Maybe no Week 4 play in NFL history has set the narrative for a playoff game quite like Derrick Henry’s first touch against the Buffalo Bills. The Ravens running back’s thundering 87-yard touchdown run was the offense’s first play from scrimmage in a 35-10 home win, the ground game’s first salvo in a 271-yard performance.
Fifteen weeks later, the run still resounds. Ahead of Sunday’s AFC divisional-round rematch at Highmark Stadium, Bills defensive coordinator Bobby Babich was asked nine questions in 12 minutes Monday about the teams’ first meeting. In Owings Mills, Ravens coach John Harbaugh got five in 21 minutes.
“You know what worked well,” Harbaugh said Monday. “The first play was a good play — that was a good play for us, but it’s just a football game. We look at it from kind of a scientific type of football perspective, in terms of: What did they see? What are they going to try to stop? What are they going to play against us? What are they going to run against us? Where are the matchups now that weren’t there then or that are different or the same?”
The matchup looks far different than it did in late September. Left guard Patrick Mekari and right tackle Roger Rosengarten were making their first starts at new positions along the Ravens’ offensive line. Henry was still finding his way in coordinator Todd Monken’s offense. The Bills were playing without three key defensive starters. They also spent most of the night trailing, a rarity for second-seeded Buffalo this season.
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In a coin-flip playoff game, the third-seeded Ravens’ biggest apparent advantage might not be all that substantial. Monken’s rushing attack finished the season as the NFL’s most efficient, according to FTN, but Babich’s run defense was No. 8. Their chess match could determine who clinches a spot in next weekend’s AFC championship game. Here are three questions that could shape it. (All stats reflect regular-season totals unless otherwise noted.)
How will the Ravens deploy their personnel?

The Ravens didn’t have a lot of interest in using receiver-heavy looks in Week 4. Here were their most common personnel groupings on first and second downs against Buffalo, which tends to play with at least five defensive backs on the field:
- 21 personnel (two backs, one tight end, two wide receivers): 28.9% usage, 113 yards on nine designed runs (12.6 yards per carry)
- 22 personnel (two backs, two tight ends, one wide receiver): 26.7%, 59 rushing yards on 10 designed runs (5.9 yards per carry)
- 11 personnel (one back, one tight end, three wide receivers): 17.8% usage, 38 rushing yards on six designed runs (6.3 yards per carry)
- 12 personnel (one back, two tight ends, two wide receivers): 15.6%, 26 rushing yards on four designed runs (6.5 yards per carry)
- 20 personnel (two backs, no tight ends, three wide receivers): 8.9%, 28 rushing yards on three designed runs (9.3 yards per carry)
- “Jumbo personnel” (six offensive linemen, two backs, two tight ends, no wide receivers): 2.1%, 1 rushing yard on one designed run (1 yard per carry)
Ravens wide receivers Zay Flowers, Rashod Bateman and Nelson Agholor were fully healthy, but they played just 16 snaps and seven pass plays together. (Only the Ravens’ Week 13 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, which Bateman left early with a knee injury, had fewer drop-backs with the trio on the field.) Even with tight end Mark Andrews yet to awaken from a sleepy first month, Monken preferred to go heavy against Buffalo.
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Expect more of the same Sunday, especially if Flowers’ knee injury sidelines him again. The Pittsburgh Steelers entered the wild-card round with a defensive line ranked as the NFL’s best by Pro Football Focus; the Ravens gashed them for 299 rushing yards in a comfortable win Saturday. The Cleveland Browns entered Week 18 with PFF’s No. 2 line; the Ravens rolled up 220 yards in another blowout. The Bills’ line finished the regular season rated No. 15.
And if the Ravens’ tight-end-heavy groupings don’t compel Buffalo to match with base personnel (four defensive backs), a six-lineman package might. The Ravens ran 15 plays Saturday with reserve lineman Josh Jones alongside their usual starters, and another play with reserve Ben Cleveland as their sixth lineman. In those “jumbo” looks, the offense’s success rate (the percentage of plays with positive expected points added) was 68.8%; the highest single-game success rate for any team in 2024 was 67.1%, according to TruMedia.
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Even the mere threat of the run should open up the Ravens’ passing attack. When quarterback Lamar Jackson dropped back on play-action passes with two or fewer receivers on the field, he averaged a ludicrously efficient 0.46 EPA per drop-back. Overall, he went 74-for-100 for 993 yards, 14 touchdowns and no interceptions and was sacked just five times on those 113 drop-backs.

The Bills are shaky against big-boy play-action, too, allowing a completion percentage of 71.6% and minus-0.13 EPA per attempt and posting just a 4% sack rate. All were below the league averages with two or fewer wide receivers on the field.
How will the Bills match the Ravens’ heavy personnel?
No defense is as comfortable in light personnel as Buffalo’s. Excluding Week 18, when the Bills rested a handful of defensive starters, they played in nickel personnel (five defensive backs) 80.6% of the time and in dime personnel (six defensive backs) 15.8% of the time. Buffalo played only 27 snaps total with four defensive backs on the field in those 16 games — and 14 of them came in Week 4.
