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?
The "Deflategate" opinion came out while I was away on vacation, so I got to enjoy listening to sports radio stations from Philly (while at the Jersey Shore) and New York (on my way home) make a complete hash of interpreting the decision. I'll give you the straight dope: Tom Brady got shafted, Roger Goodell is a no-talent assclown when it comes to investigatory prowess, and NFL in general is run worse that Chotchkie's. I'm also surprised by a gaffe made by Paul Weiss. Hopefully this will all come together by the end of my rant.
I commented on Tom Brady's balls back in January. Since then, as you know, Roger Goodell commissioned Ted Wells from the law firm Paul Weiss to perform an "independent" investigation into the circumstances giving rise to the tenderness of Brady's balls in the AFC Championship Game. The report concluded that "it is more probable than not that Brady was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities of McNally and Jastremski involving the release of air from Patriots game balls." Based on this vague conclusion, testimony from various witnesses, and the fact that Brady destroyed an old cell phone that potentially had relevant texts or emails, Goodell (acting as a neutral arbitrator) suspended Brady for four games. Brady appealed to the Southern District of New York. Hilarity ensued.
The case was assigned to Judge Richard Berman, a 70-some-odd year old Clinton appointee with 17 years of experience on the bench. He has degrees from Cornell and NYU School of Law. He was an advisor to Jacob Javitz. He was the general counsel for Warner Cable Company. He is no stranger to shitshow trials of the celebrity and political variety. He assumed senior status in 2012, presumably to get a lighter caseload and enjoy more free time in his old age. I don't think he wanted anything to do with a labor dispute involving balls and their air pressure, and Tom Brady's "general awareness" of said air pressure.
His opinion bears this out, undressing Goodell and the NFL for three primary reasons.
First, Brady didn't have "notice" that tampering with balls could lead to a suspension. Notice is a term of art--if a person has "notice" of a fact or condition, then they actually know of it, or received some notification of it (usually in the form of a document), or had reason to know about it. NFL players receive notice of various rules and conditions on their employment via the CBA and the NFL Player Policy handbook. The Player Policy handbook says that tampering with equipment results in a fine of $5,512 for the first offense and does not say that suspension is a possibility. The NFL applied the language of the Competitive Integrity Policy to Brady, but players do not receive this document--it's only given to "Chief Executives, Club Presidents, General Managers, and Head Coaches." Thus Brady didn't have notice of the possibility of a suspension, so the league can't suspend him. Goodell tried to analogize Brady's four game suspension to the PED rules, but Judge Berman scoffed at that:
The Court is unable to perceive "notice" of discipline, or any comparability between a violation of the Steroid Policy and a "general awareness" of the inappropriate activities of others, or even involvement in a scheme by others to deflate game balls on January 18, 2015, and non-cooperation in a football deflation investigation.
****
[Goodell's punishment] offers no scientific, empirical, or historical evidence of any comparability between Brady's alleged offense and steroid use. Often, steroid use has to do with critical issues of health, injury, addiction, and peer pressure, among other factors. See Steroid Policy at 1-2 (listing several factors related to the use of"Prohibited Substances," including "a number of physiological, psychological, orthopedic, reproductive, and other serious health problems, [such as] heart disease, liver cancer, musculoskeletal growth defects, strokes, and infertility"). None of these factors is (remotely) present here.
To put it more succinctly:
This line of reasoning didn't go over well with sports talk radio hosts. They said stuff like "You don't ever like to see someone get off on a technicality." Well. What some people call "technicalities," lawyers call "the law." In this instance, the particular "technicality" at issue is the concept of due process. When you hear people talk about how great America is because of our freedoms, they're talking in part about due process--freedom from tyranny. Judge Berman explained it thus: "While '[m]any controversies have raged about the cryptic and abstract words of the Due Process Clause ... there can be no doubt that at a minimum they require that deprivation of life, liberty or property by adjudication be preceded by notice." Simply put, a court can't take someone's job away for doing something they didn't know could result in termination.
Talk radio also opined that Brady has tons of money and he won't miss four games of pay. That's just nuts. I live very much within my means. If I lost my job and had to take a 25% pay cut I could do it. But I'd be pissed. And who knows what side ventures or investments Brady has going on? Maybe he owns a Truffula Tree farm and has a balloon payment coming due on it, or maybe he planned on buying a controlling interest in the company that makes Uggs. Doesn't matter. Anyone would be pissed if you took a quarter of their pay. More importantly, Brady would love one more ring, and the Pats' best shot at winning the Super Bowl comes with 16 games of Tom Brady under center.
