Ravens' Lamar Jackson hits back at Mike Florio over 'disrespectful' prediction
NBC Sports’ Mike Florio made headlines ahead of the "Monday Night Football" matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers. The longtime NFL insider predicted on Peacock’s "PFT Live" program that the 49ers would "kick the s–t out of the Ravens." Florio did not come anywhere close to being right on his prediction for the primetime matchup, […]
NBC Sports’ Mike Florio made headlines ahead of the "Monday Night Football" matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers. The longtime NFL insider predicted on Peacock’s "PFT Live" program that the 49ers would "kick the s–t out of the Ravens."
Florio did not come anywhere close to being right on his prediction for the primetime matchup, as the Ravens ended up cruising to a 33-19 road win over the 49ers. Baltimore strung together seven scoring drives in the contest, while the Roquan Smith-led Ravens defense came away with five takeaways.
Florio’s prediction for the game caught the attention of Lamar Jackson, and the sixth-year passer took some time during his postgame press conference to share just what he thought about it.
"We’re in the NFL," Jackson said. "We play ball. Not to take away from that team, but you can’t just discredit us. We’re grown men. We have to feed our families. He can have his opinion but don’t just talk like that. That’s disrespectful. That’s very disrespectful.
"Not to take away from the 49ers at all, because they’re great all across the board, but we’re going to come to play as well. Our record [isn’t a] fluke. We play ball, and we showed that. He just needs to keep doing his job, but just don’t come off like that towards us. That’s disrespectful, like I said, because he isn’t putting the pads on. If he was putting the pads on, I feel like it would’ve been different for him. He wouldn’t say that. He’d be respectful. I say that to say this; we’re respectful to our opponents. Our opponents are respectful to us, but a guy who’s not even playing against us [and] just coming out and being disrespectful, I guess he wanted more views on his channel. We’re going to leave it at that."
After the Ravens' statement win, Florio took to Twitter to issue an apology for how he "phrased" his prediction for the highly anticipated contest.
"Lamar is right," Florio wrote. "I apologize for how I phrased my opinion. I believed the 49ers were dramatically better than every other team in the NFL: Cowboys, Eagles, Chiefs, Dolphins, everyone. The Ravens proved otherwise. They deserve complete and total respect for what they accomplished."
The Ravens will now look ahead to a crucial home contest against the Miami Dolphins coming up in Week 17.
Ravens get screwed by refs in a way that’s never been seen
This play didn’t go as the Ravens expected it to go.
