A starting quarterback is never off the clock. There is always something to work on — a play, a shoulder, a reputation. Ten months ago in Baltimore, it was a relationship.

The quiet scene inside M&T Bank Stadium was jarring. There, in the corner of a Ravens locker room celebrating a blowout Week 9 win over the Denver Broncos, was Lamar Jackson. He was talking to wide receiver Diontae Johnson, and he did not look overjoyed.

Neither did Johnson. He’d finished his Ravens debut without a target. Was Jackson defending himself? Was he preaching patience? Was he explaining why it was perhaps unrealistic for a wide receiver to expect more than 17 snaps in a well-oiled offense he’d joined only five days earlier?

“Great pickup. … Just have to see what he’s made of,” Jackson had said after the Ravens traded for Johnson, and now he was finding out. Johnson was different. Talented but different. He required perhaps a softer touch.

Even near the end of Johnson’s high-drama, low-impact seven weeks with the organization, Jackson remained openly supportive of the mercurial wideout. “We want him out there,” Jackson said after Johnson’s last Ravens game, when he refused to enter a home loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.

Of all the superpowers Jackson must summon in the Ravens’ Super Bowl pursuit this season, the most important could be his diplomacy. The Ravens will need his elastic right arm, his spring-loaded quickness, his cerebral approach, but they will also need someone to feed mouths, to soothe egos.

Jackson has never had a more talented offense to support him — “For sure,” wide receiver Tylan Wallace said Wednesday — and that could turn out to be his biggest burden.

“This is when leadership is tested,” Ravens quarterbacks coach Tee Martin said in training camp. “It’s who you are as a man, yourself first, because regardless of who those faces are, who those people are and their talent and skill levels, they still look to you to be their leader. They not only listen to you, they look at how you go about your work and how you go about your business.”

Jackson, Martin added, “sets the tone. He sets the tempo. He leads by example. … It all depends on how Lamar presents to everyone that, ‘At the end of the day, we’re here to win, and I don’t care how we do it. I can throw it 40 times a game and win. We can run it 40 times and win.’ Ultimately, for him, what’s being tested is the leadership when you do have a room full of excellent, skilled players.”

There sure are a lot of them. At running back: a future Pro Football Hall of Famer (Derrick Henry) and two explosive backups (Justice Hill and Keaton Mitchell). At wide receiver: a Pro Bowl selection (Zay Flowers), another ascendant former first-round pick (Rashod Bateman) and a three-time All-Pro (DeAndre Hopkins). At tight end: the Ravens’ all-time leader in touchdown catches (Mark Andrews) and two part-timers who’d top a lot of depth charts outside Baltimore (Isaiah Likely and Charlie Kolar). Oh, and the fullback (Patrick Ricard) has five Pro Bowl honors since 2019.

“Pick your poison,” Ravens players often said last year of their record-breaking offense, which led the NFL in passing and rushing efficiency, according to FTN. Jackson’s charge is different: Pick your spots.

Try as he might, Jackson just could not sync up with Johnson last season. And Jackson tried. Maybe a little too hard.

In the Ravens’ Week 11 game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, two weeks after their Denver demolition, two of Jackson’s first four pass attempts were deep shots to Johnson. The first was overthrown on a third-and-10 scramble. The second was overthrown, too, Jackson just barely missing on a sideline shot as Flowers ran, unmarked, over the middle of the field.

Both drives ended without a score. Johnson wasn’t targeted again all game. The Ravens lost by two points.

“Guys like us, we want the ball in this league,” Wallace said. “But it takes a lot of selflessness to be able to understand the team that we have and the players that we have on this team. The ball gets spread around, and it needs to get spread around for us to win games.”

But the NFL’s best offenses aren’t egalitarian. They’re practical, driven by egos, shaped by self-interest. In a functioning franchise, the best skill position players are rewarded — with snaps, with touches, with contracts.

Success will always create opportunities. Problems, too. In his 1988 book, “Showtime: Inside the Lakers’ Breakthrough Season,” then-Los Angeles Lakers coach Pat Riley described what he called “the disease of more,” arguing that “success is often the first step toward disaster.”

Ahead of Sunday’s season opener against the Buffalo Bills, the Ravens are in no obvious danger. The vibes are good, the expectations are high, and the ground is steady. But there are fault lines in Owings Mills. Seismic change is a persistent, invisible threat in every NFL facility.

Jackson can’t control the outside forces that roil locker rooms any more than he can control the blitzes he’ll see inside Highmark Stadium. Might as well embrace them. Money? Andrews, Likely and Kolar are all in the final year of their contracts. Wallace and Ricard are among those playing on one-year deals.

