If offensive coordinator Todd Monken learned anything from the Ravens’ Week 16 win over the Steelers, perhaps it was how easily Pittsburgh’s run defense might self-combust.

Of the 220 rushing yards the Ravens racked up in that 34-17 win last month, 177 came with a man in motion, according to TruMedia. Come playoff time, that would be repeatable. But with wide receiver Zay Flowers unavailable for Saturday’s AFC wild-card-round rematch, sidelined by a knee injury, Monken had to innovate. Who else could stress the Steelers’ run fits? Who else had his speed and acceleration? On Thursday, Monken and the Ravens went to practice with a possible solution: their quarterback, the NFL’s reigning Most Valuable Player.

Monken’s idea was to have Lamar Jackson line up at wide receiver, to the left of running back Derrick Henry, who’d be aligned as a Wildcat quarterback. Jackson, at Henry’s signal, would motion over, running just behind Henry. Henry would take the shotgun snap, fake a handoff to Jackson and hope the defense took the cheese.

The Ravens practiced the play maybe twice Thursday, fullback Patrick Ricard recalled. That was enough to know it would be on Monken’s menu in prime time. If the Steelers figured that, after two regular-season meetings, they’d seen everything from the Ravens’ rushing attack they needed to, they were quickly corrected. On the Ravens’ first drive of the game, on a first-and-10 near midfield, Monken called the Wildcat play.

It was a smashing success, just as he’d drawn it up. Jackson’s gravitational pull dragged the defense one way as Henry veered the other, finishing off a 34-yard run with a stiff arm that knocked safety Minkah Fitzpatrick back into the regular season. Three plays later, the Ravens had their first touchdown and a lead they would not relinquish.

“Any play is satisfying when you execute it, and then you get an explosive, and you get down the field,” Henry said after the Ravens’ 28-14 win, which pushed them into next weekend’s divisional round. “So whether it was that play or another play, I’m glad that we were able to execute to get a big play on that, for sure.”

The Ravens’ fifth straight win was a testament to Henry’s powerhouse ability (186 rushing yards, a team playoff record), to Jackson’s newfound playoff calm (76.2% accuracy), to the team’s overwhelming line play (299 rushing yards, 29 rushing yards allowed). But it was also a reminder of the fresh, new possibilities of playoff football for an offense with one-of-a-kind playmakers and a coordinator keen on supercharging them.

As the Ravens rolled up 464 yards of offense against their division rivals, the second most in any game Jackson has started over his career, their offense wasted little time in making clear its intentions. This was the playoffs, and the Ravens wouldn’t keep their best engine in the garage. Their offense revved up in the first quarter with one read option play after another, trusting Jackson to decipher Pittsburgh’s plan of attack and react accordingly: Either hand the ball off to Henry or keep it himself.

Over the regular season, Jackson never had more than five read option keepers in a game, according to Sports Info Solutions. But he seemed to have that many by the end of the first half Saturday. With the Steelers targeting Henry at the mesh point, Jackson had the green light. He entered halftime with seven designed runs for 39 yards, plus four scrambles for another 25 yards, according to TruMedia.

“Every time you run an option play, the defense has to make a decision, and they were clearly trying to crash hard” on Henry, tight end Charlie Kolar said. “As they started changing, we changed, too. I thought ‘Monk’ did a great job.”

Without Flowers’ explosive-play potential, the Ravens leaned more on their size — and the element of surprise. Over the regular season’s first 16 weeks, Monken had called just 13 run plays with six offensive linemen on the field. In Week 17, against a smaller Houston Texans defensive front, the Ravens cranked that usage up, rushing 13 times for 38 yards and six first downs.

On Saturday, they ran even more. None of Monken’s 15 jumbo-style runs featured a single wide receiver on the field — and none of them came at the goal line, either. The Ravens overwhelmed Pittsburgh with their size mostly in the middle of the field, rushing for 72 yards in those six-lineman sets, highlighted by Henry’s 17-yard gain on a second-quarter toss play and an 8-yard touchdown one play later.

“That’s our identity,” running back Justice Hill said. “Our coaches do a great job of dialing up a great scheme, and it’s our job to go out there, execute and run it. We always want to establish a run game.”

Monken’s game plan was flush with flourishes. Henry gained 8 yards in the second quarter on a wind-back counter play that punished the aggressiveness of Pittsburgh’s second-level players. Jackson hit Mark Andrews for a 20-yard gain over the middle on an apparent “leak” concept late in the second quarter, with Pittsburgh forgetting to account for the star tight end after he initially helped in pass protection. A designed rollout on second-and-20 led to an easy 21-yard catch-and-run for wide receiver Tylan Wallace in the third quarter. An end-around to wide receiver Steven Sims, appearing in only his third game with the Ravens, produced another 15 yards on the next play.

There was razzle-dazzle. There was meat and potatoes. There was a whole lot of offense: 29 first downs, 72 plays, nearly 40 minutes of possession overall.

“They’re very aware of our style of offense, what we like to run, so you go against people like that, you’ve got to make sure they’re caught off guard and off-balance,” left tackle Ronnie Stanley said.

Added Jackson, who finished 16-for-21 for 175 yards and two touchdowns and added 15 carries for 81 yards: “Some guys [were] just waiting for their opportunity to get out there and show the world what they’re capable of.”

Now the Ravens are guaranteed at least one more offensive showcase. If the second-seeded Buffalo Bills beat the seventh-seeded Denver Broncos on Sunday, the Ravens would travel to Highmark Stadium next weekend for a divisional-round rematch. If the Broncos pull off the upset, the Ravens would host the fourth-seeded Texans in another rematch.

Neither defense would cooperate with the Ravens’ plans for conference superiority. Buffalo had 32 takeaways in the regular season, third most in the NFL. Houston allowed 5.1 yards per play, the NFL’s fourth-lowest rate.

But the Ravens pushed both units around in the regular season, and on Saturday, they looked as if they were only growing stronger. Afterward, coach John Harbaugh hinted that the offense had covered only so many pages in Monken’s playbook. Because of the Ravens’ rushing success, he said, there were still “some things we didn’t get to.”

Maybe next week.

“We don’t have to do it one certain kind of way,” Harbaugh said. “We don’t have a particular back system that we’re in. We’re not like the West Coast system or something like that. We’re just the Ravens system. What’s the best offense that we can put together for our players at this time? And they do a great job of that.”