The NFL is a passing league – or so we are told. It’s been that way for close to 20 years. Every new rule, contract, coaching hire and draft slot reinforces that the sport is now engineered to attack or defend the air. But Derrick Henry, it seems, did not get the memo.
In a league that chews up running backs with a ruthlessness that borders on disdain, Henry continues to plough ahead. In his ninth season, the 30-year-old future Hall of Famer tops the league in rushing – again. And it’s not even particularly close. Six weeks in, Henry leads the rushing race by nearly 100 yards over San Francisco’s Jordan Mason, doing so by thumping away between the tackles.
It’s not just Henry. Offenses across the league have looked to the ground game to ease the pressure on their passing attacks early in the new season, hoping to exploit voids in defensive schemes that are tailored to stem explosive passing games. Teams are rushing at the highest rate through six weeks since 2008, with sides averaging a record 4.5 yards per carry and more rushing per game at this point in a season in 40 years.
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But Henry still lives in a world of his own. Baltimore signing the aging back was one of the more intriguing moves of the offseason. Even amid the tantalizing prospect of a Henry-Lamar Jackson backfield, it was fair to wonder about the downside scenarios. How much tread was left on the tires? What if the Ravens were forced to feed him touches, taking the ball out of Jackson’s hands? What if the offense became siloed, bouncing between a structure that suited Henry and one that better served the team’s supernova quarterback?
Henry’s answer to those questions, to paraphrase Marshawn Lynch: run through everyone’s face.
Through the opening six weeks of the season, Henry leads all players in rushing yards per game and rushing touchdowns. He is the only back with 10 or more rushing attempts to average 5.9 yards per carry – and has also notched the longest individual run of the season. Any one of those would be impressive for a veteran who should be approaching the end of his career; to lead the pack in all four is objectively bonkers.
The numbers keep coming. On 24 carries against the Commanders last week, Henry rushed for 34 yards over expectation, according to NFL Next Gen Stats. Only one player (Christian McCaffrey) hit that mark in four or more games last season. Henry has eclipsed it four times already this season. You almost have to refresh the page to check that he is really 30.
Let’s not get twisted, Lamar Jackson is the player who makes Baltimore’s offense sing. Early in games, the threat of Jackson on the ground and through the air has opened up simpler rushing lanes for Henry. But where Henry has made his hay is in the second-half of games, entering sledgehammer mode against drained defenses.
Henry has become the league’s pre-eminent closer – the sport’s answer to Mariano Rivera. In fourth quarters and overtime this season, Henry has averaged 6.8 yards a carry, rushing for 246 yards and a touchdown, according to Pro Football Focus. In the first-half of games, he has been used partly as a decoy and partly as a tool to wear defenses down, grinding out 4.3 yards a carry. As defenses start to wheeze in the second-half the Ravens lean on Henry to carry them home. By the fourth quarter, you can almost see opposing defenders pleading: “Can you guys just take one play off?” No. No, they cannot. In the final quarter, Henry’s average jumps to 6.3 yards a carry.
None of this is normal. It’s even more remarkable when you consider Henry’s vicious running style, workload and age. He has carried the ball 2,149 times in the pros, on top of the 609 times he carried in college and the 1,379 attempts in high school. Few backs sniff 2,000 carries. If they do, they’re typically on their last legs.
You only have to look at Henry’s draft class to see how a back’s career usually goes. Of the 19 running backs selected in the 2016 draft, only two remain on an active NFL roster this season: Henry and Ezekiel Elliott.
Elliott is now a shadow of his former self, slogging away in Dallas’ insipid offense. He has not rushed for more than four yards a carry since 2021, his lone career ‘highlight’ in that span being taking a snap as a center. Kenyan Drake, another lofty selection in the 2016 class, last played meaningful snaps in 2022. Jordan Howard, a Pro Bowler in his rookie season, last saw the field in 2022. As Henry continued to pile up rushing titles, the rest of his class was touring the UFL or brushing up on their sales skills.
Everything about his game – his bone-crushing style, his longevity – continues to defy conventional wisdom.
It was not long ago that running backs felt like they were heading the way of New Coke. Few positions on the field take as much punishment. The shelf life, the data says, is around four years before a player’s body starts to crumble and their production nosedives.
Because of injury risks and the volume of available players, running backs are, largely, viewed as interchangeable. Over time, offensive lines and rushing schemes have proven to be more responsible for a back’s rushing production than the runner himself. It’s why teams consistently cycle through different backs.
Franchises have voted with their wallets, with contracts for the position falling even as the salary cap balloons. Eighteen months ago, the state of the position was so dire that former players lobbied youngsters to switch positions and the current crop of stars were looking at taking collective action.
But there is something of a renaissance under way. The top four offenses in the league this season – Washington, Baltimore, Buffalo, Detroit – all feature pounding, power-based run games. Three of the four lead the way in the wonkiest rushing metrics, while Buffalo, the lone holdout, top the league in the usage of extra linemen or plays with a pulling blocker. It’s all starting to feel like a Bill Cowher fever dream.
Conversely, of the top-four defenses in the league – the Vikings, Chargers, Bears and Broncos – only the Bears fall outside the top eight in slowing the run. Defenses are now geared up to confuse quarterbacks. From chaotic rotations in the secondary to a battery of blitzes, pressures and different ways to blur what’s happening at the line of scrimmage, defenses are finding solutions to slow down the passing game. The best way to offset the chaos is to gain north-to-south traction on the ground.
If the past 10 years were about pace and space, then the next couple will be about marrying those ideas with a bruising run game, to take advantage of lighter, quicker defensive bodies on the field or to force defenses into coverages that are primed to be attacked through the air. The Ravens have taken that idea out to its logical extreme by pairing the game’s best downhill thumper with its most dynamic quarterback.
“We’ve had good rushing attacks, and we’ve had a lot of games where we’ve rushed for a lot of yards. That’s all great, but the difference Derrick Henry has made is pretty clear,” Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said on Monday. “It’s a different kind of rushing attack with him because of the way he runs the ball. He’s just one of a kind. He’s one of one.”
Henry is unlikely to be a one-man trendsetter. As Harbaugh says, there is only one Derrick Henry. Teams can value the running game while still cycling through different backs. But that only elevates what Henry is doing this season. The last back to top a 1,000 yards in their 30s was Frank Gore, and Henry is on pace to shatter his total (1,106).
A running back will probably never win MVP again. It’s difficult for even the best defensive players to weasel in on the conversation. Even on his team, Henry sits behind Jackson in the pecking order. But the MVP is a narrative award. And one of the chief narratives of this season is the resurgence of the run game. No one embodies that more than Henry, a back from a different age still mauling defenses. That, alone, should earn him a place on ballots.