What He Has Left — The Gridiron Court

Nevermore. — the words of House Ravens

The thing about Derrick Henry is the shoulders, and the way men come off them without appearing to slow him down at all.

He is thirty-two years old. In this sport that is not middle age, it is closing time — and nobody has told his legs, which on Sunday afternoon carried him through an entire house three separate times.

The last of the three put him third on the list of every man who has ever scored on the ground, in the whole history of the sport. The name he moved past is Marcus Allen, who had held that place until Sunday afternoon and does not hold it now. Only two men are left above him.

Baltimore won this by a distance, which will not surprise anybody.

Baltimore also has a new steward, and it is worth noticing what his first day in charge amounted to. Jesse Minter has never run a house before. His afternoon was: give it to the thirty-two-year-old, and let Lamar Jackson do as he pleased with everything else.

Jackson threw for more than three hundred yards and the bulk of them came before the interval, which is a full day’s work finished by lunchtime. At one point he sent Zay Flowers running through a field that had briefly forgotten he was on it.

It is not a complicated plan. It did not need to be.

Indianapolis had the better story before any of this started, and for one march it looked as though they would get to tell it.

Daniel Jones, who is the lord of that house, tore his Achilles in December. That is the injury that ends men, or at least ends the version of them anybody wanted. Sunday was his first day back on a field, and he opened it by taking his house the length of the ground — twice finding the same man on exactly the throw that keeps a march alive — until his best knight carried it over the line and the hall stood up. For a few minutes this was going to be about a man returning.

On his next possession he threw one straight to a Baltimore man.

Then Henry went again. Then the knight who had scored for them put the ball on the floor, and Baltimore took that too. Then Henry went a third time.

And their own crowd, in their own hall, on the first afternoon of the year, began to boo.

Their steward did not argue with them about it afterward. He said his house had to be better, that he had to coach better, that they had to play better. Three flat sentences and no defence of anybody, himself included.

Jones was back. It was true all afternoon and it made no difference to anything.

Ships of the week: Minter and Henry, a new steward and an old knight, keeping it extremely simple. Villain of the week: the calendar, which is coming for Henry and has not arrived yet. Next week: Baltimore looks like a great house again. Indianapolis has already heard from its bannermen.

The Record