Okay, I'd like to give my take on this discussion and I am genuinely interested in hearing your guys' opinions on it. Lamar has transformed the running game and that's great! He commands respect every single play. This has elevated the play of the offensive line and the running backs. During his three games, he's shown that he will miss some passes we hoped he wouldn't, but he also made almost every type of throw at least once showing he can do it, but he's just inconsistent at this point. What I think this means however is that any defense which is better against the run will cause many of the plays that are going for 6 or 7 yards to go for 1 or 2. This may put more pressure on Lamar to use his arm to beat them. Now I'm not saying that Lamar can't do that, not at all, but I wouldn't be confident that he could. We've seen the first half of his last 2 games, which I blame M**** for, but it's reminded me of when Joe was playing because we could only do one thing, pass and not run. When M**** forced too many passes which weren't working, Lamar made mistakes and the game was close. When he had Joe and the run wasn't working, we saw added pressure on Joe and then he made mistakes. Now I know I'm stating the obvious, but you need both. I think we all kinda overlook that this isn't Lamar vs Joe completely independently. We have been using both heavily when both healthy. I do not expect that stop no matter who is starting. I honestly could see Lamar starting and having us bring in Flacco situationally. Or back to what we were doing before. I don't think THIS YEAR, either can do both and so to have our best shot at the playoffs, I think we need to use both.
