Everyone’s been too busy roasting the Ravens’ defense to nitpick their offense. The defense has been that bad, bottom-feeding in just about every category you can name, which has taken some of the heat off an offense that hasn’t exactly been spotless either. Be it their struggle to score early against the Chiefs or a fourth-quarter collapse against the Bills, Baltimore’s offense has not been playing to its potential, and OC Todd Monken isn’t fooled. He pulled the mask off this week and admitted what most people have tiptoed around: the offense needs fixing, too.

The Ravens’ offense is a puzzle right now, and Monken thinks the fix is obvious: run the ball more. “It can start by calling it more often and stacking plays. We’re either getting to the point where we’re scoring pretty fast, or we’re getting off the field fast, and that’s not a great recipe, because you can’t stack plays. The idea of being able to run the ball, stay ahead of the chains, that’s a part of it,” he said.

Sure, the team is averaging a league-best 6.2 yards per carry, but running needs to become a much larger focus. You want to run consecutively enough that defenses have to respect the run, which opens up second and third-down play-calls. If you score in two plays, or if you go three-and-out, you don’t get a chance to run four or five times in a row and force the defense to load the box.

According to Monken, the Ravens are in the odd spot of being extremely efficient when they run, but the offense’s sequencing blocks them from using that efficiency to control games.

“Bottom line is, we’ve had games where we’ve had some explosive runs, but not nearly up to the level that we expect. But it’s early, and I expect us to really get back on track,” the Ravens’ offensive coordinator added. Sure, they’re averaging 32.8 points every game. That’s explosive, but the same can not be said about their rushing attack. The Ravens currently sit at 29th in rushing attempts this year (86). Derrick Henry has rushed 31 times over the last three weeks, and if the numbers tell us anything, it’s high time they go up now.

Ravens aren’t feeding the ball to Henry; they should

Derrick Henry has made headlines for all the wrong reasons after fumbling the ball in nearly every single game he’s played so far. But ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky let us in on some facts that might change how you perceive Henry’s importance in this team.

“A month into the season, the Baltimore Ravens, with Derrick Henry, are the 32nd-ranked offense in the NFL when it comes to giving the ball to their running back on first or second down,” he said. Yes, that means that the Ravens offense doesn’t nearly give the ball to their running back on early downs as much as it should.

Well… that needs to change. Because when they do give him the ball, the offense gets a new life. “The Ravens, yet when they do it, they’re second in yards per carry at six. So, to kind of just summarize it, the Ravens on first and second down give the ball to their running backs less than anybody in the NFL. Yet when they do, the second-best offense when doing that. The Baltimore Ravens with Derek Henry? That shocked me,” Orlovsky added.

Monken talked about focusing more on the running game, and this is how you do it. Give Henry the ball. And there’s no better team to test that out than the Texans this week. Their running defense currently sits at 12th in the league, a pretty ideal setup for the Ravens offense to give the ball to Henry on first and second down.