Stephen b. Morton / Associated Press
It happens again.
At this time last year, running behind the Tennessee Titans Derrick Henry established himself as one of the most dominant and influential attacking players in the league, taking the Titans to the AFC Championship game hotly.
In eight games with the Super Bowl champion Kansas City mayor in late January, Henry amassed an incredible 1,344 screammage yards and 11 touchdowns.
A year later, the injured Alabama product is once again tearing it apart during a Titans team home extension in the first place, which continues to go unnoticed because it is not a bright team from a big market.
Henry now has 586 quick yards and six touchdowns in his last four games, after rushing 215 yards and two touchdowns to beat the fierce division-rival Jacksonville Jaguars at 14-10. It was his fourth game with over 130 quick yards from Week 6 and his eighth 100-plus-yard game of the year.
No other player in the AFC has two 130-yard fast performances throughout the year, and no other player in the NFL has played more than seven 100-yard games.
At 26, Henry became the first player to advance beyond the Hall of Fame Jim Brown, Barry Sanders and Latinian Tomlinson NFL History As a Russian with four 200-plus-yards, two-plus-touchdown games.
Three of those shows have come in his last 14 regular season games.
It is a quarterback-driven league that has largely shaped Super Bowl racing in the AFC, with comparisons by Patrick Mahomes, Ben Rothlisberger, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson, and AF in the NFC by Aaron Rodgers, Drew Breeze, Russell Wilson and Tom Brady. Has the ability to change the game and race even in a substantially deprecated state.
Yes, the Chiefs were 12-1, they beat Henry in that 2019 conference title game. But Kansas City’s last five wins have all come by six or fewer points than their opponents with worse records than Tennessee. Kansas City, which ranked 26th in the DVOA last year (safety-adjusted value above average among football outsiders) is even worse in 2020, ranking 30th in that metric.
It is noteworthy that when Tennessee and Kansas City met during the regular season last year, Henry rushed to two touchdowns in 188 yards and the Titans won.
A Coconus Arrowhead Stadium was undoubtedly one of the leaders that overcame a double-digit deficit to beat Tennessee in the playoffs last year, but was limited by the COVID-19 epidemic as three of Kansas City’s last four home games have been decided by a score.
“Especially this year, in the absence of fans, the home-field advantage will actually be out the window,” Tampa Bay Buchanan head coach Bruce Arians recently told The Athlete’s Greg Aman. “It’s going to be lined up in empty arenas. A big, big part of the playoffs in the past is the home-field advantage, [but] I don’t think this will be an advantage this year. It’s one thing to get inside. “
Stephen b. Morton / Associated Press
Meanwhile, Henry has gone over 100 yards in nine regular season road games in a row, tearing the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens out of the house in last year’s playoffs. Overall, 64 percent of the 110-plus-yard shows in his career have come out of Nashville.
As a result, the Titans are in a very different situation, 10-1 in their last 11 road games outside of that January trip.
Despite having to go on the road at least once in January, the chances of Tennessee taking a run are all very good. Henry will not be afraid of those leaders guarding the nearby empty Arrowhead Stadium, and he will not be afraid to look at the Pittsburgh Steelers team, which has been hit hard by seven (not Devin Bush Jr.) injuries before the defense. Or Butt Dubree, now Robert Spillen) and have not beaten a team that has won just over a few points since mid-October.
If those two win the AFC South and reach the regional playoffs the chances of running the Titans are high. Realistically, both Tennessees have a chance to play on the road in January so it can beat one or the other after a wild card win at home.
Its value is that buffalo bills, the other division head of the AFC, also had lower run coverage than DVOA at 13 weeks. Tito, for Cleveland Browns and Miami Dolphins, are both currently in the wild-card film. Of the teams now in the AFC playoff stages, only the Steelers use that metric to hold the top-10 run.
So, while neither Mahomes, Allen, Rothlisburger nor Ryan Danehill have set the tone for the Henry AFC Super Bowl race, it is clear that the Titans were sixth in the quarterback league. Another strong performer on Sunday was the highest scorer before finishing all but five of the 24 passes.
The way the Henry works, the current dynamics are in the AFC so the Titans can do this.
Brad Cognon has covered the NFL Bleacher report since 2012. Follow him on Twitter: @Brad_cognon.