The Ravens’ run game is in a rough place, and the warning signs are flashing from every direction. What was supposed to be a strength now looks vulnerable, and the problems start up front, where the offensive line is getting exposed before Derrick Henry can even build momentum.
That matters even more because this isn’t a team with much room for delay. Henry is in his age 32 season, and the line around him is unstable enough that the Ravens are already being forced into uncomfortable answers.
The offense coordinator has only been on the job for three games, and short-yardage and goal-line situations are already a mess. Meanwhile, middling defenses have put the breakdowns on film, showing how easily linemen and linebackers can disrupt the run before it gets rolling.
The ripple effect is obvious. If the ground game can’t function, the Ravens are pushed toward asking Lamar Jackson to carry more of the load with his legs, which only raises the risk of him taking a beating. That comes at a time when Jackson has no contract beyond 2026 and has to decide whether he wants to renew his commitment to Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta, who keeps building teams with no chance to win up front and protect him.
Pass protection has been ugly too, with the Ravens sitting third-worst in the NFL in pressure rate allowed so far. But even setting that aside, the run blocking is a major problem all by itself.
Center and guard play has been so shaky that the offense can’t sustain anything at the line of scrimmage. Carson Vinson held up well in pass protection in his first NFL start on Sunday in place of injured stalwart Ronnie Stanley, but the line still dragged the run game down.
Roger Rosengarten has been road grading people at right tackle, yet the overall picture remains ugly. Stanley returning on a toe the Ravens hope holds up deep in a career that’s already been nearly ended by injuries before is a concern, and rookie guard Vega Ioane may now have to learn another new position on the fly and potentially snap for Jackson on Sunday with All Pro caliber defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons lined up over him.
Henry’s Week 3 line said plenty on its own: 26 carries, 89 yards, fresh against one of the NFL’s truly pathetic run defenses. That’s not the kind of output a team wants when the plan is supposed to be built around him.
“He will prepare to potentially play that position,” Minter said of Ioane at center, a massively important position in this Doyle’s Sean Payton offense as Payton explained to us this spring. “We will figure out the best five guys to put out there for this particular week as we may add a piece or two, obviously, from losing a couple of guys.”
The issue is that the Ravens are trying to patch this together after choosing not to add a starting-caliber veteran swing tackle and after years of spending near the bottom of the league in assets devoted to the offensive line. Their center plan was built around injured Danny Pinter, a cheap veteran swing option who couldn’t play regularly for the Colts, and Jovaughn Gwyn, who had 11 total snaps on the offensive line and none at center.
They also signed Ethan Pocic late in the offseason after Achilles surgery because the other options clearly weren’t good enough. Corey Bulluck could have helped as a developmental center, but he was lost at roster cuts, even as the team kept 10 of its 11 draft picks plus two undrafted rookies.
The bigger pattern is hard to miss. The line turned Jackson, coming off the best season of his career after his 2023 MVP campaign, into a red-zone failure last season, with a 68.4 rating that ranked last in the NFL.
It also made Henry, one of the more powerful backs in modern league history, a failure in goal-to-go and short-yardage situations. This season, those problems already look worse.
There’s no easy fix, either. The Ravens are scrambling to find players who couldn’t start for other teams and asking them to stabilize critical spots on a “Super Bowl or bust” roster while a new offense is still being installed. That is a dangerous mix.
DeCosta’s roster-building choices are under the microscope for good reason. The Ravens have a record $365M payroll, but almost none of it has gone to the offensive line. Stanley is on a remarkably team-friendly deal because other teams didn’t want him because of his deep injury risk, and no one else on the line is making real money except the rookie on a slotted contract.
They let elite center Tyler Linderbaum walk in free agency. They chose a run-stopping edge project in the second round over their pick of almost any interior lineman in the draft. And they ended up with Pinter, Gwyn, and Pocic as the answers at center because the line had already been addressed so poorly.
The numbers on the ground game tell the story. Filtering out the off-script quarterback runs, the Ravens’ backs have gone from 1.67 yards before contact last year to 1.18 this year.
Their third-down conversion rate has dropped from 57.6% to 40%. Expected points added has slipped from +.02 to -.05.
Against eight-man boxes, yards per carry have fallen from 4.2 to 2.5. And on third or fourth and 1, they’ve gone from 70.6% conversion to 0%, with three rushes for minus-7 yards.
The suggestion now is to lean more on perimeter runs with Justice Hill out of pistol looks, get rookie Joker Adam Randall involved when he comes off IR, and use Zay Flowers outside the tackles more than ever. But none of that changes the larger truth: this is a real problem, and it is not going away on its own.
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The latest reminder came against the Cowboys in Week 3, when Humphrey was targeted often and gave up six catches for 108 yards and a touchdown. For a player who has built his reputation on slowing down opposing passing games, the bigger concern is the trend line: 15 completions allowed, 215 yards surrendered and a passer rating against that has already climbed past his previous career low point. Baltimore does not need this to become a lingering issue, but it is clearly one the Ravens have to keep watching closely. [Read more 🡒]