The NFL is a passing league – or so we’re advised. It’s been that method for shut to twenty years. Each new rule, contract, teaching rent and draft slot reinforces that the game is now engineered to assault or defend the air. However Derrick Henry, it appears, didn’t get the memo.
In a league that chews up working backs with a ruthlessness that borders on disdain, Henry continues to plough forward. In his ninth season, the 30-year-old future Corridor of Famer tops the league in speeding – once more. And it’s not even notably shut. Six weeks in, Henry leads the speeding race by almost 100 yards over San Francisco’s Jordan Mason, doing so by thumping away between the tackles.
It’s not simply Henry. Offenses throughout the league have appeared to the bottom recreation to ease the stress on their passing assaults early within the new season, hoping to use voids in defensive schemes which are tailor-made to stem explosive passing video games. Groups are speeding on the highest fee by way of six weeks since 2008, with sides averaging a report 4.5 yards per carry and extra speeding per recreation at this level in a season in 40 years.
However Henry nonetheless lives in a world of his personal. Baltimore signing the ageing again was one of many extra intriguing strikes of the offseason. Even amid the tantalizing prospect of a Henry-Lamar Jackson backfield, it was truthful to marvel in regards to the draw back eventualities. How a lot tread was left on the tires? What if the Ravens have been pressured to feed him touches, taking the ball out of Jackson’s fingers? What if the offense grew to become siloed, bouncing between a construction that suited Henry and one which higher served the workforce’s supernova quarterback?
Henry’s reply to these questions, to paraphrase Marshawn Lynch: run by way of everybody’s face.
By means of the opening six weeks of the season, Henry leads all gamers in speeding yards per recreation and speeding touchdowns. He’s the one again with 10 or extra speeding makes an attempt to common 5.9 yards per carry – and has additionally notched the longest particular person run of the season. Any a type of can be spectacular for a veteran who must be approaching the tip of his profession; to guide the pack in all 4 is objectively bonkers.
The numbers preserve coming. On 24 carries in opposition to the Commanders final week, Henry rushed for 34 yards over expectation, in response to NFL Subsequent Gen Stats. Just one participant (Christian McCaffrey) hit that mark in 4 or extra video games final season. Henry has eclipsed it 4 occasions already this season. You nearly need to refresh the web page to test that he’s actually 30.
Let’s not get twisted, Lamar Jackson is the participant who makes Baltimore’s offense sing. Early in video games, the specter of Jackson on the bottom and thru the air has opened up less complicated speeding lanes for Henry. However the place Henry has made his hay is within the second-half of video games, getting into sledgehammer mode in opposition to drained defenses.
Henry has grow to be the league’s pre-eminent nearer – the game’s reply to Mariano Rivera. In fourth quarters and additional time this season, Henry has averaged 6.8 yards a carry, speeding for 246 yards and a landing, in response to Professional Soccer Focus. Within the first-half of video games, he has been used partly as a decoy and partly as a software to put on defenses down, grinding out 4.3 yards a carry. As defenses begin to wheeze within the second-half the Ravens lean on Henry to hold them residence. By the fourth quarter, you’ll be able to nearly see opposing defenders pleading: “Are you able to guys simply take one play off?” No. No, they can not. Within the ultimate quarter, Henry’s common jumps to six.3 yards a carry.
None of that is regular. It’s much more exceptional when you think about Henry’s vicious working type, workload and age. He has carried the ball 2,149 occasions within the execs, on prime of the 609 occasions he carried in faculty and the 1,379 makes an attempt in highschool. Few backs sniff 2,000 carries. In the event that they do, they’re usually on their final legs.
You solely have to take a look at Henry’s draft class to see how a again’s profession often goes. Of the 19 working backs chosen within the 2016 draft, solely two stay on an energetic NFL roster this season: Henry and Ezekiel Elliott.
Elliott is now a shadow of his former self, footslogging away in Dallas’ insipid offense. He has not rushed for greater than 4 yards a carry since 2021, his lone profession ‘spotlight’ in that span being taking a snap as a middle. Kenyan Drake, one other lofty choice within the 2016 class, final performed significant snaps in 2022. Jordan Howard, a Professional Bowler in his rookie season, final noticed the sphere in 2022. As Henry continued to pile up speeding titles, the remainder of his class was touring the UFL or brushing up on their gross sales abilities.
Every little thing about his recreation – his bone-crushing type, his longevity – continues to defy typical knowledge.
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It was not way back that working backs felt like they have been heading the best way of New Coke. Few positions on the sphere take as a lot punishment. The shelf life, the info says, is round 4 years earlier than a participant’s physique begins to crumble and their manufacturing nosedives.
Due to harm dangers and the quantity of accessible gamers, working backs are, largely, considered as interchangeable. Over time, offensive traces and speeding schemes have confirmed to be extra liable for a again’s speeding manufacturing than the runner himself. It’s why groups persistently cycle by way of totally different backs.
Franchises have voted with their wallets, with contracts for the place falling even because the wage cap balloons. Eighteen months in the past, the state of the place was so dire that former gamers lobbied kids to change positions and the present crop of stars have been taking a look at taking collective motion.
However there’s something of a renaissance below method. The highest 4 offenses within the league this season – Washington, Baltimore, Buffalo, Detroit – all characteristic pounding, power-based run video games. Three of the 4 paved the way within the wonkiest speeding metrics, whereas Buffalo, the lone holdout, prime the league within the utilization of additional linemen or performs with a pulling blocker. It’s all beginning to really feel like a Invoice Cowher fever dream.
Conversely, of the top-four defenses within the league – the Vikings, Chargers, Bears and Broncos – solely the Bears fall exterior the highest eight in slowing the run. Defenses are actually geared as much as confuse quarterbacks. From chaotic rotations within the secondary to a battery of blitzes, pressures and alternative ways to blur what’s taking place on the line of scrimmage, defenses are discovering options to decelerate the passing recreation. One of the best ways to offset the chaos is to realize north-to-south traction on the bottom.
If the previous 10 years have been about tempo and area, then the subsequent couple can be about marrying these concepts with a bruising run recreation, to reap the benefits of lighter, faster defensive our bodies on the sphere or to power defenses into coverages which are primed to be attacked by way of the air. The Ravens have taken that concept out to its logical excessive by pairing the sport’s greatest downhill thumper with its most dynamic quarterback.
“We’ve had good speeding assaults, and we’ve had a whole lot of video games the place we’ve rushed for lots of yards. That’s all nice, however the distinction Derrick Henry has made is fairly clear,” Ravens head coach John Harbaugh mentioned on Monday. “It’s a special sort of speeding assault with him due to the best way he runs the ball. He’s simply one in every of a sort. He’s one in every of one.”
Henry is unlikely to be a one-man trendsetter. As Harbaugh says, there is just one Derrick Henry. Groups can worth the working recreation whereas nonetheless biking by way of totally different backs. However that solely elevates what Henry is doing this season. The final again to prime a 1,000 yards of their 30s was Frank Gore, and Henry is on tempo to shatter his whole (1,106).
A working again will in all probability by no means win MVP once more. It’s troublesome for even the perfect defensive gamers to weasel in on the dialog. Even on his workforce, Henry sits behind Jackson within the pecking order. However the MVP is a story award. And one of many chief narratives of this season is the resurgence of the run recreation. Nobody embodies that greater than Henry, a again from a special age nonetheless mauling defenses. That, alone, ought to earn him a spot on ballots.