Second, Goodell prohibited Brady from cross-examining Jeff Pash at his arbitration hearing, essentially turning the entire proceeding into a clown show crossed with a kangaroo court. It's wickedly crooked.
Pash is the NFL's general counsel, their chief lawyer. Pash was also the "co-lead counsel" for the allegedly "independent" investigation into Brady's balls with Wells and Paul Weiss. He even reviewed and revised the final draft of the Wells Report before it was published. So the NFL's "independent" investigation was led and written by their own internal lawyer! Then, at the arbitration, Paul Weiss represented the NFL! So the "independent" investigators worked with the league to generate evidence against Brady, then worked for the league to adjudicate against Brady! This is a surprisingly and obviously bad strategy and I'm surprised Paul Weiss went along with it. Oh ... and Roger Goodell, the guy who hired Wells and for whom Pash works, served as the arbitrator. Simply put, the deck was stacked against Brady, and he wasn't even allowed to cross-examine one of the primary people who built the case against him. You can't do that in America.
Goodell let Brady cross-examine Wells, and concluded that Pash's testimony would be "cumulative" (legalese for "redundant") in light of Wells's testimony, noting that Wells testified that Pash's edits to the Wells Report "couldn't have been that big a deal." Judge Berman disagreed:
[T]he NFL fairly cannot suggest, without more than the testimony of the NFL's retained counsel, that the edits from Mr. Pash were not significant or that his testimony would have been "cumulative." Pl.'s Mem. Supp. II. Mr. Wells acknowledged that he did not know the content of Mr. Pash' s pre-release edits, and thus there was simply "no reasonable basis for the arbitration panel to determine that ... [the] omitted testimony would be cumulative."
In other words, you can't say that Pash's testimony is redundant just because they guy you're paying $1250 an hour to represent you says it's redundant.
Third, Goodell did not give Brady's lawyers access to the investigative files and witness interview notes that were generated during the Pash-Wells investigation. This prejudiced Brady because there might have been a "smoking gun," or at least a helpful quote or two, to benefit his case. Judge Berman added:
Compounding Brady's prejudice is the fact that, as noted, Paul, Weiss acted as both alleged "independent" counsel during the Investigation and also (perhaps inconsistently) as retained counsel to the NFL during the arbitration. Paul, Weiss uniquely was able to retain access to investigative files and interview notes which it had developed; was able to use them in direct and cross-examinations of Brady and other arbitration witnesses; share them with NFL officials during the arbitral proceedings; and, at the same time, withhold them from Brady.
Taken together, these three issues alone (and Brady had three other, more complicated gripes that the judge didn't bother to address) show that Goodell isn't qualified to run a bar and grille, let alone a professional sports league. Let me spin out a hypothetical for you, with the hopes of maybe making all of the foregoing a little bit easier to relate to.
Imagine that you wait tables at a restaurant called Chotchkie's, a bar and grille sort of like TGI Friday's. It's a franchised chain, with each restaurant owned by different people and a headquarters somewhere in NYC. Headquarters sets some rules for how each franchise must operate and provides various employee handbooks. The waiter's handbook says, among other things, that anyone who knowingly serves contaminated, expired, or otherwise unsafe food can be suspended for 3 months or more, or even fired. The waiter's handbook also says that you must wear between 12 and 13 pieces of flair on your uniform. Failure to do so will result in a reprimand and, if it happens more than once, fines of up to $50 a night at the manager's discretion. That said, flair is really important--it's about fun. It's why people come to Chotchkie's.
One night you're waiting tables when halfway through the evening the manager comes up and accuses you of wearing only 11 pieces of flair. You deny it--you had 13 pieces when you left your house and you're sure you still have 13 pieces now. A quick recount confirms that you only have 11. The manager reprimands you. So you add on two more pieces and finish the second half of the night, waiting just as many tables as you did in the first half. Life goes on.
A few days later, you learn that one of your co-workers sent a letter to HQ stating that you only wore 11 pieces of flair in the first half of one of your shifts. The CEO is incensed and commands an investigation. Surveillance footage from the kitchen and locker area shows that an unidentified person went into your locker, but it isn't clear if he took any flair, or even if he had time to take any flair. Undaunted, the CEO hires one of the fanciest law firms in the country and has his GC work with them to prove that you knowingly worked the first half of your shift with an under-flaired uniform. Experts in flair are retained, dozens of co-workers and restaurant patrons are interviewed, and millions of dollars are spent. The investigation concludes exactly what the CEO asked it to prove: you knew you let the flair out of your uniform.
