Sunday’s divisional round NFL playoff game between the Buffalo Bills and the Baltimore Ravens at Buffalo’s Highmark Stadium is one of the most highly-anticipated contests of the 2024 season. Which is interesting, because when these two teams played in Week 4 of the regular season, it wasn’t even close. The Ravens beat the Bills up and down the field on both sides of the ball in a 35-10 trouncing.

Lamar Jackson completed 13 of 18 passes for 156 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 135.4. On the other side of the game (and, as it turned out, on the other side of the NFL Most Valuable Player conversation), Josh Allen completed 16 of 29 passes for 180 yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 73.9. And this was well before Baltimore’s marvelous defensive resurgence in the second half of the season.

But this game wasn’t about the passers, or Baltimore’s defense. The Ravens had signed running back Derrick Henry to a two-year, $16 million free-agent contract before the season, and this was the game in which Henry started to make that look like one of the best bargains in recent NFL history. Henry had run for 151 yards and two touchdowns the week before against the Dallas Cowboys‘ leaky run defense, but against the Bills and their ostensibly more consistent and disciplined defense, he did his new opponents one better, putting up 199 yards and a touchdown on 24 carries.

The touchdown came on the Ravens’ first offensive play of the game. With 11:02 left in the first quarter, Henry took the ball from his own 13-yard line, and blasted through Buffalo’s defense as his escorts blocked up the perfect Wham/Trap play. 87 yards later… Touchdown, Ravens.

Right guard Daniel Faalele pulled left to remove defensive tackle DaQuan Jones from the play, and fullback Patrick Ricard crashed down to take defensive tackle Ed Oliver, who probably thought he had an easy opening through the gap when Faalele left it. Trap blocks like this require the second blocker filling the empty space to do so with quickness and authority, and Ricard did that here as well as he has all season. Tight end Mark Andrews got to the second level to block safety Taylor Rapp, which opened things up further for Henry as right tackle Roger Rosengarten, making his first NFL start, took defensive end Greg Rousseau out of the play to the right.

At the same time, the second-level blocks of left tackle Ronnie Stanley and center Tyler Linderbaum were assisted by the pulling efforts of Faalele and left guard Patrick Mekari. When they both pulled left, that influenced linebackers Baylon Spector and Dorian Williams to take a step away from where the run was going. And that gave Stanley and Linderbaum the time they needed to get on the move and in optimal position for their blocks.

One good bit of news for the Bills is that they will have linebackers Terrel Bernard and Matt Milano in this game; both were out with injuries in Week 4. Spector and Williams were backups pressed into starting roles. But as much as that does present a personnel upgrade, there’s still the matter of stopping Baltimore’s run game with Henry AND Lamar Jackson. It is a problem that has puzzled the NFL all season long, and the NFL is no closer to an answer now than it was back in Week 4.

“22 [Henry] is big, runs hard, he’s super-fast, and then you got Lamar, who’s a great athlete as well, makes a lot of guys miss, can run away from guys,” Bernard said this week. “So, I think that goes back to just the fundamentals of what we want to do. Things we’ve worked on since training camp. That’s the main emphasis, is getting back to doing what we do — sticking to our fundamentals and going out there and playing our best ball.”

That’s its own issue, because when Henry and Jackson (who gained 54 yards and had a rushing touchdown in Week 4) are running together, there’s more than enough eye candy to send any defense into places it would rather not go.

This happened over and over in Baltimore’s 28-14 wild-card win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. Especially on the first offensive drive, it was Jackson who put the Steelers’ defense in a bag with read-option plays in which he would wait until the last millisecond to take off as a runner. That delay in the mesh point killed the Steelers as they tried to crash down on the run; the Bills cannot make that same mistake.

Jackson was able to get the Bills a couple of times with those keepers. In these instances, you might see Justice Hill in the backfield instead of Henry; this also adds to the specter of the passing game, and one more thing for any defense to have to counter. On this 9-yard touchdown run with 2:51 left in the third quarter, tight end Mark Andrews motioned to the backfield to join Jackson, Hill, and tight end Isaiah Likely. Both tight ends swept out to block, Williams took the cheese on the fake to Hill, Faalele and Rosengarten pulled to the left to further confuse the Bills as to the direction of the play, and the score seemed almost inevitable at that point.

Jackson is just as likely to succeed with quarterback draws, especially when Henry is  on the field to assist as an upfield blocker. Even if the Bills are able to deal with all this running stuff better than they did the last time around, we still haven’t talked about Lamar Jackson the passer yet.

“Going against Lamar Jackson, you don’t want to rush too conservative, but you don’t want to be too reckless at the same time,” Bills edge-rusher Von Miller said this week. “You just gotta play your game. Cage-rushing those guys each and every play is not effective. It’s Lamar Jackson, he’s gonna make plays. So, you just gotta rush. And you gotta be conscious of where you’re rushing and how you’re rushing. But at the end of the day, you just gotta go out there and play your game.”

Bills defensive coordinator Bobby Babich recently said that eye discipline will be key to it all, which is absolutely correct. Ideally for the home team, this is where Milano and Bernard come in.

“It’s gonna be absolutely 100% critical,” Babich said. “All 11 guys are gonna have to do their job, have their eyes where they’re supposed to be, know what their keys are, and then let their keys tell them what to do.”

Any deviation from that idea could well have the Bills on the wrong side of one more heartbreaking postseason loss that prevents Josh Allen and his guys from yet another Super Bowl appearance. And if that’s the case, the Ravens’ run game might be the way forward to the franchise’s third Lombardi Trophy.