ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Lamar Jackson did what he had to, and that should’ve been enough. It won’t be. That’s not how these things go.

Over the next week of sports talk, over the looming offseason and the 2025 regular season, the final play of the Ravens quarterback’s transcendent 2024 will be reduced to facts in a box score — TWO-POINT CONVERSION ATTEMPT. L.Jackson pass to M.Andrews is incomplete — stripped of context and turned into tired punchlines: “Boy, Lamar sure does drop the ball in the playoffs, doesn’t he?”

The jokes write themselves at this point. The Ravens’ season ended Sunday night the way it always does these days, heartbreakingly, the Buffalo Bills enjoying the last laugh in a 27-25 divisional-round win. Tight end Mark Andrews’ dropped pass on a would-be game-tying 2-point conversion late in the fourth quarter all but doomed the Ravens to another early exit, leaving Jackson to reckon with his playoff record (3-5) and the fickleness of a sport he can bend to his will, but not always.

There was Jackson at his best inside a frigid Highmark Stadium, doing so many of the things he needed to do, so many of the things that only he can do. And there was Jackson at his worst, doing too many of the things he could not afford to do. Fumbles, interceptions, frustration. Misery and misfortune on the sport’s brightest stages. A franchise’s Super Bowl dreams crushed once more.

“Came up short, and like I’ve been saying all season, every time we’re in situations like this, turnovers play a factor,” said Jackson, who finished 18-for-25 for 254 yards and two touchdowns. “Penalties play a factor. Tonight, the turnovers — we can’t have that shit. That’s why we lost the game, because as you can see, we’re moving the ball wonderfully. It’s just, hold on to the [expletive] ball. I’m sorry for my language. … I’m just tired of this.”

The Ravens got what they deserved. So did Jackson. They committed three turnovers, two by Jackson and another from Andrews, and forced none. They scored touchdowns on two of their three red-zone drives, wasting a first-and-goal from the 2, and allowed touchdowns on three of Buffalo’s four red-zone drives. They lost the penalty battle. They turned into the team that beats itself.

But the third-seeded Ravens also had hope late in the fourth quarter because they had Jackson — the superstar version of Jackson anyway, the preternaturally gifted 28-year-old who might be two weeks away from claiming the third NFL Most Valuable Player honor of his career. When Jackson scrambled long enough to find tight end Isaiah Likely on a 24-yard touchdown pass with 1:33 remaining in the fourth quarter, drawing the Ravens to within two points of a Buffalo team it had trailed 21-10 at halftime, it seemed he’d turned a corner.

Not just in the game, but in his career, too. Jackson had entered Sunday’s rematch against the second-seeded Bills and quarterback Josh Allen as his best self: a composed pocket passer, a dynamic runner, a mature game manager, a dedicated leader. Maybe that would be enough for Jackson to become a ghostbuster, too. There were demons in his postseason history to vanquish.

In each of Jackson’s first five playoff losses, he had gone out with a whimper. In the 2018 wild-card round against the Los Angeles Chargers, a strip sack on his final play. In the 2019 divisional round against the Tennessee Titans, three straight incompletions. In the 2020 divisional round against Buffalo, a concussion after a botched snap at the end of the third quarter. In the 2023 AFC championship game against the Kansas City Chiefs, an interception on his penultimate drive and two misses at the end of his final drive. Frustration. Misery. Misfortune.

On Sunday, Jackson met the moment. After a Bills field goal with 3:31 remaining, the Ravens took over, trailing 27-19. Jackson missed his first throw, a deep shot to Likely, then caught fire. He scrambled for 8 yards. He found running back Justice Hill for a short first-down catch, then wide receiver Rashod Bateman for a short gain, then wide receiver Tylan Wallace on an across-his-body heave for a 27-yard catch-and-run. He hit Hill again underneath, then Andrews for a 19-yarder. With his strike to Likely in the front of the end zone, he accounted for all 78 yards of the Ravens’ touchdown drive, a one-man band hitting all the right notes on their most important possession all season.

All the Ravens needed were 2 more yards, two more points. Offensive coordinator Todd Monken expected man coverage and called a play to beat it. Andrews was uncovered as he headed for the front pylon, freed by legal interference from Bateman and Likely. The throw was not perfect, but it was catchable. Andrews bobbled it, then dropped it. Highmark Stadium exploded. Jackson’s moment had come and gone.

