The Remarkable Case of Derrick Henry

Derrick Henry led the league in yards, carries, and rushing TD for the second year in a row.  Leroy Kelley did it from 1967-1968.  It doesn't appear that anyone else did it since.  A guy named Bill Paschal did it in 1943 and 1944; Steve Van Buren did it from 1947 to 1949; and Jim Brown did it in 1958-59.  In fact, OJ Simpson is the only post-merger player I can find who led the league in all three categories twice in his career (1973 and 1975--it always comes back to OJ).  For the record, Jim Brown did it four times because he's Jim Brown (1958, 1959, 1963 and 1965).

I've been a Derrick Henry fan ever since the 2014 Sugar Bowl.  Something happened every time he touched the ball.  I couldn't understand why he touched it only nine times.  It was like watching a man among boys.  

And that reception at the end was his only reception of the season!  Incredibly, the guy making those plays was only 18 or 19 years old.  Even more incredible: his senior year of high school highlight reel:

Also incredible: he looked like this when he was 14 years old.  Here's a link to more footage--the "Derrick Henry Rule" in his middle school league starts around 1:50.  According to that video, he never rushed for under 100 yards in any of his 45 career high school games.  His senior year game log looks like something from Super Tecmo Bowl.  Here are his high school stats:

So it isn't like he came out of nowhere.  He was the best high school RB ever!  I assumed that he would be the featured back in 2015 but instead he only got 172 carries.  He made the most of them--990 yards and 11 TD.  Bama was stacked that year with TJ Yeldon, Kenyon Drake, Amari Cooper and OJ Howard.  There were too many mouths to feed so Henry didn't get a huge workload.  I couldn't understand this, he was unstoppable yet he never got more than 20 carries in a game that year.  Bama finish the year ranked sixth.

TJ Yeldon left for the NFL so Henry got all the carries in 2015, picking up 2219 yards (sixth best single-season total), 28 touchdowns (ninth best single-season total), a National Championship, the Doak Walker and Maxwell Awards, and the Heisman Trophy.  He was a steamroller.  He received high praise from brilliant pundits like me, opining "I said it before and I'll say it again. Just get be the ball to Derrick Henry."  I think I was drunk when I wrote "get be the ball."  I also posited "As I said here last year, just give the ball to Derrick Henry. He is not human."  Mark concurred with "Stumping for Derrick Henry will never be a bad idea."  TR, however, predicted that "Derrick Henry will not be an elite NFL running back. #hottake"

NFL front offices listened to TR instead of Mark and me.  Henry was drafted #45 overall in 2016.  This was the height of the "running backs grow on trees" phase of NFL team-building, but Melvin Gordon and TJ Yeldon went #15 and #36, respectively, the year before.  People drafted ahead of Henry in 2016 include Paxton Lynch, Eli Apple, Corey Coleman, Josh Doctson, and Laquon Treadwell.  My beloved Bills drafted Reggie Ragland at #41 and he never played a single down of football in a Buffalo uniform.

I knew the Titans had the steal of the draft.  I took Henry in the seventh round of my fantasy football league--it's full of sharps, super competitive, and if you want a guy you have to move early.  Mahomes went in the fifth round in 2018, for example.  Sure, Tennessee had Demarco Murray, but he was 28 and coming off a shitty year in Philadelphia.  Surely the superhuman rookie would get the bulk of the work.

I forgot that Mike Mularkey was involved in Tennessee.  He's an idiot.  He allocated almost three times as many carries to Murray as Henry in 2017, and an even split between the two in 2017.  

Mike Vrabel took over in 2018 and made Henry the week 1 starter but he only averaged about 11 carries per game, then Vrabel demoted him for Dion Lewis in week 9.  He finally gave the ball to Henry in week 13.  Over the last four weeks of the 2018 season, Henry complied 585 yards and 7 TD on 87 carries, good for 6.72 yards per rush.  He even threw a 6 yard completion.  Then, of course, 2019 and 2020 were laser shows.

How the hell did this happen?  Derrick Henry was literally the best high school running back in the history of high school running backs.  Then he went to Alabama and put up eye-popping yards-per-carry numbers his first two years but couldn't get all the work because of TJ Yeldon?  He had an all-time season his senior year as the featured back on the national championship team and won the Heisman, but didn't get drafted until the second round?  And then his team needed over two and a half seasons to realize he was a cross between the Hulk and the Flash, while he languished behind a past-his-prime back averaging 3.6 yards per carry who got benched by his previous team for Ryan Mathews?  How is this possible?  How was he hiding in plain sight for years?

Mark and I had a text exchange about this.  Most of the all-time great running backs were highly drafted and started right away.  Curtis Martin's success was a bit of a surprise as a third rounder, but he started fifteen games as a rookie--it didn't take long for Parcells to figure out what he had.  Terrell Davis was drafted in the sixth round, in large part due to his history of migraines, but he was able to overcome that with medication approved in 1997.  Sumatriptan y'all!  He started fourteen games as rookie because Shanahan knew what he had.  I don't consider Frank Gore to be an all-time great but it only took him one season to become a starter.

