Derrick Henry is heading into his age-32 season, and Ravens rookie offensive coordinator Declan Doyle isn’t talking like a man ready to put the brakes on. If anything, Doyle sounds eager to see just how much Henry can handle.
That’s notable coming from a 30-year-old first-time play caller who hasn’t even decided yet whether he’ll be on the sideline or in the pressbox on game day. He doesn’t have projections for Henry, and he isn’t pretending to have the whole thing figured out. What he did make clear after Wednesday’s practice is that he has no plans to shield Henry or manage him with kid gloves.
“He is a special talent,” Doyle said on Henry. “There are not many guys in the league who can do what he does.
The vision for him in the offense is an immense role. Obviously, I don't want to put a number on the amount of [carries], because obviously, as you look at every single week, every week is different.
You want to be able to deploy things in different ways, and at the same point in time, he's going to have a pretty large workload.”
That’s a pretty bold stance when the workload conversation is tied to a running back entering the part of the calendar where the position tends to fall off a cliff. Henry has never topped 300 carries in three straight seasons, and if he gets there in 2026, he’d be doing something only Walter Payton and Otis Anderson have done at age 32. The list of backs to even clear 250 carries at that age is tiny: Frank Gore, Emmitt Smith, Payton and Anderson.
Henry has already been through one stretch like this. The last time he posted 300 carries or more in consecutive seasons, he suffered a Jones fracture in his foot midway through the following year and missed nine games before returning for the playoffs.
Still, Henry doesn’t sound like a player thinking about the finish line. He said early in training camp that retirement isn’t on his mind.
“I don’t try to enter another season thinking about retirement or having that on my mind,” Henry explained. “That’s not even in my mindset.”
Asked how much he can handle at this stage, Henry didn’t want to get dragged into setting expectations.
“I ain’t really trying to get into the expectation thing,” Alrighty then.
There are reasons for caution. Henry’s workload has piled up over the years, and the numbers at this age usually turn ugly.
Even the source of the most optimistic comparison points in the league’s history doesn’t line up cleanly with Henry’s resume. The best age-32 back ever, Ricky Williams, had about 1,000 fewer carries than Henry does now when you count the playoffs.
But Doyle doesn’t seem interested in that warning label. He pointed to Henry’s production last season, when he ran for 1,600 yards again and averaged 6.0 yards per attempt on first down. He also noted that Baltimore is expected to run more under center than it has during the Lamar Jackson era, and Henry has done plenty of damage in that style before from his Tennessee days.
There are also some wrinkles in the numbers that could cut both ways. Henry’s yards before contact dropped from 2.41 in 2024 to 1.60 last season, and his yards per carry against an eight-man box fell from 6.3 to 3.8. At the same time, Lamar Jackson barely running the football and fewer option looks may have had plenty to do with that.
Doyle, for his part, sounded like a coach who knows exactly what he has in front of him.
“I was telling the offensive staff how cool it is when you call a run play, first-time play caller, and Derrick Henry is the running back,” Doyle noted. “And you're like, 'The odds of this working are a lot higher.'”
Rookie head coach Jesse Minter was a little more measured, but he didn’t suggest Henry is fading. He said the staff will have to be smart about getting him through the season.
“I do think - like all the players - we’re going to have to be really smart to get him through the long season,” Minter said. “I don’t look at that as he’s slowing down, from that standpoint. But that’s our job.”
So the Ravens are not exactly hiding the plan. Henry looks set for a big role, Doyle is comfortable leaning into it, and the team appears willing to find out whether one of the league’s most punishing backs can keep doing what he’s always done. If that means another 300-carry season, so be it.
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