He rumbles more like thunder, but Derrick Henry has his quarterback seeing lightning.
In his first playoff game as a Raven, Henry proved every bit as valuable as he had all season, punishing the Pittsburgh Steelers with 26 carries for 186 yards and two touchdowns on the way to a 28-14 wild-card win far more dominant than the score lets on.
“It looks like a movie clip," Lamar Jackson said postgame when asked what it's like to watch Henry run, per team transcript. "Do you watch the movie Cars? ... You know when Lightning McQueen is just flying and flashing past, and it’s like [whooshing sound]. That’s how Derrick looked when he was running past all those guys. It looked like a movie. I’m not going to lie to you, but I’d rather be watching it than be on the other side of the ball; I know that.”
The play Jackson is likely referring to in which Henry ran past "all those guys" took place in the third quarter, when the Baltimore back split a convergence of Steelers and zoomed past them all for a 44-yard score, hitting a top speed of 20.60 mph, per Next Gen Stats.
But Henry delivered a full carload of highlights on the night, including an 8-yard touchdown earlier in the game and a 34-yard run out of Wildcat formation that came complete with a stiff arm to send safety Minkah Fitzpatrick into another dimension.
"I believe it’s self-explanatory," Jackson said regarding Henry's playoff impact. "He is just a work horse. That guy is just that guy. I don’t know. I can’t find the words to say, man. I believe everyone sees it. I can just hand the ball off, [and he gets] 10 yards, 20 yards, 30 yards, and I’m just chilling. Now, when they’re attacking him, I go, and it’s like I’m fresh. It’s just making my job a lot easier. We just piggyback off each other.”
Although Henry certainly led the charge, along the way totaling an impressive 7.2 yards per carry, dismantling Pittsburgh was very much a tag-team effort as Jackson alluded to.
The QB, who threw sparingly but efficiently with 175 yards and two TDs on 16-of-21 passing, added another 15 totes and 81 yards to the team's rushing total, constantly extending plays and drives.
At home, in the cold, Baltimore ran the ball on 24 of its first 32 plays, including for the entirety of a 13-play touchdown drive that began on its own 15-yard line.
With the defense chipping in, especially early on when the unit allowed the Steelers just 49 first-half yards, Henry and Jackson simply demoralized their opponent, who entered the postseason ranked sixth against the run.
Baltimore, unsurprisingly first in the category on offense, finished with 299 rushing yards, a franchise playoff record and more than the total yards (280) the Steelers managed by game's end.
In doing so, the Ravens knocked off their bitter rival, a second straight head-to-head victory in the span of a month after losing eight of their previous nine in the series.
Now the Divisional Round is on deck, either another home affair versus the Texans or a road game against the Buffalo Bills.
Baltimore showed in dramatic fashion Saturday how unrelenting it can be, but it's not as if the Ravens haven't flashed such postseason potential before. They reached the AFC Championship Game just last year on the heels of a 34-10 romp over Houston, only to fold in a massive disappointment.
Those Ravens did not have Henry, though, who despite his heroics is intent to keep the team on track.
“We’re not going to get too ahead of ourselves and go off the walls about how great we are," the running back said. "We’re going to stay level-headed, enjoy this one, watch the film, see where we can get better at and then move onto the next one. It was a great win today; everybody did a great job. Like I said, [we’ll] enjoy this one and get ready for next week.”