Can Derrick Henry do it?
Derrick Henry sits atop the list of the NFL’s rushing leaders and it seems like he is set to win back to back rushing titles.
That isn’t why you clicked on this article though, you clicked on it to see what the odds are that he is going to break into the most exclusive club that a running back could join: The 2,000-yard club.
After the Cleveland Browns game, it seemed like it was going to be a tough mountain to climb. Through no fault of his own, Derrick Henry was taken out of the game script a little bit due to the Titans needing to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time if they were going to get back in that game.
Luckily, a return home to Florida always seems to do the body good for Derrick Henry and he cruised to a 215-yard game (where he was taken out in the 4th quarter because it was such a beatdown).
Now all that is left is to do some math and see exactly what Derrick Henry needs to get into that 2,000-yard club, what his chances are and what hurdles he might have to overcome. Let’s start with the fun part: MATH!
Party Math Time
Let’s start with the good stuff, right now Derrick Henry sits at a monstrous 1,532 yards this season with three games left to play. Over the course of the 2020 season, Henry has career highs in yards per game (117.6) and yards per attempt (5.2).
So this isn’t a case of Henry just getting more volume, while he is getting more rushes he is also doing more with them.
If these numbers hold for the next three games, Henry would actually fall short of 2,000. He would end the season with 1,885 yards which would still be outstanding, but obviously, that isn’t the goal.
The other way to look at those numbers is to look at how many carries it would take him to get to 2,000 yards. At 5.2 yards per attempt, it would take Henry 30 attempts per game (90 total) to reach his goal.
That isn’t impossible, but it is still a massive workload if you are just counting on more volume being the answer to this problem. Luckily, there is a good reason to think that Henry will outdo his average down this final stretch.
Potential lucky break
I have said this since I wrote my first article on this months ago, this final stretch of defenses makes this really interesting for Derrick Henry.
With the games now in the book from Week 13, the updated rushing yards per game allowed by these teams are:
-Detroit Lions (29th in the NFL): 132.8
-Green Bay Packers (11th): 109.7
-Houston Texans (31st): 152.3
-Total: 394.8 (131.6 per game)
Now, here is an interesting note. The league average is somewhere around 117 yards per game which means that these defenses are allowing about 15 more yards rushing yards per game than the average.
If Derrick Henry adds 15 more yards to his rushing average, that means that Henry would end up with 1,975 yards rushing without any additional workload involved.
And look, you can argue a lot of things, but you can’t tell me that Mike Vrabel wouldn’t give Henry every chance to break the record if it was that close. Not after we saw Derrick Henry stay in a game last year against the Houston Texans and rip off that long run late in the game to secure the rushing title.
It is going to be a very close race and another 200-yard game could take a lot off of his mind, just like another 80-yard game could make it an almost impossible task. However, the exciting thing is, there is a real shot for him to get this goal and for him to make a strong argument as one of the best running backs of all time.