After the investigation is complete, a report summarizing your flair malfeasance is issued, stating that it is more likely than not that you were generally aware of your lack of flair. A hearing is held, over which the CEO presides. You are not allowed to cross-examine the GC or review any of the documents that were generated during the investigation or that were relied on to create the report. The CEO suspends you without pay for 3 months, analogizing the situation to serving unsafe food ... despite the fact that you didn't serve unsafe food and the level of punishment for your lack of flair is expressly addressed in your handbook.
How pissed off would you be? If you knew that low flair levels could result in a 3 month suspension, you would've been super diligent about maintaining your flair. So even if you hate wearing flair (which was alleged in the report) and purposely took off two pieces of flair so that you would be more comfortable, the worst you thought could happen was a $50 fine, per the handbook. And now this suspension bullshit? You'd fight it, wouldn't you? Even if you really did take off a little flair at the start of your shift?
Can you imagine the CEO of a chain of bar and grilles doing something this asinine? Of course not. No one would put someone this moronic in charge of a lemonade stand, let alone a national franchise. Then how in the hell did a guy who isn't capable of running Chotchkie's wind up running the most successful sport in America?
When I first heard that Tom Brady's balls were under-inflated I chuckled, much like Brady did himself when questioned about the issue. But somehow this fiasco took on a life of its own once Brady's preference for tender balls (as opposed to Aaron Rodgers' love of turgid balls) was twisted to make this hot air (or lack thereof) a "legitimate" story. Some jackals said the Colts should play in the Super Bowl instead of the Pats, others said Brady should be banned from the game. Still others want a new AFC championship game to be played between the Colts and the Ravens.
The rationale for this hooey generally holds that "A Rule Is A Rule and If You Break A Rule You Should Be Punished" and "We Must Protect The Integrity Of The Game." I have a pretty Gheorghe view of this matter--I do not take it, or myself, particularly seriously.
The whole A Rule Is A Rule line of thinking is just plain silly. There are Rules and then there are rules. "Thou shalt not kill" is a Rule. "Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain" is merely a rule, and a goddamn rule at that. People who espouse this rationale are hypocrites unless they always cross at the corner and only when the "WALK" sign lights up; they didn't drink or smoke or look at porn underage; they never take a sip of their coffee on the Metro; they've never peed in a bush or between two parked cars on Harrison Avenue at 2 am on their way home from the delis; they never littered; they never let their car inspection expire; and the never lied to their girlfriend when she asked if she looked fat in a particularly unflattering outfit. They certainly never smoked pot or drove a car after drinking a few beers or got free cable when the previous tenants moved out and didn't turn it off.
I think the best analogy is speeding. Everyone speeds every day. No one thinks you should get a speeding ticket for driving 29 in a 25. No cop would give you a ticket under those circumstances and no judge would enforce it. I didn't pick those numbers at random--those extra 4 MPH represent a 16% increase over a 25 MPH speed limit. That's the same percentage difference at issue with Brady's balls--2 psi is 16% of the 12.5 psi limit. Honestly, if you heard that Tom Brady drove his car 29 MPH in a 25 MPH zone, would you say that he should get a ticket? That he should lose his license? That he should go to jail?
Of course not. Because that 4 MPH differential is meaningless. Who's to say how fast anyone is actually going? A speedometer has some accuracy limitations, as does a radar gun. Even if the radar gun is perfectly calibrated and balls-on-accurate, should the driver be penalized if his speedometer is a little bit off?
Similarly, 2 psi of air pressure is meaningless in this context. How accurate is an air pressure gauge? I'm sure NASA has really good ones, but how fancy are the ones used to measure footballs? Why would anyone make a really fancy football air pressure gauge in the first place?
From a more legitimately empirical perspective, ESPN analyzed balls of different pressure and found no real difference, in my view, beyond the fact that the ball of lesser pressure can me indented 1 mm further.
As you've heard ad nauseum, the Patriots blew the Colts away in the second half using firmer balls, so those 2 psi truly made no difference.
I've done something that no one else who wrote about this nonsense likely did--I went and actually read the NFL rulebook. Rule 2 is titled "The Ball." Section 1, "Ball Dimensions," says in part:
The ball shall be made up of an inflated (12 1/2 to 13 1/2 pounds) urethane bladder enclosed in a pebble grained, leather case (natural tan color) without corrugations of any kind. It shall have the form of a prolate spheroid and the size and weight shall be: long axis, 11 to 11 1/4 inches; long circumference, 28 to 28 1/2 inches; short circumference, 21 to 21 1/4 inches; weight, 14 to 15 ounces.
