Derrick Henry deal secures the Tennessee Titans cornerstones on offense

Who are the key players for the Tennessee Titans?

It is almost too simplistic to try to boil down the Tennessee Titans roster and find the most important players.

However, if you look at the best rosters in the NFL there are clearly some pieces that can make or break those teams. Before you think that the league is completely driven by quarterbacks, it is important to take a step back and look at the players that make the QB’s life easier.

Look at Aaron Rodgers. Maybe one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history in terms of talent and ability, but the Green Bay Packers have wasted a lot of his career by not surrounding him with talent to help him.

If you kept up with the 2020 NFL Draft, then you remember this highlighted by the fact that the Packers haven’t drafted a wide receiver in the first round since 2002. Not only that, but they haven’t spent a first round pick on a player on the offensive side of the ball in the last 10 years (excluding future Aaron Rodgers replacement Jordan Love this year).

Even with an all-time great player like Rodgers, the Packers never quite found all the “cornerstone” caliber players on offense to make it to the Super Bowl again. That is why it is important to layer talent on both sides of the ball, even with an elite player or two on one side.

With the deal just handed out to Derrick Henry, we now have a complete picture of what the offense will look like this year and we now are 100% sure about the type of offense that Mike Vrabel and Jon Robinson want in Tennessee.

The path is laid out and now the Titans have to do everything they can to improve on what they did last season with the goal of getting a step further and making it to the Super Bowl this year. So which players will have the biggest impact on this season and beyond? Meet the cornerstones on offense.

Derrick Henry, RB

Obviously there is no better place to start with this article than to talk about the player that the Titans recently made a big commitment to, Derrick Henry.

Henry is the perfect player for the Tennessee Titans and in reality, that wouldn’t be the case with every franchise. “El Tractorcito” is a player that needs a specific playbook to win despite his endless athletic potential, but more important than that is where he played college ball.

If you have been to a Titans game in the last four years, you know that it is impossible to look to your left and then to your right, and not find someone asking why Henry hasn’t had more carries. Part of that is because there are A LOT of SEC fans in the crowd at Titans games.

Those fans have all either seen Henry run on their favorite college team or run for their favorite college team and so the Titans were allowed to be patient with him even when he wasn’t playing his best football.

That patience bought him just enough time to talk to Eddie George and turn his career around.

We all know his accolades and if you want more info on his contract I have you covered, but “give the ball to Henry” is the identity that Titans fans have embraced the most. Once he starts rolling, everything else seems to fall in place.

Taylor Lewan, LT

I completely understand the argument for Derrick Henry as the face of the franchise in Tennessee. However, if you don’t think that Lewan is a massive part of the identity and attitude of this team, then you haven’t been paying attention.

For all the talk of being a leader this offseason, it is hard to see Lewan as anything less than that. Even if he says it himself, the qualities of leadership aren’t always intentional.

Whether he meant to be a leader or not, how can you look at his career and see anything other than leadership?

You want to know the list of Titan/Oilers who made the Pro Bowl 3 times in their first 5 seasons?

-Taylor Lewan

-Chris Johnson (1 of 6 players with a 2,000 yard season)

-Jevon Kearse (still holds the record for sacks by a rookie)

-Eddie George (we all know Eddie)

-Blaine Bishop (one of the best DBs of his era)

-Earl Campbell (Hall of Fame)

-Robert Brazile (Hall of Fame)

-Elvin Bethea (Hall of Fame)

-Ken Houston (Hall of Fame)

4 of those 9 players are in the NFL Hall of Fame, and 2 of the remaining 5 have had historic seasons.

Taylor Lewan has raised the level of expectations for a Titans offensive lineman and he has also brought this group together off the field which you can hear on his podcast or you can see it at a Nashville Predators game where he and the rest of the OL are chugging beer off of catfish.

Lewan is one of the culture-changers on this offense and you would be hard-pressed to find tackles that are asked to do more.

Ryan Tannehill, QB

When you talk about cornerstones, you have to mention the quarterback. In fact, if you don’t have a QB as one of your cornerstone pieces then your season is basically toast.

You can dance around the idea or try to talk your way out of it, but we saw Ryan Tannehill start in 13 games last season and he ended as the most efficient QB in the NFL who was even recognized by the Wall Street Journal of all places.

I can’t stress this enough, the Titans played for three seasons with Derrick Henry and Taylor Lewan who I have recognized as great players. However, until Ryan Tannehill took over, the Titans had one of the worst offenses in the NFL.

Suddenly, Tannehill takes over the helm and now the offense is producing at a historic level against great defenses and he did it for 13 games! That is basically a season worth of tape right there, and people still want to write him off.

Even if he regresses, he isn’t going to regress into a backup quarterback, he will just be a top-12 QB instead of a top-5 QB.

Also, a key detail to remember in all of this is that Ryan Tannehill is not going to be asked to carry this team. Now that the team has secured Henry, the offense isn’t going to be on the back of any one player.

Is there a box of defenders with less than 8 people? Great, run the ball behind Taylor Lewan and the rest of the OL until they overcompensate.

Have they overcompensated yet? Even better, run play action and get Tannehill in space or in a pocket with protection and let him throw it to one of the Titans great receiving threats.

Speaking of receiving threats…

A.J. Brown, WR

Sometimes you can see stardom instantly. I remember with one of the Titans last superstars at the skill position, just how early you could see that stardom.

Go back to 2008, Chris Johnson’s rookie year. It started out very strong with nearly 400 yards in his first five games despite never having 20 or more rushes. And then, the Kansas City Chiefs game happened.

That was the game where you realized how incredibly Chris Johnson was going to be, as he rebounded from a tough Baltimore Ravens game to have 168 rushing yards an 18 touches (9.3 yards per attempt). His blistering speed was showcased and from then on he was truly a threat to carve up a defense in any given week.

For A.J. Brown, that game happened a little later. You could argue that the matchup against the Atlanta Falcons was when you saw glimpses of a star, but the game against the Oakland Raiders was when he really proved it.

Brown was a machine the week before against the Jacksonville Jaguars, but come one, no one respects the Jaguars. Then he went to Oakland, in a harsh environment as two teams met with their playoff hopes basically on the line.

During that game, he had three touchdowns even though one was called back on a dumb holding call. Despite losing that TD, he still had a 91-yard TD reception as well as a TD catch where he had to rumble through two defenders to get in the endzone.

I have written a lot about Brown’s historic campaign, but I think this tweet is my favorite snapshot.

Despite being in an offense that didn’t pass much, Brown couldn’t stop himself from becoming one of the most productive rookie wide receivers in history and this illustrates that incredible efficiency.