King Henry’s return is a matter of “when” not “if”
No, it’s not yet time to start questioning Derrick Henry’s expensive new contract. It’s not the time to trade Henry from your Fantasy team, or the time to swap out your Henry jersey for a Jeremy McNichols one (although you should probably have both, honestly), and it will never, never, be the time to admit that Geoff Schwartz was right.
Admittedly, Derrick Henry’s two-game start to the season has been a far cry from where he ended the 2019 regular season, and about as slow a start as you could expect to see from the AFC’s leading rusher over the first two weeks of the season.
Don’t let the high rushing totals fool you, despite being just one of two running backs with over 200 yards at this point in the year, it’s been tough-going for Henry in 2020.
Henry, who currently averages a staggering 4.7 yards per carry on his career, has managed just 3.6 through two games in 2020.
The running back who managed a combined 28 touchdowns through two seasons in 2018 and 2019, hasn’t found the endzone a single time yet in 2020. The ball-carrier known for reeling off nearly impossible long runs, ones unforgiving to whatever poor cornerback or safety tries to stop him, has managed a season-high carry of only 14 yards.
It hasn’t been a change in the offense, the Titans are still force-feeding their running game, even if it has produced mixed results thus far. It hasn’t really been a change in the blocking, either. Despite losing Jack Conklin in the offseason, the Titans offensive line mostly hasn’t missed a beat.
All of this comes back to beg the question, “what is wrong with Derrick Henry?”
The Master of The Slow Start
If you’re trying to find out what’s wrong with Henry’s game, the answer might be simple. It’s the same problem that it’s always been– Derrick Henry just starts the season slowly.
That was the case in 2018, Henry’s first season as a full-time starter. With over 1,000 yards on just 215 carries and a whopping 12 touchdowns to boot, it’s easy to look at that season, think that Henry was one of the best running backs in the league, and just be done with it.
But Henry’s 2018 season didn’t really start booming until late in the year. In fact, up until a breakout Week 13 against the Jacksonville Jaguars, it might even be fair to call Henry a non-factor.
In the final four weeks of football alone, Henry had 585 of his 1,059 rushing yards, seven of his 12 rushing touchdowns, averaged more than three yards a carry more than his average through the first 12 weeks and had four of his six highest-volume games in the last four weeks.
It was a similar story in 2019, although a quicker turnaround. Henry was slow in his first six games of last season. He ran the ball at a high volume, similar to this season, but he really struggled to take over games in the way he did from Week 7 onward.
It’s important to remember that even in two seasons with slow starts, Derrick Henry did eventually become…well Derrick Henry. It took a few 28 and 44-yard games in 2019, but Henry eventually became the NFL rushing leader. Same for 2018. It took a few 20-30 yard showings at the start of the season, but Henry did eventually become a guy capable of 99-yard touchdown runs.
This happens for a couple of reasons, one big one being Henry’s running style and frame. A running back of the same size and strength becomes a much harder guy to bring down in Week 9, after months of NFL wear and tear, than he would be in Week 2 or 3. It could also be schematic.
Once teams get more tape on an offense, ways to slow down a passing attack become more apparent, taking effort and resources away from stopping the running game. But whatever the reason, like magic, Derrick Henry always becomes Derrick Henry.
So with the question “what is wrong with Derrick Henry?” answered, the focus shifts more to “when will Derrick Henry start playing like himself again?”
When Will Derrick Henry Emerge in 2020
If my calculations are correct, we should see Derrick Henry start to assert himself as the league’s best running back on…
October 18, 2020. Week 6 of the NFL regular season, in the Titans’ first match against the division-rival Houston Texans. There are a couple of reasons for this, the date wasn’t pulled out of a hat.
Following the trail of Henry’s last breakout game, and taking into account who Henry will be facing in the following weeks as well as what the Texans’ defense has looked like in 2020– one could easily make a case for Week 6 is the game where Henry finally breaks out again.
In 2018, it took until Week 12 for Henry to start playing at a high level, against a fairly average Jacksonville Jaguars run defense. In 2019, as Henry developed as a player, Week 10 served as his true coming-out party, when he ran like crazy against a basement-dwelling Kansas City Chiefs defense. In 2020, Henry, while still young and not yet overworked, will keep getting better as a player, and in theory, should need less time to start running over bad run defenses.
Week 3 has the potential to be a big game for Henry, but with Weeks 4 and 5 representing games against strong Bills and Steelers defenses, there’s a chance that, even with a good showing against Minnesota, that Henry could regress.
But towards the bottom of the totem pole, a team that allowed the most yards to a single runner in Week 1 and gave up over 200 rushing yards as a team in Week 2, the Houston Texans– the Tennessee Titans Week 6 opponent.
Week 6 could mark Derrick Henry’s seemingly inevitable 2020 breakout, and if it does, it will be a much-needed facelift for the Tennessee Titans offense.
The Titans Desperately Need Derrick Henry
The Titans have been lucky up until now, they haven’t needed peak Derrick Henry quite yet.
The team is still 2-0, Ryan Tannehill is playing at an elite level, and the mere threat alone of Henry taking over a game has been enough up until this point to scare opposing defenses and elevate the Titans’ passing game. But, if Henry can’t step up his game soon, the team will suffer as a result.
Sooner rather than later, the defenses that the Titans will be forced to play won’t be so easily picked apart through the air in the way that the Jaguars and Broncos were. Coming up on the schedule as soon as Week 4, one of the best defenses in the NFL in the Buffalo Bills. The following week, things won’t be much easier when the Titans take on the Pittsburgh Steelers.
But as the year goes on, if Henry can’t become the running back we all know and love, the quality of defenses might not matter. If teams stop treating Henry like a threat, things are bound to get harder for Ryan Tannehill. And if both players start to falter, it could spell disaster for the Titans offense.
Tennessee approaches offense with a perfect balance. Plenty of reps for Henry, plenty of reps for Tannehill. But if one of those pieces can’t shoulder their portion of the offense, the other one is bound to suffer as a result. But don’t go pushing the panic button just yet.
Derrick Henry always starts out the years slow, and he always picks it up as the weeks pass. The Henry breakout isn’t a question of if at this point, but when. And expect it sooner this year rather than later.