BALTIMORE (AP) — Lamar Jackson's experience with “Monday Night Football” growing up sounds pretty relatable.
“My mom used to make me go to sleep because I had school,” the star quarterback said.
If parents nowadays are any more lenient, their kids should be in for quite a treat this Monday, when Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens host the Detroit Lions. It's a matchup of two of the league's most entertaining offenses — and Jackson tends to play his best in this particular showcase game.
In nine starts on Monday night, he's thrown 22 touchdown passes and no interceptions while producing a passer rating of 124.3.
“Probably that extra rest day. I’d say that. ... Extra film," Jackson explained. "Get a good feel for who we are playing against and go from there.”
For a team that gets criticized for not advancing far enough in the postseason, the Ravens have been pretty darn good in certain spotlight games in the regular season.
Under coach John Harbaugh, they're 22-3 in prime-time home games, with Jackson producing a 10-1 mark. The Ravens have won five straight Monday night games.
Last season, Baltimore won road Monday night games against the Buccaneers and Chargers. The Ravens haven't lost on Monday night since Las Vegas beat them in overtime to start the 2021 season. The most recent time they lost a night home game with Jackson in the lineup was against Kansas City back in 2020.
Although they've played their share of prime-time home games and games on Monday night, Baltimore (1-1) hasn't hosted a Monday night game since Oct. 11, 2021, when Jackson rallied the Ravens to two touchdowns and two 2-point conversions in the final 10 minutes of the fourth quarter to force overtime against Indianapolis. Baltimore ultimately won 31-25, and Jackson finished with a couple of career highs that still stand — 37 completions for 442 yards.
“We’ve done pretty well on the road on Monday night,” Harbaugh said. “The home games, you have your crowd. That’s really what it boils down to. You have your crowd, and I hope they’re out there. I expect them to be out there like they always are and be really into it, be loud and really make it tough.”
The Lions (1-1) enter this matchup at Baltimore with a three-game winning streak in Monday night games. They played two of them last season — a sign of how much more of a draw they'd become under coach Dan Campbell.
Detroit beat Seattle 42-29 last September, and the Lions went on the road and beat San Francisco 40-34 on Dec. 30.
Jared Goff completed all 18 of his pass attempts in the Monday night game against the Seahawks. He's 7-2 as a starter on Monday night with a passer rating of 105.6.
One of Goff's first Monday night starts was an epic 2018 matchup between his Los Angeles Rams and Kansas City.
Goff threw for 413 yards and four touchdowns as the Rams outlasted Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs 54-51.
Goff says playing on Monday night is still special.
“We’ll be the only thing on TV and on the road in a raucous environment, against a team that’s got the history they got,” he said. "It’ll be fun.”
The previous time Detroit faced Baltimore was in 2023. That was a home game for the Ravens — although not at night — and they scored touchdowns on their first four possessions and won 38-6. Baltimore was up 28-0 before the Lions managed a first down.
“I want to see us improve on the road against a really good opponent," Campbell said. "There’s a lot of things I feel like are similar between us. It’s not a mirror image necessarily, but yet, the principles I feel like are very much alike. And so, you want to see us go in there and really improve under that environment against that team. I think that’s the biggest thing.”
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Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff (16) celebrates after he connected with teammate tight end Brock Wright (89) for a touchdown against the Chicago Bears during the first half of an NFL football game in Detroit, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson throws under pressure from Cleveland Browns defensive tackle Maliek Collins during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson passes against the Cleveland Browns during the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Donald Trump is set to meet Thursday at the White House with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, whose political party is widely considered to have won 2024 elections rejected by then-President Nicolás Maduro before the United States captured him in an audacious military raid this month.
Less than two weeks after U.S. forces seized Maduro and his wife at a heavily guarded compound in Caracas and brought them to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking charges, Trump will host the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Machado, having already dismissed her credibility to run Venezuela and raised doubts about his stated commitment to backing democratic rule in the country.
“She’s a very nice woman,” Trump told Reuters in an interview about Machado. “I’ve seen her on television. I think we’re just going to talk basics.”
The meeting comes as Trump and his top advisers have signaled their willingness to work with acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president and along with others in the deposed leader's inner circle remain in charge of day-to-day governmental operations.
Rodríguez herself has adopted a less strident position toward Trump and his “America First” policies toward the Western Hemisphere, saying she plans to continue releasing prisoners detained under Maduro — a move reportedly made at the behest of the Trump administration. Venezuela released several Americans this week.
Trump, a Republican, said Wednesday that he had a “great conversation” with Rodríguez, their first since Maduro was ousted.
“We had a call, a long call. We discussed a lot of things,” Trump told reporters. “And I think we’re getting along very well with Venezuela.”
In endorsing Rodríguez, Trump has sidelined Machado, who has long been a face of resistance in Venezuela. She had sought to cultivate relationships with Trump and key advisers like Secretary of State Marco Rubio among the American right wing in a political gamble to ally herself with the U.S. government. She also intends to have a meeting in the Senate on Thursday afternoon.
Despite her alliance with Republicans, Trump was quick to snub her following Maduro’s capture. Just hours afterward, Trump said of Machado that “it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”
Machado has steered a careful course to avoid offending Trump, notably after winning last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, which Trump coveted. She has since thanked Trump and offered to share the prize with him, a move that has been rejected by the Nobel Institute.
Machado’s whereabouts have been largely unknown since she went into hiding early last year after being briefly detained in Caracas. She briefly reappeared in Oslo, Norway, in December after her daughter received the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf.
The industrial engineer and daughter of a steel magnate began challenging the ruling party in 2004, when the nongovernmental organization she co-founded, Súmate, promoted a referendum to recall then-President Hugo Chávez. The initiative failed, and Machado and other Súmate executives were charged with conspiracy.
A year later, she drew the anger of Chávez and his allies again for traveling to Washington to meet President George W. Bush. A photo showing her shaking hands with Bush in the Oval Office lives in the collective memory. Chávez considered Bush an adversary.
Almost two decades later, she marshaled millions of Venezuelans to reject Chávez’s successor, Maduro, for another term in the 2024 election. But ruling party-loyal electoral authorities declared him the winner despite ample credible evidence to the contrary. Ensuing anti-government protests ended in a brutal crackdown by state security forces.
Janetsky reported from Mexico City. AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
FILE - U.S. President George Bush, right, meets with Maria Corina Machado, executive director of Sumate, a non-governmental organization that defends Venezuelan citizens' political rights, in the Oval Office of the White House, Washington, May 31, 2005. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
FILE - Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado gestures to supporters during a protest against President Nicolas Maduro the day before his inauguration for a third term, in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, file)