“This is a really hard one to accept for us, especially the guys who have been here for years,” left tackle Ronnie Stanley said. “There’s just kind of shock about it.”

He added: “Whatever it is, I always feel like we’re the better team and we just aren’t there that day or whatever it is. I feel like we’re the better team, but on that day, it just doesn’t happen.”

With Jackson, the Ravens have almost always had the better quarterback. But he has not always made the better plays, the smarter plays. In Jackson’s six playoff losses, only one opposing quarterback, the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, has passed for more than 209 yards in a game. On Sunday, Allen went 16-for-22 for 127 yards, making more of an impact as a red-zone battering ram (two touchdowns) than as a rocket-armed passer.

Jackson’s undoing has been his ball security, the very thing that, through four months this season, few in football had been better at. Jackson threw just four picks in the regular season and finished with the NFL’s second-best interception rate. But on the Ravens’ second drive, he overthrew Bateman near the sideline and watched as the ball settled into safety Taylor Rapp’s grasp.

Jackson’s trouble was only starting. After the Ravens moved into field goal range on their next drive, Jackson corralled a poor snap, tried to wiggle free from safety Damar Hamlin in the backfield and “tried to squeeze the ball,” he recalled. “It slipped out of my hand.” Defensive end Von Miller pounced on the ball, only Jackson’s second lost fumble since late October, and returned it to the Ravens’ 24-yard line. Four plays later, the Bills had a 14-7 lead.

The damage was done. Jackson’s 11 turnovers in his eight playoff games are, according to TruMedia, the most of any quarterback since 2018. Those giveaways have amounted to the loss of 55.0 expected points — almost eight touchdowns’ worth, and more than the combined turnover EPA of Allen and Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow in that span (54.8).

“It’s football,” said Ravens coach John Harbaugh, who was adamant that Jackson’s turnover problems were not part of a broader pattern. “It’s how football works. If you want to draw some big cosmic thread, you draw it for every single team in the league except the team that wins. It’s a big challenge. That’s why the Chiefs — you have to admire what they’ve done. It’s tough to win playoff games. It’s tough to get in the playoffs. Then it’s tough to win playoff games. Now you have to stack four playoff wins to win a championship, and when you don’t win it, you’re going to start drawing threads. There’s no thread. It’s football. That’s football. This game went the way it went.”

Such is the curse of Jackson’s talent. He can make football look easy, until it finds a way to look impossibly hard at the worst possible time. Over the Ravens’ late-season run to the AFC’s No. 1 seed in 2023, he transformed from an explosive, if error-prone, quarterback into one of the NFL’s most unstoppable forces. Then he struggled in the first half of a divisional-round win over the Houston Texans. Then he struggled even more in the AFC championship game loss to the Chiefs.

This year, Jackson was set down a path menaced by his own personal dragons. He brandished a historically good offense and a resolute defense. In Week 18, the Ravens got revenge on the Cleveland Browns, who’d handed them an embarrassing Week 8 loss, and claimed another AFC North title. In the wild-card round, the Ravens won their second straight game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Jackson’s most troublesome nemeses, and earned another showdown with Allen. Beat Buffalo again — and how hard could that be, really, after a 35-10 win in Week 4? — and a rematch with Mahomes and the Chiefs in Arrowhead Stadium would await.

Jackson needed just over four minutes Sunday night to inspire hope that this year, finally, truly, would be different, his 16-yard touchdown pass to Bateman giving the Ravens an early 7-0 lead. Then came the turnovers, the albatross dragging Jackson back to those familiar playoff depths.

In the end, Jackson nearly found salvation. Instead, he was left only with more frustration. At his postgame news conference, Jackson was asked what he needs to do to take the next step. Jackson smiled for a moment, as if he couldn’t believe he was back to where all the trouble had started.

“I don’t know how you even want me to answer that question,” he said. “I said it; if I protect the ball, we’re not having this conversation, and you’re not asking that question. If we protect the ball, we’re still on the field, and I believe we’re driving the ball down the field and we’re putting points [on the board]. … We didn’t do shit. We didn’t do what we were supposed to do. Protecting the ball — that’s the No. 1 priority, and we didn’t do it.”