumors heading into the draft last year. But Andrews had one game over 50 receiving yards all season and was targeted more than six times just once. Likely's departure should help him a little bit, but Likely already missed a large chunk of last year and the Ravens didn't get Andrews all that involved. He's in the TE2 stage of his fantasy career at this point, though I think there is some low-end TE1 bounceback potential just due to the surrounding targets being depleted.

Ultimately, I think I'm a little higher on the Ravens' ceiling cases in the pass game this year with Doyle, but much like Jackson's health, this is something we will come in completely blind on. Doyle seems competent and is getting the job at a young age. You could tell me that projecting him to be a good playcaller could be one of the funniest things I did this offseason, or you could tell me that projecting him to be a good playcaller would be a massive understatement. Either way, I would believe you. It's a wide range of outcomes. But if the Bears had Derrick Henry last year, I bet they would have been even more run-heavy than they already were, which is what keeps me believing that the ceiling for Flowers is a WR1 and the ceiling for Andrews is probably a mid-tier TE1 while everyone else is just jockeying for the vague title of "fantasy-interesting."

▶ Running Game

RB: Derrick Henry, Justice Hill, Rasheen Ali/Adam Randall

OL (L-R): Ronnie Stanley, Olaivavega Ioane, Danny Pinter, John Simpson, Roger Rosengarten

Is this the year Derrick Henry finally runs out of juice? Well, we haven't seen a sign of him slowing down yet. He averaged four yards after contact per attempt despite seeing more stacked boxes last year than at any point from 2018-2025 — the year that data starts in NFL's Next Gen Stats system. You know what you're getting at this point: King is an absolute monster with the ball in his hands once he gets going and he will give you very little PPR production, making him a useful mid-to-late-first round RB1 pick. I think this situation has actually evolved in a pretty useful way for him with Keaton Mitchell off to Los Angeles. Baltimore's other three backs are rookies or passing-game specialists. Justice Hill has 65 carries and 78 targets over the last two years, and Rasheen Ali saw seven attempts versus 11 targets last year. Barring an injury, Henry seems like a lock to cross 300 carries again in 2026.

Baltimore has traded out most of it's interior line, with first-round pick Olaivavega Ioane in line to start at left guard, returner John Simpson to handle right guard, and a lightly-paid black hole at center to replace all-time bag getter Tyler Linderbaum in free agency. We'll project Colts backup Danny Pinter as the starter for now. It's hard to argue that the unit is better than last year when they let Linderbaum walk, but they also on paper upgraded at both guard spots from last year's combo of Daniel Faalele and Andrew Vorhees. It feels like a pretty neutral situation. It would be nice for Henry's league-winner upside if the 2024 Jackson showed up, especially if he got involved in read-option calls. But even without that, Henry feels like a pretty safe pick with high touchdown equity in this offense.

▶ 2026 Baltimore Ravens Win Total

DraftKings Over/Under: 11.5

Pick: Under (-140)

We can understand the merits of putting the Ravens in the AFC North driver's seat, but their roster just doesn't look anywhere near as impressive as it did at this time in 2025. The receiving room could be up-and-down, there's a big hole at center, nobody knows if Nnamdi Madubuike is going to play, and Trey Hendrickson can't solve every problem this defense had in 2025. Even with the benefit of a second-place schedule (as opposed to the division-winning Steelers), we find it hard to put the Ravens down for 12 wins.

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