BEREA, Ohio — The Baltimore Ravens always offer the Browns a couple of their toughest regular-season tests.
But now? It‘s a matchup that’s become even harder to ace.
Enter Derrick Henry.
“He certainly gives those guys a different dimension in the run game, and I would say it’s because of all the big plays,” Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz said. “It’s not the 3, 4, 5 yarders — it’s the 80 yarders and some of those things that we’ve seen more on film. Derrick Henry’s a player we know we won against last year. We’re going to play our very best to slow down and contain their running game.”
Henry is the NFL’s leading rusher with 873 yards and eight touchdowns on 134 carries.
At 6-foot-2, 247 pounds, he moves unlike any other back in the league and is a nightmare to have to gameplan for, especially in the second and third levels of opposing defenses.
“He‘s pretty big,” safety Grant Delpit said, before jokingly adding, “we just gotta put (6-foot-8, 374-pound offensive tackle) Dawand (Jones) at scout team running back and just let him give us a good look.”
He’s proven to be an even more formidable weapon alongside a mobile quarterback in Lamar Jackson, who is playing some of the best football of his career over the last five games, all wins for the Ravens.
Baltimore has had the luxury of resting Henry early on in games and saving him for second halves, allowing him to essentially be their closer as they maintain late leads.
Against the Buccaneers on Monday night in Baltimore‘s 41-31 win, 11 of Henry’s 15 carries and 146 of his 169 yards came in the second half, including an 81-yard run in the third quarter.
Add that to the production of Jackson, who is ranked 11th in the NFL with 455 rushing yards and two TDs on 73 carries in addition to his 1,810 passing yards and 15 TDs, and it’s a pick-your-poison offense.
“It‘s a couple things that’s different, but they just try to tailor it to the kind of runs that he’s good at,” Delpit said. “He kinda likes to stay on the track and keep it that way. So kind of got to game plan around that, but they’ve got a dangerous one-two combo back there. It’s been working so far.”
This will be the first time Henry plays Cleveland as a member of the Ravens.
As a member of the Tennessee Titans, Henry played the Browns five previous times in his career, dating back to 2016. In an anomaly, he’s never wrecked a game against Cleveland.
In those five games he’s rushed for only 184 yards on 60 carries, with one TD in 2019. He also has an additional 115 yards and a touchdown on six catches.
Last season, as the Browns topped the Titans 27-3, they held Henry to only 20 rushing yards on 11 carries.
“I think we did a good job against Derrick Henry,” linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah said. “I think he had some of the lowest numbers that he had in the year. So we want to carry over some of those things, but obviously that’ll be a big goal for us. As you’ve seen, he’s on track for 2,000 yards and everything, so we want to make sure that we limit his activity.”
Of course, the plan against Henry can‘t be exactly the same, since the way they are able to use him alongside Jackson and the Ravens’ other offensive weapons in the pass game is going to be unlike anything this Browns defense has seen before.
Baltimore has the No. 1 ranked offense in the league at 461.4 yards per game. They have the fifth-ranked passing offense at 250.6 yards per game, but are first in the league at 8.81 yards per pass play thanks to pass catchers like Zay Flowers, Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely. They have the best rushing offense at 210.9 yards per game. They are the highest-scoring team in the NFL at 31.1 points per game.
As the Ravens have continued on this five game winning streak, Henry, 30, has continued to show he’s not out of his prime yet.
When he entered free agency this offseason, some teams were (mistakenly, it turns out) scared off by his age, and the possibility that he might be hitting a decline.
It’s turned out to be an unfounded concern.
Schwartz, who served as a senior defensive assistant with the Titans in 2021 and 2022, isn’t surprised that Henry has been able to keep up this output.
“Like a lot of great players, very serious about his craft and his conditioning and those kinds of things,” Schwartz said. “He’s obviously been blessed with some physical skills and some size and things like that, but he’s also been a hard worker and has made the most of it. And I think when you see veteran players that have success late in their careers, it’s not just an accident. It’s because of professionalism and discipline and hard work.”