ExtremeRavens Posted 16 hours ago Posted 16 hours ago On a chilly January evening, around this time last year, Lamar Jackson gave his most descriptive account of what it’s like watching Derrick Henry run with the football. His lips crinkled to make a whooshing sound. Jackson said that Henry runs like the aptly named Lightning McQueen drives. Jackson invoked the Disney movie “Cars” after having watched Henry torch Baltimore’s most vexing rival for 186 yards and two touchdowns off the strength of 26 carries in the wild-card round. “It’s making my job a lot easier,” the two-time NFL Most Valuable Player said at the time. That was the last time the Ravens and Steelers played a win-or-go-home affair. This next meeting Sunday night in Pittsburgh isn’t officially a playoff game. But for all intents and purposes, it is. Week 18’s winner claims the AFC North division title and a trip to the playoffs, while the loser enters a long offseason of questions concerning organizational hierarchy. Henry figures to be the key to Baltimore prolonging this confounding season. With temperatures expected below freezing this weekend and potential for snow, he’s that much tougher to tackle. In a matchup fulfilling every cliché about the physicality of this rivalry, Henry is the one best equipped to land punches, particularly with Jackson recovering from a back contusion for a can’t-lose game against a team that cornerback Marlon Humphrey described as historically being a “knife in their side.” “When you have the best back in the game,” center Tyler Linderbaum said, “sometimes there’s not an issue with just giving 22 the ball and seeing what happens.” Henry is coming off “one of the greatest performances” his coach has ever seen. John Harbaugh said that it’s always in the game plan to involve their Mack Truck of a running back, but against an understaffed Packers defense, the Ravens were more intentional. According to Next Gen Stats, Henry rushed for 165 of his 216 yards out of the I formation. That’s the most by any player in a single game since at least 2016. It was also his fourth career game with 100-plus rushing yards inside the tackles and another 100-plus outside the numbers, a feat no other running back has touched in a decade. Henry’s four touchdowns (a first-half hat trick and fourth-quarter knockout blow) tied his career high. “We have the best job in the world blocking for someone like that,” Linderbaum said. Wide receiver Zay Flowers beamed with his boyish grin: “I said give it to him every play. Fourth-and-10? Give it to him. We don’t even need to throw it.” Henry was handed the ball 36 times in the season-saving win over Green Bay. That’s the most carries of any NFL running back since 2023. It was a career-high mark and the most times Henry ran the ball since in his football life since 2016, when he led Alabama to a national championship win over Clemson. Even Henry, who invests considerable time and money into his body, appeared to be huffing at times. “There were a couple of those where he was kind of tapping out and I said, ‘No, get him back in there. Get his [butt] back in there,’” offensive coordinator Todd Monken joked. “At the end of games, you’re gonna need him.” Monken and Harbaugh have taken flack — some fair, some not — for how they’ve handled Henry’s workload of late. He was barely on the field during a Thanksgiving night loss to Cincinnati and he was on the sideline for each of Baltimore’s final two drives despite a two-touchdown outing against the Patriots. Some of that is a byproduct of game flow. But pummeling the Packers seemed to justify much of the criticism. Henry preferred to not spend much time dwelling on the past. A world-class performance in Green Bay, to him, is nothing more than “a game to build off of.” Henry has two thoughts front of mind: “[Pittsburgh] got the upper hand on me last time,” he said, and this weekend is a chance to improbably punch Baltimore’s ticket to the postseason. He’s the guy to do it. Against the Steelers in December 2024, he turned 24 carries into 162 yards. Three weeks later, in the playoffs, he sent Pittsburgh packing with his second best performance of that season. Tomlin hadn’t stepped into the shower after that game before he was already thinking about an aggressive offseason approach to mitigate a player like Henry. It’s well documented that those two performances hung around the Steelers’ draft war room like a thick cloud. The Steelers selected Derrick Harmon with their first-round pick. Harmon didn’t suit up in the first meeting because of a knee injury. He’s expected to play Sunday alongside star edge defender T.J. Watt (another game wrecker who missed the first meeting). Harmon’s impact is bolded and underlined on the stat sheet. Since his return three weeks ago, the Steelers have allowed 52 rushing yards per game and 2.9 yards per carry, both NFL lows. They’re also the only team to have not allowed a rushing score. Harmon isn’t shy about the expectation. “It’s what they [brought] me here for,” he told local reporters, “for these type of games.” Same could be said for Henry, who turns 32 on Sunday and forged a career bound for the Hall of Fame with a reputation of playing his best football in the consequential games with below-freezing temperatures — another truism Henry won’t give credence. “I don’t really get into the, ‘Oh, this is when I’m going to be Macho Man or something like that,'” Henry said. “I just try to go out there and do my job.” His job on Sunday against the Steelers is to run like Lightning McQueen and carry the Ravens to the playoffs. Have a news tip? Contact Sam Cohn at scohn@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/samdcohn.x.com. Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson hands the ball to running back Derrick Henry during practice this week. Henry ran for 94 yards in the first meeting with the Steelers this season, a 27-22 Pittsburgh win. (Kevin Richardson/Staff) View the full article Quote
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