You dorks need to stop pretending that Derrick Henry won’t be a fantasy legend.
Writing about the Tennessee Titans is a difficult job. After months worth of offseason articles, finding unique ways to say “Derrick Henry is good at football” that hasn’t already been used is becoming an increasingly difficult task.
But, you can’t write about the Tennessee Titans without at least mentioning the obvious fact, no matter how many times it’s been written. Derrick Henry is good at football. Both real-life football and fantasy football too.
You won’t find many detractors to either of those camps either. Henry is regularly talked about like an RB1, both in actual football and the fantasy realm. But questions about specifically how good Derrick Henry can be in fantasy continue to pop up for PPR (points per reception) fantasy experts–all of which are based around one central concern.
Derrick Henry does not catch passes.
Henry may have been the NFL’s leading rusher in 2019. He may have led the league in carries, and he may have finished fourth in the league in total scrimmage yards– while being the only player in the top five to not appear in all 16 games.
But Derrick Henry does not catch passes.
Henry may be set for an even better 2020 season than he had in 2019. He will once again be the undisputed feature running back, and ideally, he’ll be getting a full schedule of Ryan Tannehill as his quarterback. In the nine games Henry played with Tannehill– he managed to break 23 fantasy points in six of them, a feat he managed just once in the six weeks before Tannehill.
But alas, Derrick Henry does not catch passes.
If you’re a fantasy football player in a PPR league, Derrick Henry’s 24 total passing targets in 2019 could be scary, especially without any reason to believe that his passing volume will go up any in 2020. But for all that Henry is as a runner, he can more than make up for it. If you’re looking for a running back for your fantasy team this year, no matter what the league setup is, Derrick Henry should be your top choice of anyone not named Christian McCaffrey.