Lamar Jackson might have the toughest job in football. Every week, he has to chase down his own sky-high standard.

Whenever the Ravens quarterback fails to make a play lately, you can almost visualize how the Jackson of last season could have done it. In this sense, Jackson is always competing with himself.

Sunday’s 23-10 win over the Jets was an exhibition of how Jackson hasn’t managed to run down his own ghost recently. On each of the first two drives, on third down, Jackson had a chance to scramble to his right on rollouts — but he threw incompletions. Gaps and slivers that we are used to see him streaking through have closed before an obviously slower-than-usual Jackson could scramble upfield.

Even his arm is not what it has been in his two MVP seasons. Jackson missed a wide-open DeAndre Hopkins in the end zone on a double-move route — one that Hopkins thought for sure was going to be his 1,000th career reception. We’ve seen Jackson make that throw with his eyes closed.

But the tape around his ankle was the only real acknowledgment anyone on the Ravens has made that Jackson isn’t playing his best. Even though the Ravens are stoic about how they’ve won five straight games — “it’s not pretty, it’s not perfect, but it’s us,” coach John Harbaugh said — it’s hard to be convinced that they are prepared to face the defining stretch of the schedule starting with hosting Cincinnati on Thanksgiving night.

Based only on what we’ve seen from the Ravens, especially on offense, they aren’t yet ready for prime time. A repeat performance of the efforts against the Vikings, the Browns and the Jets is not going to cut it.

It starts with Jackson, who completed less than 60% of his passes with fewer than 200 yards for the third straight game (the only other stretch he’s done that was as a rookie in 2019). In the past three games, he’s thrown one touchdown pass and hasn’t run for a score, either.

Jackson isn’t the only thing that’s off. But, despite his limitations, he and the Ravens haven’t changed their approach, and it is hamstringing the team. The 72 yards of offense in the first half made for the worst offensive output of the season and the second-lowest total since Jackson has been the franchise quarterback, according to ESPN.

When asked if there’s been a game when he has felt totally himself since returning from a hamstring injury, Jackson said: “I can’t call it. But in my position I feel like I should still be able to do what I do.”

The problem is he’s not doing what we’ve seen him do. The Ravens are not the team we’ve seen the past two seasons. In the coming trial by fire — with the Bengals, the Steelers and the Bengals again coming up — it feels inevitable that the Ravens will get burned.

On Sunday, Baltimore was achingly reminded of its flaws against one of the worst teams in the league.

Aside from Jackson’s middling play, it was another day of issues along the offensive line. They averaged just 2.9 yards per carry on the day. Short-yardage situations had better overall outcomes — including Derrick Henry’s fourth-down TD run — but still made the Ravens sweat. The most explosive run of the day by Keaton Mitchell was called back on a holding penalty on Tyler Linderbaum. Jowon Briggs demolished Andrew Voorhees on New York’s only sack, and Jackson had to dodge pressure other times.

On defense, the pass rush had a tough time keeping Tyrod Taylor in the pocket. Open-field runs by Breece Hall left a lot of defenders struggling to tackle. These issues remain sore spots for a defense that has feasted on bad quarterbacks (Taylor’s 82.7 was the highest opposing passer rating in the winning streak) — but now they could see Joe Burrow on Thursday.

Perhaps understanding how precariously his team is perched, Harbaugh said being first in the division “feels great” but the job is only half over.

“Starting Thursday night, we have no time for rest,” he said. “We gotta go to work on the Bengals, and we know what that’s like, how challenging that is.”

Even in a down year for the AFC North, it will be a hard division to sweep. The Steelers and the Bengals did the Ravens a favor by losing Sunday, but if you’ve seen these head-to-head matchups, you know these teams often play a lot feistier than their records.

Jackson has had a good handle on his rivalry with Burrow, going 6-1 in the head-to-heads, but at his current level of play, you wonder if this offense can score enough to keep pace with the high-octane Cincinnati attack.

Meanwhile the Steelers … well, they’re the Steelers. And the way the Ravens play in those games often defies explanation. I doubt any of these games will be easy, and with how the offense has played recently, would you trust the Ravens to make the fourth-quarter game-winning drive?

This is even before getting into the 9-2 Patriots or the 6-3 Packers, nondivision games that look pretty damn hard to win. As good as it was to climb from 1-5 to 6-5, the next part of the ascent to making the playoffs is harder.

I buy that the Ravens can win those games. I buy that the Ravens probably deserve to be the AFC North favorites given the context of their schedule and that no division team has a perfectly healthy first-string quarterback.

But the way they’ve played in the past five games, despite the wins, doesn’t breed confidence that they’ll play the way we expected at the outset of the season.

Even maintaining the level they’ve shown over the last few weeks will not be enough. Jackson, the offense and this whole Ravens team need to chase the greatness we’ve seen from them in seasons past.

They’re not playing close enough to their potential to be champions of the division — much less champions of the NFL. Far from inspiring the confidence that they’re returning to top-of-the-conference form, this five-game winning streak has served to underscore the flaws they’ve yet to overcome.