Ego? In 2022, HBO’s “Hard Knocks” captured an Arizona Cardinals sideline spat between Kyler Murray and an exasperated Hopkins, who, after one drive, asked the quarterback, “What you looking at, bro? What you see?” before telling him, “C’mon, bro. That shit wide open.”

Last year, after the Ravens lost to the Las Vegas Raiders, Flowers retweeted a fan’s message expressing frustration with the wide receiver’s limited second-half role. Bateman’s body language tends to droop when he’s not featured in the passing attack.

A movie role? Adam Sandler, Henry’s favorite actor, joked with him this offseason that Henry would get one if he rushed for 2,000 yards in 2025. (Sandler later seemed to relent on the challenge, telling Henry at the premiere of “Happy Gilmore 2” in July that they’d do a movie together.)

“It’s a lot,” Wallace said of Jackson’s responsibilities as the Ravens’ leader and consiglieri. Winning helps with the buy-in, of course. But a less-is-more approach is not for everyone, not when some get more than others.

“Football is a team game,” coach John Harbaugh said Wednesday. “It’s a team sport, and you’re one of 11 out there doing your part. Nobody can do anything without the other 10 guys. And yet, at the same time, we also want guys who want the ball. If you don’t want the ball, and you’re a skill player on offense ... it’s just like a corner who doesn’t want them to throw the ball over there. I promise you, our corners want them to throw the ball over there.”

On the best offenses, all the pieces matter. Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner, who won two NFL Most Valuable Player awards leading the “Greatest Show on Turf” Rams, starred alongside three Pro Bowl skill players during St. Louis’ heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s: running back Marshall Faulk and wide receivers Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt.

“Nobody was complaining, ‘Got to get the ball more,’” he said. There was an understanding among the Rams’ standouts and other contributors, Warner said, that “everybody was going to get theirs.” He never had to worry about mollifying unhappy stars with schemed-up touches. Above all else, coach Mike Martz wanted Warner to get to the right play, to feed the right player.

“I think the great thing about our team was, we had very unselfish superstars,” Warner, an NFL Network analyst, said in an interview. “And that’s not to say everybody didn’t have an ego and everybody didn’t want the ball more and didn’t think that they were the best guy. That was all there. But we had such unbelievable individuals that basically just said, ‘As long as we’re winning, I’m cool. I’ll get mine at some point in time.’ And I think they were all genuinely excited for the other guys, because the other guys were great as well, and they recognized that.”

In Baltimore, the appreciation radiates from under center. Offensive coordinator Todd Monken said last season that it’s “hard not to love Lamar Jackson.” He’s long been one of his teammates’ biggest cheerleaders. In June, at Jackson’s first news conference since the Ravens signed Hopkins, he called the 33-year-old “dope,” “different” and a “super vet.” In July, Jackson dubbed him “one of the greatest in the league ever.”

Charm offensives seem to come naturally to Jackson, but they may not be necessary. Warner said Jackson’s credentials — two MVPs, four division titles, a .744 winning percentage — should lend him an almost unimpeachable credibility in the locker room. He’s the best player on one of the NFL’s best offenses. “I couldn’t say that,” Warner said.

“If you have these great players on the outside, and, as a quarterback, you’re not at their level, it’s much easier for them to come and say, ‘Hey, why aren’t you throwing me the football?’” Warner added. “I mean, Lamar is so good and has been so good … that you just can’t go and complain about the things that he’s doing.”

Warner’s advice for Jackson echoes the counsel he took from Martz: Play the play the right way. “That’s how you have the greatest success as a player and as a team, is by doing the right thing. … And Lamar does that. And he does that consistently. And it’s why they continually win and he continually has success. And everybody has to learn to deal with that because the most important thing always has to be, if I’m a quarterback and I do the best thing in a situation based on the defense for the team, more times than not, we’re going to be successful.”

It’s easier now for Jackson than it was five years ago. In 2020, the Ravens’ offensive cupboard wasn’t bare but it wasn’t fully stocked, either. After a Bengals loss in Baltimore that season, safety Jessie Bates said Cincinnati’s pass defense knew “where Lamar wants to go: either 15 or 89,” referring to wide receiver Marquise “Hollywood” Brown and Andrews, respectively. Recipes for success were limited.

Now, stocked with premium ingredients, the Ravens’ challenge isn’t so much deciding what to cook as it is how to cook it. Every practice, every meeting, every rep for Jackson and Monken takes them one step closer to channeling their inner Claire Saffitz and concocting their next gourmet offering. One tight end or two? Speed or power in the backfield? A rugged blocker or a speed demon out wide?

Asked about his array of weapons Wednesday, Jackson shook his head, almost in wonder. He grinned. “I pretty much just let their play do the talking,” he said. “I can’t tell you guys what I learned, what I see with my guys. You guys going to see it come Sunday night.”