Ravens Run Game Under Assault From Suspect Offensive Line

The Ravens are facing an existential crisis running the football in a way we haven’t seen in quite some time.

It’s early, to be sure, but also quite late from a roster standpoint in terms of try to fix a severely broken offensive line on the fly, running back Derrick Henry is in his age 32 season, which historically since the 1970 AFL/NFL merger backs have needed more help than ever to sustain their careers, the offensive coordinator has done the job for all of three games and now has his hands tied behind his back in short yardage and goal line (for starters) and middling-at-best defenses have already put on film the relative ease with which linemen and linebackers can blow up the Ravens run game before Henry gets started.

It’s a potentially devastating development (especially when coupled with what remains a choking fourth-quarter defense, and it leads to one natural default – have two-time MVP Lamar Jackson try to take games over his legs and withstand a significant beating. And this at a time when Jackson has no contract beyond 2026 and must decide whether he wants to renew his commitment to Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta (the guy who keeps building teams with no chance to win up front and protect him). For these purposes, we’re going to set aside pass protection that has been abysmal by any standard (and third-worst in the NFL in pressure rate allowed thus far; again worse than last year’s pathetic standard.

Right now the Ravens cannot sustain anything at the line of scrimmage with center/guard play so feeble that even when a youngster like Carson Vinson holds up quite well in pass protection in his first NFL start on Sunday in place of injured stalwart Ronnie Stanley, the line undermines the entire run game. Even with right tackle Roger Rosengarten road grading people, the line is a massive concern. Stanley returning on a toe the Ravens hope holds up deep in a career that’s been nearly ended by injuries before, is problematic. Rookie guard Vega Ioane now forced to try 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 is a bad look.

When Henry runs 26 times for 89 yards fresh in Week 3 against one of the NFL's truly pathetic run defense, you are in trouble. From the guy who told you this was designed to fail all along, trust me it could get worse.

“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.”

Triage. In week 3.

Because there was no move at all to add a starting-caliber veteran swing tackle or DeCosta is on the bottom eight in assets spent on the offensive line for years and his draft picks don’t pan out and the plan at center was a super-cheap veteran swing guy who couldn’t play regularly for the Colts (injured Danny Pinter) and a guy with 11 snaps on the OL total and none at center (Jovaughn Gwyn) and signing veteran Ethan Pocic very late in the offseason coming off Achilles surgery because that other stuff clearly wasn’t going to be good enough. Sure could use developmental center Corey Bulluck, but lost him at roster cuts but they made sure 10 of their 11 draft picks were on the team plus two undrafted rookies.

Getting Destroyed

The offensive line turned Jackson, coming off the best season of his career which was the follow  up to his 2023 MVP season, into a failure in the redzone last season HYPER (68.4 rating last in the NFL, yeah that happened) and made Henry, one of the more powerful backs in modern league history into a failure in goal-to-go and short yardage situations and it’s already markedly worse this season. Shockingly worse, and scrambling to find people who can’t play for other supposedly-lesser teams to now come start for your “Super Bowl or bust” roster at critical offensive line spots while a new offense is still being installed feels like a recipe for further disaster.

And it probably is. And Ioane’s development, as the 14th overall pick, is already being thrown for a loop, and don’t let them cry about injuries in an injury sport. They have a record $365M payroll and they put nothing into the OL, with Stanley on a remarkably team-friendly deal because other teams didn’t want him because of his deep injury risk, and no one else making any money except the rookie on a slotted contract. Boy did DeCosta make some decisions here.

They let elite center Tyler Linderbaum walk in free agency, chose a run-stopping edge project in the second round over their pick of almost any interior lineman in the draft, and no other team looked at Pinter as a starter and Gwyn was literally overwhelming being asked to impersonate and NFL center and Pocic was a massive injury risk coming off the surgery but still a risk worth them taking given how horribly they had addressed the line prior.

How's The Working Out?

Here’s a chart comparing key metrics on running back production (filtering out the off-script QB stuff), between last year and this year. It’s bleak. Again, these are RB rushes.

                                                            2025                            2026

Yards Before Contact                 1.67 (5th)                     1.18 (T-15th)

Third Down Conv %                     57.6% (7th)                  40% (T-20th)

Expected Points Added               + .02 (T-3rd)               -.05 (T-10th)

8-Man Box YPC                                 4.2 (3rd)                       2.5 (18th)

Third/Fourth and 1 Conv              70.6% (13th)              0% (3 rush, -7 yds)

Doyle better lean on more perimeter runs with Justice Hill out of pistol looks. They need rookie Joker Adam Randall to find a role when he is activated off IR and expect to see Zay Flowers outside the tackles more than ever before. But this is a big problem, and it won’t be easily fixed.

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