The Bills’ heavier approach that night only weighed the defense down. The Ravens averaged 7.1 yards per play and had a blistering 53.3% success rate when Buffalo was in base personnel. Among the highlights: a 38-yard run by Henry, a 26-yard completion to tight end Isaiah Likely and two touchdowns from inside the 5-yard line.
But with improved health should come a stouter run defense. In Week 4, the Bills were missing two starting off-ball linebackers, Matt Milano and Terrel Bernard, a 2022 All-Pro and the team’s leading tackler in the 2023 season, respectively. They lost starting safety Taylor Rapp in the second quarter to a concussion.
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And, perhaps most crucially, Buffalo was without slot cornerback Taron Johnson, an All-Pro last season and pivotal run defender. Over each of the previous three seasons, according to PFF, Johnson ranked among the NFL’s top 12 defensive backs in run stops (tackles that are considered a “failure” for the offense).
“They play that nickel pretty much against everything, except when they put the really big people out there, and those guys play so well together,” Harbaugh said Monday. “They are experienced players, and Taron Johnson, he’s a DB, but he plays like a linebacker in there. He gets in the box, and he plays the Sam [strong side] or the Will [weak side] nickel ’backer, based on your formations, just like a linebacker would, and he’s 190 pounds. … He’s out there in the apex [the first defender inside the outside cornerback] — boom, he’s in the ‘B’ gap [between the guard and offensive tackle] before you blink an eye when playing the run. He does a great job, and those are great players.”
Milano, Bernard and Johnson have played just five games together, including Sunday’s playoff win over the Denver Broncos, but their impact has been clear. In three matchups with well-regarded rushing attacks (the Detroit Lions, Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers) and two with poor rushing attacks (the New York Jets and Denver Broncos), Buffalo’s run defense allowed almost a yard less per carry and held firmer at the line of scrimmage than it had over the season’s first three months, according to TruMedia.
Bills coach Sean McDermott has been flexible against other dangerous Ravens rushing attacks. In Buffalo’s 2020 playoff win, the defense lined up for more snaps of base personnel than it had in any game that season and limited the Ravens to 95 yards on 26 designed runs (3.7 yards per carry). Two years later, in a regular-season comeback victory in Baltimore, the Bills used nickel personnel on all but one defensive snap and held the Ravens to 112 yards on 25 designed runs (4.5 yards per carry).
Considering Johnson’s importance to Buffalo’s pass defense, especially in the middle of the field, the Bills will likely take their chances with him on the field. So will the Ravens.
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How much will the Ravens use their read option?
Over the past month, Monken has made a small but important tweak to the Ravens’ run game. He’s leaning into read option plays more than he did over any regular-season stretch.
From Week 1 to Week 15, the Ravens finished just one game with more than 10 read option runs, according to Sports Info Solutions. Over their past four games, however, the Ravens have had three games with at least a dozen option carries, and to largely great success. They averaged 3.1 yards per option run in Week 16 against Pittsburgh, 7.9 yards in Week 17 against the Houston Texans, 6.9 yards in Week 18 against the Cleveland Browns and 8.2 yards in the wild-card-round rematch against Pittsburgh.
The Ravens’ under-center run game can be a nightmare for defenses, especially when All-Pro fullback Patrick Ricard is finding paths to clear. But, by involving Jackson in the run game, Monken can help negate the numerical advantage defenses often have in the box.
On Henry’s 44-yard touchdown run Saturday, the Steelers had seven players within about 6 yards of the line of scrimmage, plus a deep safety, while the Ravens had their five linemen and Andrews blocking. On paper, Pittsburgh should’ve had an unblocked defender available to rally to the ball carrier. In reality, Jackson’s convincing fake on the read option drew three Steelers away from Henry, who found a cut-back lane up the middle and wasn’t touched until he was 10 yards past the line of scrimmage and approaching top speed.
The Bills did not see a lot of read option looks during the regular season. And, what they did see, they struggled to stop. Opponents rushed 33 times for 169 yards, according to SIS. (In Week 4 alone, Jackson and Henry combined for 36 yards on just four carries.) Quarterback keepers, while rare, were especially troublesome; the New England Patriots’ Drake Maye and Joe Milton, the Arizona Cardinals’ Kyler Murray and Jackson had seven carries for 60 yards and two touchdowns, with all but one run considered a successful play.
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“It’s interesting, because our lineup has been all over the place a little bit this year, and that’s not an excuse, by any means,” the Bills’ Babich told local reporters Monday. “But, in any profession, the continuity, I think, is an important piece, and open lines of communication, clear communication, and then sometimes just knowing what the guy in front of you is going to do. ... I think the longer that a group of people, in our case, are on the field together and are constantly practicing that communication and nonverbal communication is critical. And it’s absolutely helpful. So it’s good that all these guys are able to be out there together and we’re all on the same page.”
In a loud, hostile environment, the Ravens will need the same kind of connectivity. Behind a much-improved offensive line, Jackson and Henry don’t need much help to break off a long run. But there are always risks — a blown block, a missed read, a messy handoff. Those can doom a play, a drive, maybe even a season.
“We’re just playing football,” Jackson said after Saturday’s win over Pittsburgh. “Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose. Those guys had opportunities where they won. We had opportunities where we won. So it’s just a cat-and-mouse game.”
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