On the first play of last Wednesday afternoon’s Ravens practice in Owings Mills, Patrick Ricard cleared a path for running back Derrick Henry. Two hours later, he slipped out of the backfield and caught a short pass from quarterback Lamar Jackson. In between, he did just about everything else, lining up in several spots across various formations.
Such is life for Baltimore’s versatile fullback, who’s down to about 290 pounds this season from his typical weight of roughly 305.
“When I first got asked to play fullback, I didn’t play offense in college, so for me, it was just like, ‘Take it step by step and really be a sponge [and] really ask a lot of questions,’” said Ricard, who’s now entering his eighth season with the Ravens and the final year of his contract. “I had to meet a lot with coaches and players.”
For most of the existence of professional football, the fullback’s role was as simplistic as it was barbaric: find a hole in the offensive line, locate man, hit man, repeat.
Those days are, of course, long gone, though today’s fullbacks are having something of a renaissance. While only a dozen teams used a fullback on offense last season and only 10 played more than 10% of the offensive snaps, three of the four teams from the AFC and NFC championship games — the Ravens, San Francisco 49ers and Detroit Lions — fielded offenses that featured the use of a fullback. The Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs did not for the first time in coach Andy Reid’s tenure, but he hasn’t ruled out bringing one back into the fold this season.
And the upward trend appears to be growing still.
After the Pittsburgh Steelers went without a fullback on the roster last season, they have Jack Colletto, a former college quarterback who switched to linebacker and also played fullback at Oregon State in 2021 and 2022, after adding him to their practice squad last October. The Los Angeles Chargers, meanwhile, spent a fifth-round draft pick on 6-foot-2, 303-pound offensive lineman Jordan McFadden out of Clemson, who has also been getting work at fullback and jumbo tight end under new offensive coordinator (and former Ravens coordinator) Greg Roman during training camp. And The Associated Press added last season a designated spot on its annual All-Pro team for a fullback for the first time since 2015.
What’s behind the rebirth? While defenses have gotten smaller and faster to combat offenses that have become smaller and faster with the rise of the passing game over the past two decades, fullbacks now have a chance to use their size to their advantage.
“Football is a very cyclic game,” former New England Patriots fullback James Develin said in a recent interview with Not For Long Media. “The fullback position isn’t dead … now there’s an opportunity to exploit defenses in these smaller packages and put 500 pounds in the backfield, put two tight ends on the field and run out of 22 [two tight ends, two running backs] and just smash mouth football again.”
The Ravens have long operated with a fullback — before Ricard signed with Baltimore as an undrafted defensive end out of Maine in 2017, they had Kyle Juszczyk, now an All-Pro with the 49ers. But when the team changed offensive coordinators last offseason from the run-heavy scheme of Roman to the more spread-out, pass-friendly attack of Todd Monken, there were questions about where — or if — Ricard would fit in. It didn’t help that his return to the field was slowed by offseason hip surgery.
“When Monken got hired there were a lot of questions of, ‘Is he gonna use a fullback? Is he gonna use me? How’s he gonna use me? How much is he gonna use me?’” Ricard told The Baltimore Sun in a recent interview. “Because I had hip surgery, I couldn’t show him anything. I already knew a lot of tight end stuff, so I thought why not meet with the offensive line and see what they do and if that’s an opportunity to extend my career? It helped being in that room in terms of pass blocking and run blocking.”
Yet, Ricard, a four-time Pro Bowl selection, saw a decrease in his playing time last season, lining up for 39% of the Ravens’ offensive snaps compared with 64% in 2022. His five catches were also his fewest since his rookie season. Per Pro Football Focus, he logged 317 snaps at inline tight end, 65 in the backfield, 45 in the slot, 10 out wide and six as an offensive lineman. He also logged 66 snaps on kick returns and 20 against field goal and extra point tries.
That raises the question of whether Ricard’s role will continue to decrease or trend in the opposite direction now that the 30-year-old is healthy, leaner and thus quicker.
“There’s always going to be a requirement for a guy like Pat — if you have a guy like Pat,” coach John Harbaugh said. “The questions last year were pretty much kind of debunked. He played a lot, and I think it’s going to be the same thing this year.
“He’ll be out there playing, and we’ll find a lot of great roles for him to do. The nice thing is, he can actually run routes and catch the ball, and that’s something that people kind of take for granted that he wouldn’t be able to do.”
That was evident in last December’s blowout win over the Miami Dolphins when, with Baltimore on Miami’s goal line, Ricard chip-blocked before leaking out across the formation into a vacant area to make a one-handed touchdown catch.
Earlier in the season, in a Week 7 rout of the Detroit Lions, Ricard similarly found himself with no one in sight and rumbled for a 28-yard gain after another short completion from Jackson.
And while the bulk of Ricard’s snaps last season came from an inline position, that wasn’t always the case. In Week 3 against the Indianapolis Colts, he had a dozen snaps in the backfield compared with just five at inline. Other weeks, he logged just one or two snaps in the backfield, and in others he had as many as five from the slot and three lining up out wide.
His versatility wasn’t just week to week, but often play to play as he lined up at fullback, as a blocking tight end or extra offensive linemen, or motioned across the formation or to the outside for the Ravens, who had the sixth-highest pre-snap motion rate of any team in the league at 28.2% last season.
“You have to be a hybrid player,” Ricard told The Sun. “You need to be able to catch, block in the run game, block in pass protection, move around, be in a bunch of different spots, be a smart player.
“It’s hard to find guys like that.”
And it’s difficult to learn to be one.
“Last year was kind of [for me to] learn as much as I can, and I missed most of the offseason with my hip surgery last year,” Ricard said. “But now, having the same offensive coordinator [and] a lot of the same guys in the offense, I was able to really have just a big foundation from last season and kind of just grow from that and kind of just keep learning different things [and] keep refining things I’m good at.”
Still, some of those things trace back to his roots coming out of Maine, where he was a defensive end.
Ricard said his favorite thing to do within the Ravens’ offense and his myriad tasks is to hit people. Specifically, anytime there’s a downhill run, he relishes the opportunity to block a defensive lineman then proceed to crack the linebacker on the next level of the defense.
The player that gives him the most trouble in that regard is Steelers edge rusher T.J. Watt. Ricard said the four-time All-Pro and 2021 NFL Defensive Player of the Year is technically sound, works the edges well and punishes mistakes. “You take one bad step against him, he’s gonna capitalize on it,” he said.
The same could be said of Ricard, and he should get plenty of opportunities to clear the way playing alongside Jackson and now Henry, the Ravens’ best running back since Ray Rice.
He also said he doesn’t care whether he gets 5,000 snaps or five snaps, and that the fullback isn’t going away.
“You kind of are seeing a resurgence,” he said. “Once fullbacks started getting taken out of the game, teams started using tight ends, but they’re not as good of blockers as fullbacks. So fullbacks have to evolve with the offense.”
That evolution doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.