Is he playing? Is he not playing? Is “day-to-day” a medical term, or just a polite description of how calendars work?

These are the questions of a football Tuesday, which is when they’re loudest and the answers are furthest away. I’m a Tuesday asker. I treat midweek injury news the way some people treat a weather app: compulsively, and as though checking it will change the forecast.

This week the question is whether Lamar Jackson returns for Bills-Ravens, and as of this writing the truthful answer is a single word that every football writer has learned to dread.

Wednesday.

Here’s what has actually been reported, and only what has been reported. Jackson suffered a left high-ankle sprain in Baltimore’s Oct. 4 win over Tennessee and has missed the past three games. Last week he was limited in practice Wednesday through Friday, listed as questionable, then ruled out on Saturday. On Monday, Ravens coach Jesse Minter said, per Sports Illustrated, “He’ll be in a decent spot, but we’ll know more on Wednesday.” NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport had gone further over the weekend: “Expected to return, actually.” CBS’s Tracy Wolfson reported that Jackson is “confident” he’ll play.

That’s a generous helping of encouragement. None of it is an injury report.

(This isn’t a gotcha. Rotowire notes that Minter called Jackson day-to-day before each of the last two games, and both times Jackson was ruled out at least a day ahead. “Day-to-day” is the NFL’s official dialect for “ask me tomorrow,” and every coach in the league speaks it fluently.)

So that’s the Lamar Jackson injury news, such as it is. Now the game: Sunday, Nov. 1, 1 p.m. ET, at Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, on CBS, with Baltimore (4-3) visiting Buffalo (5-1). And here’s where it gets a little strange.

You’d expect the betting line to act like the rest of us this week: pacing, refreshing, fretting. Instead, it has settled in like a houseguest who’s found the good chair. ESPN’s Week 8 odds board, published Tuesday morning, had the Bills at -3.5 at DraftKings, with Buffalo -185 and Baltimore +154 on the moneyline. CBS Sports had the same 3.5 on Monday morning, and SI’s Peter Dewey wrote that the spread hasn’t budged from where it opened. CBS’s Tyler Sullivan said the number reflects Jackson’s expected return.

In other words, the market has quietly penciled him in. Pencil, mind you. Not pen.

The total is where all the nervous energy went. ESPN lists it as opening at 51.5. CBS had 52.5 on Monday. ESPN had 53.5 by Tuesday. That’s two points of drift on a game whose starting quarterback hasn’t been officially confirmed, which tells you either what the oddsmakers think a Jackson start does to a scoreboard or what they think bettors think it does. I can’t tell those two apart, and I’m not convinced anyone is meant to.

And if he doesn’t play?

Nobody has published a no-Lamar line, and I’m not about to make one up. Dewey’s read, in SI, is that the spread should hold around 3.5 if Jackson practices Wednesday and would likely move toward Buffalo if he doesn’t. That’s where the evidence stops. Everything past it is a very well-dressed guess.

The backup scenario isn’t really hypothetical, because it describes the last three weeks. Tyler Huntley started all three, Baltimore went 1-2, and the Ravens averaged 17.7 points a game in that stretch, per Rotowire. Last Sunday they led Cincinnati 13-0 at halftime and lost 35-13. So when you game out the Huntley version of Week 8, you aren’t imagining anything. You’re rewatching.

That brings us to the most interesting player in all this fog, and he doesn’t play quarterback.

Zay Flowers caught eight of 11 targets for 137 yards and a touchdown in that Bengals loss, with a long of 48. According to Yahoo’s Week 8 fantasy rankings, it was his third game this season with 100-plus yards and a score, and Rotowire notes he has built chemistry with both Jackson and Huntley. USA Today ranks him seventh among receivers this week. The Yahoo item framed the open question about as politely as it can be framed: “More could be in store if QB Lamar Jackson returns.”

If.

A whole cottage industry has been built on that word. Anyone with Flowers on a fantasy roster is holding a receiver whose floor has already survived the backup and whose ceiling is waiting on a practice report. That’s an unusually dignified position for a fantasy asset, and it comes with an unusually undignified amount of refreshing.

Now, if you came here looking for a Ravens vs. Bills prediction, I owe you some candor: there isn’t one here. I’m not making a pick, and I’m not telling anyone what to do with their money. CBS’s John Breech, who does this for a living, filed two picks for this game, one for each version of Sunday, and wrote, with a frankness I deeply respect, “I have no idea whether Lamar Jackson will play.” Neither do I. Neither, if we’re honest, does the line. It just hides it better.

Here’s what I am sure of. The most consequential document of Week 8 in Baltimore won’t be a game plan. It’ll be the Ravens’ Wednesday practice report, a sheet with three possible entries beside Jackson’s name: did not participate, limited or full. Thursday and Friday will add their own entries, and Friday brings the game-status designation, the league’s formal vocabulary of questionable, doubtful and out. A Lamar Jackson return is, for the next 24 hours or so, a matter of paperwork. Rarely has so much attention waited on so little ink.

So: is he playing? Is he not playing? Is “day-to-day” a diagnosis?

Ask me again in a day. We’ll know more Wednesday.