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Lamar Jackson had a chance of playing, and then he didn’t. He was a full practice participant, and then he was limited. The optimism was there, and then it seemed misplaced.

With the 1-5 Ravens ruling their star quarterback out of Sunday’s game against the Chicago Bears a day after he was considered questionable, an unbelievable 2025 on Saturday tipped into inexplicable territory. What could have possibly happened with Lamar’s hamstring? What the heck’s going on with the Ravens?

This isn’t the first time that questions like these have been asked. 2025 is starting to feel a lot like 2021, like 2022, seasons with a ticking clock, a lingering Jackson injury and questionable public prognoses.

Here was coach John Harbaugh in December 2021, five days after Jackson left a Week 14 loss with an ankle injury, when asked about the chances of Jackson playing in the Ravens’ next game: “I’d say he has a chance. It’s just one of those things where … It’s an ankle sprain; if he starts feeling good and everything is all right, we’ll check him out, probably pregame. He’s in all the preparations and all of that. We’ll see where we’re at.”

Jackson missed the Ravens’ final four games, watching from the sideline as an 8-5 start spiraled into an 8-9 ending. After the season, Harbaugh said Jackson had been sidelined by a bone bruise, actually, that hadn’t healed quickly. “The first week, he thought he had a chance,” Harbaugh said. “The second week, he assured me, he said, ‘I’ll be back. I’ll be back.’”

Here was Harbaugh in December 2022, after Jackson left a Week 13 win with a knee injury: “It’s not a season-ending type of knee [injury]. We’ll get more tests tomorrow and let you know how long it’s going to be; we’ll see. .. It’s going to be a number [of] days to weeks. We’ll see; we’ll see if he can go back this week. If not, it’ll be some time after that shortly.”

And three days later: “I would say it’s kind of week-to-week. It’s going to be a weekly thing, so as the week goes on, we’ll see for this week. It’s probably less likely for this week, but it’s not impossible. Then after that, it will become more and more likely.”

Jackson missed the Ravens’ final five regular-season games as the team slipped from a tie for first place in the AFC North to two games behind Cincinnati. Three days before a wild-card-round loss to the Bengals, which Jackson also missed, he tweeted that he was dealing with a Grade 2 injury in his PCL, a ligament in the knee, that is “borderline” Grade 3.

And here was Harbaugh after the Ravens’ Week 6 loss to the Los Angeles Rams, when asked about the team’s post-bye-week building blocks: “Our quarterback is going to be back.”

And on Friday: “Full practice today [for Jackson], so that was good. And we’ll see where we’re at, going forward.”

The next day, Jackson was ruled out. His practice participation was retroactively downgraded to limited. And the Ravens’ expectations management looked worse than ever.

According to the NFL’s injury report policy, participation on the scout team — which Jackson reportedly led in Friday’s practice — by a player whose “normal repetitions” would be with the starters would warrant a limited-participation designation.

An NFL spokesman said Saturday that the league would look into the Ravens’ handling of Jackson’s practice status. The team, which could be subject to league discipline for violating the league’s injury report policy, said in a statement Saturday: “Upon further evaluation today and after conferring with the league office, because Lamar didn’t take starter reps in practice, we updated our report to reflect his practice participation.”

The NFL’s injury report policy “has been a cornerstone of public confidence in the NFL for many decades,” according to the policy itself. “The credibility of the NFL, teams, owners and team personnel requires full compliance with and uniform enforcement of the policy.”

Harbaugh is generally accurate with his injury assessments; one fantasy football site reported after last season that he had a “75% reliability on injury coachspeak,” second-highest in the AFC North. As the Ravens’ most consistently public-facing team official, Harbaugh’s also only as accurate as the information shared with him by Ravens medical personnel and players alike. That includes Jackson, whose optimism about previous injuries has inspired false confidence in his availability.

But as the Ravens look for any toehold in a season quickly slipping away — with a loss Sunday, their playoff odds would fall to 26%, according to The New York Times — the questions they now face are more pernicious than any about their run defense or their offensive line.

They have to do with accountability. To the NFL. To their fans. To Jackson. The two-time MVP, to whom trust and understanding are paramount, has not talked to reporters since before he suffered his Week 4 injury.

In his absence, speculation from big-name reporters and optimism from Ravens officials have filled the vacuum, as they did in 2021 and 2022. Almost none of it has proved accurate, as was the case in 2021 and 2022.

Well before Saturday’s shakeup, this season in Baltimore was hard to figure out. Now, ahead of the most important game of their season so far, it seems not even the Ravens know what’s going on. A franchise lauded for its stability is wobbling under the weight of its care for its most important player.