Pitch perfect: Derrick Henry and the Ravens are running wild with this old-school play

The NFL’s most explosive run play is a wonder to behold and a doozy to explain. Maybe that’s why the Ravens keep tossing the ball to running back Derrick Henry. There is endless complexity in the play’s old-school simplicity.

Start with the X’s and O’s: It is not actually one concept in offensive coordinator Todd Monken’s playbook, but a couple. Then move on to the presnap presentation: The Ravens run outside-toss plays out of different personnel groupings and different formations, from under center to pistol. Then consider the most confounding variable: Quarterback Lamar Jackson, one of the NFL’s most dangerous runners, has to surrender the ball almost immediately.

Six weeks into the season, defenses seem no closer to figuring out the Ravens’ toss plays than they did in September. According to Sports Info Solutions, Henry has 20 such carries for 197 yards and a touchdown; at 9.9 yards per attempt, his rushing average is more than double the rest of the NFL’s (4.4 yards). In the Ravens’ 30-23 win Sunday over the Commanders, over 40% of Henry’s 132 rushing yards came from five pitch plays, including the 27-yarder down the left sideline that extinguished Washington’s comeback hopes late in the fourth quarter.

“The toss plays have been really good in critical situations, and I just think it’s part of the fact that the diversity of the offense has helped,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said Monday. “So the idea that you have to defend the run game from the ‘A gap’ [in between the guards] all the way to the sideline on both sides, and then you have to defend the play-action and the quick passing game off the hard play-actions in the middle of the field all the way out to the sideline. We pretty much [have] been able to attack the width of the field and the depth of the field with the run game and the run play-actions, so that just makes it tough; you spread them a little thin.”

Toss plays have become an unexpected cornerstone of the NFL’s top-ranked rushing offense. Last season, Monken’s first in Baltimore, the Ravens recorded just 24 tosses for 130 yards, almost half of which came on running back Keaton Mitchell’s 60-yarder late in a blowout win over the Seattle Seahawks.

Nor were toss plays a hallmark of Henry’s final seasons with the Tennessee Titans. After 38 such carries in 2019 and 40 in 2020, Henry’s rushing diet changed. He had 15 toss runs for 34 yards in 2022, his first full season following an injury-shortened 2021, and 21 carries for 46 yards last season.

Even this season, Henry and the Ravens took some time to find their groove. Monken called just one toss play in Week 1 against the Kansas City Chiefs, and it went to running back Justice Hill for 3 yards. (Hill’s other pitch play this season, against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 3, went for 13 yards.)

In almost every game since, the Ravens have made it a featured item in their run game menu.

In the team’s Week 2 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders, Henry had four outside-toss runs for 30 yards. In Week 3, two carries for 4 yards. In the Week 4 win over the Buffalo Bills, five runs for 45 yards. In the Week 5 win over the Cincinnati Bengals, four runs for 64 yards, including the 51-yarder that set up kicker Justin Tucker’s overtime game-winner. And against Washington, five runs for 54 yards.

“Critical situations, we’ve got to be able to do that,” center Tyler Linderbaum said after Sunday’s win. “Find certain looks, certain alignments of the defense that try to give us a favor, give us an advantage, and we got a couple of those and sprung some big runs. Credit, one, to the play-calling, and just credit to the guys for blocking it up right.”

Monken has made the play hard to sniff out. While 11 of Henry’s 20 runs have come from under-center looks in 22 personnel (two backs — Henry and fullback Patrick Ricard — two tight ends and a wide receiver), the Ravens have also sprinkled in pitches with 12 personnel (one back, two tight ends and two wide receivers), 21 personnel (two backs, one tight end and two wide receivers) and a “jumbo” set (two backs, three tight ends and six offensive linemen) near the goal line. There’s even greater formational diversity within the Ravens’ two-wide-receiver formations: four under-center snaps, two shotgun snaps and two pistol snaps.

From there, the Ravens have their pick of either side of the field — they’ve gone left 11 times and right nine times — and one of two tried-and-true run concepts. Their first big toss play, a 17-yarder in Week 2, came on a “pin and pull” play, in which one or more blockers “pin” a defender, essentially walling them off from the flow of the run, so that an inside blocker can pull around that block and into space.

WATCH: Derrick Henry rushes for a 17-yard Gain vs. Las Vegas Raiders

Henry’s 38-yard run against the Bills and 51-yard knockout blow against the Bengals, meanwhile, came on zone runs, where blockers are responsible for an area, rather than a designated defender. Both concepts require linemen quick enough to cut off defensive linemen and second-level linebackers and defensive backs before they can get in the ball carrier’s way.

The most important block, though, might be the most surprising one. Often, Monken’s play designs will call on a wide receiver — most often Nelson Agholor — or a tight end who’s aligned close to the core of the formation to “crack-block” an unsuspecting edge defender who’s shooting upfield, punishing their aggressiveness and clearing the runway for Henry and Ricard.

“That anchor block is so big,” tight end Charlie Kolar said Sunday. “If you get the D-end blocked, the whole play’s got a chance.”

Added rookie right tackle Roger Rosengarten: “I give a lot of credit to our wideouts. Their perimeter blocking since Week 1 has gotten so much better, and those guys get paid to catch a ball. Credit to those guys, because [wide receiver] Zay [Flowers], ‘Bate’ [wide receiver Rashod Bateman], you name it, those guys have just made so many strides in their game on their perimeter blocking.”

If the Ravens do their job up front, Henry can do his downfield. Five of his 20 pitch plays have gone for at least 12 yards, and his put-away run against Washington featured a stiff-arm against cornerback Benjamin St-Juste 20 yards past the line of scrimmage, Henry steaming forward for his longest gain all game.

“Derrick’s really good,” Kolar said. “Every play, you can’t block everyone, so there’s going to be someone [unblocked], and he has a pretty uncanny ability to make them miss at full speed.”

Even Jackson is no bystander on toss plays. He often rolls out after the pitch, as if he’s running a bootleg and looking for a receiver on the back side of the play. His acting was convincing enough late in Sunday’s game that both Commanders safety Quan Martin and St-Juste initially tracked his movement, not Henry’s, on the running back’s 27-yard rumble. Such is the threat of the Ravens’ pick-your-poison offense.

“They’ve stopped inside runs, and they’ve stopped outside runs, but we’ve also hit [on] our fair share, because I just think it’s hard to be everywhere on defense,” Harbaugh said Monday. “And that’s probably the calculus for why we’ve hit some of those big runs, maybe, when you would think that people would be looking for them.”