Seven weeks into the NFL season, and who could have guessed it? Derrick Henry is on top of just about every column of the rushing leaderboard.
Henry leads the NFL with 134 carries. He leads the NFL with 873 rushing yards. He leads the NFL with 8 rushing touchdowns. He leads the NFL with a 6.5 yards-per-attempt average, and with his 124.7 yards-per-game average. He has the longest run of the season at 87 yards. He's third in yards per rush out of shotgun, via TruMedia, as well as second in yards per rush on first down, fourth in yards per rush into eight-man boxes and (how horrible) 15th in yards per rush after contact. His marks in nearly all of those categories are the best of his career.
| Season | Overall | YBCo | YACo | Shotgun | 1st Down | 8-in-Box |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 4.4 | 1.82 | 2.64 | 5.3 | 4.9 | 4.1 |
| 2017 | 4.2 | 0.99 | 3.23 | 2.5 | 3.9 | 4.9 |
| 2018 | 4.9 | 0.72 | 4.21 | 4.1 | 5.4 | 3.0 |
| 2019 | 5.1 | 0.89 | 4.18 | 4.2 | 4.9 | 5.3 |
| 2020 | 5.4 | 1.42 | 3.94 | 4.4 | 5.2 | 5.9 |
| 2021 | 4.3 | 0.95 | 3.32 | 3.2 | 4.9 | 3.9 |
| 2022 | 4.4 | 0.79 | 3.60 | 5.2 | 4.3 | 4.2 |
| 2023 | 4.2 | 0.85 | 3.32 | 4.9 | 4.3 | 3.3 |
| 2024 | 6.5 | 3.15 | 3.36 | 6.5 | 6.6 | 7.2 |
Henry is 30 years old and, five years after rushing for over 2,000 yards and winning Offensive Player of the Year, is averaging just 2 fewer yards per game than he did at what was ostensibly his physical peak.
He is excelling in just about every area a running back can. Just 17 of his 134 carries have been stopped at or behind the line of scrimmage, a 12.7% rate that is fourth-lowest in the league. Meanwhile, he's ripped off an explosive run on 11.9% of his carries, which is 10th-best among the same group of players; he already has 16 runs of at least 12 yards. He had just 19 such runs all of last season. He has a 44% rushing success rate, which is better than every season except for his rookie year, during which he had just 110 carries.
His runs have generated 0.15 expected points added, which is MORE THAN SEVEN TIMES BETTER than his previous career-high mark. It's so good that just six quarterbacks have generated more EPA per DROPBACK to this point in the season. It's outrageous.
| Season | EPA/Rush | Success% | O/Neg% | 1D/Rush | Expl% | Avoid% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | -0.04 | 46.4% | 14.5% | 26.4% | 8.2% | 0.0% |
| 2017 | -0.09 | 41.5% | 25.6% | 22.2% | 7.4% | 18.8% |
| 2018 | 0.02 | 40.9% | 13.5% | 23.7% | 9.8% | 20.9% |
| 2019 | -0.01 | 41.6% | 17.5% | 24.1% | 11.6% | 19.1% |
| 2020 | 0.02 | 43.1% | 15.6% | 25.9% | 10.1% | 19.8% |
| 2021 | -0.03 | 36.1% | 18.3% | 22.4% | 6.4% | 14.6% |
| 2022 | -0.05 | 35.8% | 17.5% | 18.6% | 7.7% | 19.8% |
| 2023 | -0.01 | 35.4% | 15.7% | 22.5% | 6.8% | 20.4% |
| 2024 | 0.15 | 44.0% | 12.7% | 29.1% | 11.9% | 18.7% |
What's most interesting to me about all of this is the way that his explosive rushes have come. Henry's avoided-tackle rate of 18.7% ranks just 26th among the 47 players with 50 carries or more, indicating that he is simply following the blocking and using his vision to maneuver himself into open space, and then zooming right through it because nobody can catch him. And on many of those explosives, you can see that is indeed what's happening.
On the explosives out of the gun, some of that space can be attributed to the presence of Lamar Jackson. Jackson is playing at the highest level of his career this season, and remains the league's premier rushing threat at the quarterback position. Defenses choosing between stopping Jackson and Henry are in a no-win situation, and it benefits them both. The shotgun runs were a preseason concern because Henry had mostly been in an under-center offense throughout his career. So much for that. As previously mentioned, he is third in the league in shotgun yards per rush.
The stuff out of the pistol and under center is more about Baltimore's blocking, and about Henry's ability to wait for a crease and then attack it with force, which we have seen throughout his career. That's especially the case on perimeter runs, where Henry is absolutely killing it this season. According to TruMedia, he is gaining 10.7 yards per attempt (TEN POINT SEVEN) on runs to the left. The league average on such runs is 4.8 per attempt, among the aforementioned group of 47 players who have 50 totes or more. And it's not like Henry is doing this on an insignificant number of attempts, either; his 44 rushes to the left are third-most in the NFL.
And there is really no reason to expect that Henry will slow down. He is clearly being put in position to succeed by his scheme, his offensive line (the Ravens rank fifth in ESPN's run block win rate and eighth in Pro Football Focus' run-blocking grades) and his quarterback. He does not appear to have lost a single step, which makes absolutely no sense given what we know about running backs and the age curve but is seemingly true. And the Ravens are going to keep giving him the damn ball so long as they keep winning games, which seems pretty damn likely to continue.