What if the Patriots got a batch of balls with leaky bladders? Can that happen to a football (I know it happens to frat guys)? I don't know but it wouldn't surprise me if Wilson makes some duds once in a while.
More surprising: the circumference across the laces can vary by 1/4 inch?!? Doesn't that seem like a big deal? Do the refs measure all of those dimensions in addition to the air pressure? If a ball is too long does the ref say "You got long balls Larry"?
Section 2, "Ball Supply," says in part:
In the event a home team ball does not conform to specifications, or its supply is exhausted, the Referee shall secure a proper ball from the visitors and, failing that, use the best available ball. Any such circumstances must be reported to the Commissioner.
Wait, "failing that, use the best available ball"?!? So if all of the available balls are under-inflated then the ref would just use the "best available" under-inflated ball? Then the rules clearly contemplate using non-conforming balls in certain circumstances! How big a deal could this be? Sure, you have to report this to the Commissioner, but no penalty is specified. Seems like a minor speeding infraction to me.
While going through the NFL rulebook I found some other rules that are also like doing 29 in a 25. For example, Rule 1 Section 1 says in part:
The playing field will be rimmed by a solid white border a minimum of 6 feet wide along the end lines and sidelines .... In addition, within each bench area, a yellow line 6 feet behind the solid white border will delineate a special area for coaches, behind which all players, except one player charting the game, must remain.
Yeah, this is enforced.
Speaking of that Mike Tomlin photo, Rule 13 "Non-Player Conduct" Article 4 says:
The only persons permitted within the solid six-foot white border (1-1) while play is in progress on the field are game officials.
Tomlin was fined by the league in that instance, but I don't think the refs penalized the team during the game. Probably because coaches are in the six-foot white border all the time.
Rule 13 Article 2 is really interesting. It says:
Either or both team attendants and their helpers may enter the field to attend their team during a team timeout by either team. No other non-player may come on the field without the Referee’s permission, unless he is an incoming substitute (5-2-2).
During any team timeout, all playing rules continue in force. Representatives of either team are prohibited from entering the field unless they are incoming substitutes, or team attendants or trainers entering to provide for the welfare of a player, and any game-type activities are prohibited on the Field of Play.
That second paragraph is in red in the rulebook. God knows why. Coaches enter the field just about every time they throw a challenge flag.
Rule 13 says it's a 15 yard penalty if you violate Article 2 but I've never seen it enforced and I think sports talk radio would explode if a ref ever tried. Kind of like if cops started giving tickets for doing 29 in a 25.
I could go on with the rules but you get my drift.
The "Protect The Integrity Of The Game" prong of uproar is farcical. rob already took down the NFL's integrity about two years ago (relying on efforts from Senator Tom Brady nonetheless!). But here are a few more Integrity Of The Game points to ponder.
Eugene Robinson was arrested for soliciting a prostitute the night before the Super Bowl. He played in the game. Because prostitution is part of the Integrity Of The Game.
Walter Thurmond was suspended last year on November 24 for four games for violating the NFL's substance abuse policy. He came back just in time for the playoffs; the rest probably helped him get ready for the post-season and he played in the Super Bowl. Because substance abuse is part of the Integrity Of The Game.
Ray Lewis used something called deer antler spray leading up to the Super Bowl. Apparently it was not on the NFL's list of approved supplements. He played in the game. Because using unapproved substances is part of the Integrity Of The Game. As is obstructing justice in a murder investigation, but that was before a different Ravens Super Bowl.
Leonard Little killed a woman while driving drunk on October 19, 1998. Three and a half months later he recorded four tackles in the Super Bowl. Because killing people is part of the Integrity Of The Game.
I'm starting to veer away from Gheorghe's mission statement so I'll stop with those examples. My point is that somehow or other, the Patriots played with some slightly under-inflated balls for half of the AFC Championship Game. We know that these balls conferred no competitive advantage because they played the second half with firmer balls and cruised to victory, a perfect test/control experiment. No one can currently say why these balls were soft. It could be due to leaky bladders or a crappy gauge or a rogue ball attendant or maybe even Tom Brady is lying and he let the air out clandestinely. It simply doesn't matter. To the extent there is any violation of the league's rules here, it's akin to doing 29 in a 25. People have done much worse but still played in the Super Bowl.
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