‘Tired of this’: Lamar Jackson rants about turnovers after Ravens’ loss to Bills

Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens are headed home early from the playoffs yet again. And the two-time NFL MVP, in an expletive-laden rant, said his two turnovers were partially to blame.

EDMONTON — Connor McDavid has been quietly taking the abuse for the first decade of his National Hockey League career.

Now, he’s giving some back. And Corey Perry, for one, is here for it.

“Absolutely,” Perry said on Monday, speaking to Sportsnet in his dressing room stall. At the same moment, McDavid was in an adjoining office conducting his hearing with the Department of Player Safety over his latest transgression, a cross-check to Conor Garland’s head.

“You have to protect yourself,” advised Perry, “because if you don’t, you’re just going keep getting the shit kicked out of you. They’re just going to keep coming. That is what it comes down to.”

McDavid snapped last week, with a hat trick of hard but questionable physical plays: A crushing body check that knocked Los Angeles winger Alex Laferriere out of the Kings lineup for at least three games, that included a liberal dose of McDavid’s elbow; a sneaky dirty chicken wing that landed Minnesota’s Marcus Johansson (concussion) on injured reserve; and the cross-check to Garland’s head in Vancouver Saturday night that earned him a three-game suspension.

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McDavid, it seems, has had enough of waiting for the on-ice officials to give him the room he requires to be the best player on earth. (More on that in a second).

For now, he’ll cut his own swath rather than waiting patiently for a striped arm to go up.

“You can’t (wait). Not in our game,” Perry said. “It has to be policed by the players, and that’s the way it’s always been.”

McDavid was not made available to speak with the media on Monday prior to his hearing. So we went to the veteran Perry, who has spent a career on the razor’s edge of the official’s judgement.

Somehow this season, things have changed for McDavid. Though fans of other teams complain that he gets every call, increasingly, people inside the game are wondering why he draws so few penalties.

And the numbers back that up.

McDavid, the consensus best player in the National Hockey League, possesses the puck in the offensive zone more than any other player. That’s 1:25 per game this season, the highest number recorded since they began charting that stat for the 2016-17 season.

SEASON	MCDAVID OZ POSSESSION TIME/GAME	LEAGUE RANK
2024-25	1:25	1st (MacKinnon 2nd, 1:18)
2023-24	1:19	1st (Q. Hughes 2nd, 1:14)
2022-23	1:21	1st (Barzal 2nd, 1:17)
2021-22	1:19	1st (P. Kane 2nd, 1:11)
2020-21	1:15	1st (Barzal 2nd, 1:07)
2019-20	1:07	4th (Barzal 1:19, Eichel 1:18, Kane 1:08)
2018-19	1:07	4th (Kane 1:19, Barzal 1:14, Eichel 1:08)
2017-18	1:08	3rd (Barzal 1:12, Kane 1:11)
2016-17	1:02	2nd (Kane: 1:12)

So, no one has ever had more offensive zone puck possession than McDavid has this season. But you’ll never guess where he is ranked in penalties drawn.

Somehow, the Oilers captain sits 47th in the league in penalties drawn this season, way down from his usual ranking in the top five.

SEASON	PENALTIES DRAWN	LEAGUE RANK
2024-25	14	T-47th
2023-24	41	T-5th
2022-23	45	1st
2021-22	50	T-1st
2020-21	29	T-2nd
2019-20	24	T-20th
2018-19	35	T-6th
2017-18	36	T-8th
2016-17	52	1st

“I can’t believe he doesn’t draw three or four penalties a game,” a scout said to me last week, watching his own team try to corral McDavid and the Oilers. “You could call something almost every time he has the puck. We’re all over him.”

Perry is less surprised at that number than you’d think.

“It’s frustrating to watch when you’re on his team because you see the abuse he takes,” Perry said. “Forty-seventh in the league? Anybody else in the league that stuff happens to, it’s a penalty. But because he has the puck so much, (referees) don’t want to call a penalty every time.

“You can’t tell me that Garland didn’t have three penalties in the last 10 seconds of that game. If they just call the penalty, all that shit doesn’t happen.”

Perry has gone from Hart Trophy-winning, top-line, Team Canada player, to a fourth-liner in Edmonton grinding out the final few seasons of a Hall of Fame career.

Like him? Hate him? Whatever.

Nobody still strapping on the gear today has more experience with the zebras, or DoPS, than the 39-year-old they call “The Worm.”

“Why aren’t we protecting the superstars? Why aren’t we?” Perry asks. “Every other league does it? They protect their superstars.”

Parick Mahomes, LeBron James… Go down the list.

“Sure, they’re going to take extra abuse. They’re the superstars. Connor knows that and he doesn’t bitch and complain very often about it,” Perry said. “So we’ll do it for him.”

Speaking to a few voices in the officiating community Monday, when asked why veteran officials Wes McCauley and Chris Lee didn’t even raise an arm while Garland was wrestling with McDavid, more than one person said this (and we paraphrase):

“Edmonton’s got the puck. The second you blow the play dead, they shoot it in the goal and now you can’t count the goal. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. That’s how referees think.

“But why are we thinking that way?” asks Perry. “They don’t do that in football. They throw the flag every time there’s a penalty. That’s the problem: We’re reffing the score. We’re reffing the time of the game.

“In the first period, that’s a penalty (on Garland). In the third period with 20 seconds left, it isn’t? Why are we like that?”

As for McDavid falling to 47th in penalties drawn, usually when we see a precipitous drop in calls for an individual player it is because the officials have caught on to a player’s embellishment. Videos sent out by the NHL’s officiating department land in the inbox of every on-ice official on a daily basis, and a trend in one player’s game is noted and dealt with accordingly.

We asked four sources within the department if that is the case with McDavid. All said it was not.

“The embellishment list? Never, ever,” said a source. “Never even brought up with McDavid. He plays through it, the way (Sidney) Crosby does.”

“We know the guys who embellish,” said another voice. “I’ve never, ever heard his name (connected) with that group.”

There are two types of players who draw penalties:

Since the 2016-17 season, McDavid ranks second in the NHL in penalties drawn (326), trailing only Matthew Tkachuk (331). Both NHL superstars, Tkachuk is far more active after the whistle than McDavid will ever be.

That, however, may be changing.

There is no such thing as having a Dave Semenko riding shotgun for Wayne Gretzky in today’s NHL, and it appears the officials have stopped holding up their end of the bargain.

So it’s up to McDavid to make his own space out there now, and he had a busy week at it.

Will this suspension change anything? Our advice to those looking to find out is simple:

Keep yer head up.