The closest comparables are perhaps Ahman Green and Shaun Alexander who rode the bench behind Ricky Watters for two years and one year respectively.  But Watters in Seattle was a hell of a lot better than Demarco Murray in Tennessee.

How do you not realize that you have a guy who can do this?

via Gfycat

Or this?

via Gfycat

After he did this.

via Gfycat

Just about every aspect of Derrick Henry's career is remarkable, albeit in vastly different ways.

Believe the Hype

Back in the halcyon days of G:TB, or at least the days when we gave a shit about college football (as a collective - I know that many of you still do), Mark and I used to make a pretty serious effort to preview the SEC Championship when our teams were involved.

That happened in both 2008 and 2009, and though I'm not one to brag, I think our work speaks for itself. In 2008, as a matter of fact, no less a sporting expert than the late, lamented Jerry said this about our prognosticating prowess:

Florida and Alabama met again for the SEC title last season, two programs in decidedly different places than they were in the late aughts. And they meet again next Saturday, champions of their respective divisions, to decide who holds the belt as the winner of the country's best conference. (Get out of here with that Big Ten nonsense. Two teams worth a shit and Wisconsin, who might have a puncher's chance to win the SEC East.)

That's Leeburg's own
Jonathan Allen

Neither Mark nor I have the time or inclination to repeat our earlier efforts. We're both still a little worn out from the exertion, truth be told. And if we're telling the truth, I haven't followed the Tide nearly as closely this year as I have in years past, a combination of apathy, coaching soccer, and Alabama's entertainment-sapping dominance draining my reservoir of attention. I'm a pretty lousy fan. Alabama doesn't need me, though. They're going to win, and win handily. Let's call it 34-10. Local kid Jonathan Allen's gonna score a defensive touchdown. And Jalen Hurts is only a damn freshman. That doesn't seem very sporting.

In the spirit of nostalgia, and of hoping to catch lightning in a bottle again, I asked Mark for his prediction. Reached on a barstool during the Florida/Florida State game, he offered this, "I reserve the right to change it if Florida continues to suffer a plague of injuries. As of now I'll say 40-13."

Careful observers will note that both of us predicted the same digits. So if there's a way to bet on a score that contains a 0, 1, 3, and 4, I'd advise you to get on it. The past suggests it'll be worth your investment.

Each of the previous three times the Gators and Tide met in the SEC Championship, the winner went on to close out the season as National Champions. Odds are good that Alabama will make it four straight - they're basically a professional organization at this point. Barring a gymnastics meet, or a dance competition, or a really good soccer game on television, I might even watch it.

G:TBCS Preview

Someone just told me they're playing the BCS championship game today. How 'bout that? I've been so focused on the Tribe's historic hoops season that I've completely lost track of college football. I honestly can't ever remember caring less about bowl season. (It's possible I wrote the exact same words at this time last year and that this is all a function of getting older and having different priorities, but I don't really have the time to research that.)

This isn't an anti-BCS post. I'm as tired of writing those as you are of reading them. But i confess to a substantial 'meh' feeling - 43 days off will do that (36 in LSU's case). But like Kellen Winslow, I'm a warrior*, so I soldier on. Like Harvey Updyke, too, who's wandering around the French Quarter like a PTSD-addled infantryman. Mike had better sleep with one eye (of the Tiger) open. (My bad.)

(* Note: I'm actually more of a worrier, at least in the context of sports rooting. Close enough.)

There are lots of places on the internet to find terrific analysis of this game. This is not one of them. Here's what I know, though:

Had this game been played two weeks after the SEC Championship Game, I'd have liked LSU by a relatively comfortable margin. The Bayou Bengals were simply wrecking people late in the season. After they beat Alabama, 9-6, in the two teams' much-ballyhood first tilt, LSU whipped its final four opponents by a combined 177-39 score. More telling to me was the way the Tigers absorbed a series of body blows from Georgia and then blew the Bulldogs' doors off, scoring 42 unanswered points to claim the SEC title.

With six weeks for Nick Saban to prepare, though, I can't see LSU's momentum making any difference. The fact is, Saban got completely outcoached in the two teams' first matchup. His mixture of panicky gimmickry and questionable decision-making (choosing to attempt long field goals, letting a badly injured Marquis Maze return a punt) were as responsible for Alabama's loss as anything that happened on the field. It's hard for me to see that sort of coaching mismatch happen again.

These are two terrific teams, anchored by phenomenal defenses and competent offenses. LSU's Tyrann Matthieu is probably the most dynamic player in the game, but Alabama's Trent Richardson is better than anyone LSU will line up opposite him. Frankly (Marty Schottenheimer homage), nothing that happens in this game will really surprise me, except for a one-sided rout. Based on nothing other than a hunch, I like Alabama, 20-16. I like Brad Smelley to play a big role. And I like these two girls in their houndstooth caps.

Boy, would I really like a playoff.

[Doofus Overlord edit, because rob's PG-13 pic sucks]

In an effort to be fair and balanced: