As the Titans were pulling out a narrow victory over the rival Colts on Sunday afternoon, they might have been losing their best chance at winning a Super Bowl. Derrick Henry left the contest several times to be examined, and while he returned each time and finished with 28 carries, the seemingly unbreakable star running back won't be back for the foreseeable future. He will undergo surgery on an injured right foot Tuesday morning, and it's unclear when he will return to the lineup. His 2021 season might be over.
Obviously, this is terrible news. Unless you're a defensive player or a fan of a team competing with the Titans, the league is more fun with Henry doing his thing. There's really not anybody like him in the NFL, which makes the idea of the Titans replacing him a nonstarter. They will naturally line up somebody at halfback and hand him the ball, with Jeremy McNichols and free-agent addition Adrian Peterson first in line, but there aren't any like-for-like replacements for the guy who used to be in that role. Henry is one of one. Tennessee isn't going to be the same without him.
Can this team survive or even thrive without Henry, though? Ask 10 people across the NFL and you're likely to get 10 different answers. As a throwback runner in a league that has moved heavily to the pass, his value to the Titans is a unique proposition. Some of the evidence suggests they will be just fine without him . Other arguments suggest that they just lost the league's most valuable player. I'm not sure I agree with either, but I'm going to run through what we've seen and try to figure out what happens next for the only six-win team in the AFC:
Jump to a section:
The Titans' biggest changes
Will they be pass-first now?
Can they actually make a run?
What changes for the Titans
To start, they aren't going to run the ball as frequently as they have with Henry in the lineup. By any standard, his workload was astronomical. After leading the league with 303 carries in 2019 and 378 in 2020, he already had 219 rush attempts this season. No running back in NFL history had carried the ball more times through the first eight games of a season than Henry had for the Titans in 2021.
With the move to a 17-game season, he was on pace for 465 carries, plus whatever sort of work he might have seen during the postseason. New Titans offensive coordinator Todd Downing also had reintegrated Henry into the passing game, as his 18 catches were within one of his career high for a full season. In a league in which teams throw the ball more often than ever before and lead backs are the exception, Henry was an enormous outlier.
Naturally, there's an elephant in the room we need to address here. No running back is ever going to turn down the football, but did the Titans do wrong by Henry in handing him the largest workload in NFL history? Could this season-impacting injury have been prevented if they had taken some of his carries and given them to another back or thrown the ball more frequently? Is the rest of his career going to be different because the Titans needed to win games in October 2021?
I'm not sure we can get a clear answer. We'll never get to see the alternative of what Henry's career would have looked like a lesser workload, but we know that running backs who endure the workload he dealt with in 2020 almost always struggle to stay as healthy and productive the following season. The Titans then amped up his workload to an unprecedented level this season. As I'll get to in a minute, he might have been feeling the strain of putting the team on his back even before breaking his foot.
Things could have been different if 2020 third-round pick Darrynton Evans had been healthy, but the backup running back only touched the ball twice on either side of trips to injured reserve with a knee injury. The Titans also played three overtime games, which only added to what was already an exhausting load for Henry. I suppose you could make a case that he also might have gotten hurt without this sort of workload. The Titans could have limited him to 250 carries in 2020 or 150 carries in 2021 and he could have suffered the same foot injury while still ranking among the league leaders in carries.
At the very least, we can say with some confidence that Henry's chances of getting hurt likely increased alongside his workload. There was no way a 465-carry workload was going to be sustainable for anybody over any meaningful length of time. He might have been able to shoulder more than any player in the league, but this was almost surely too much. He felt like an exception to the rules we know about running back workload, but every great back does until they're not.
Henry was touching the ball nearly 30 times per game. Those touches are going to go somewhere else. Naturally, the majority are likely to be carries that will be funneled to a new running back. McNichols was the change-of-pace back for Tennessee with Henry in the lineup, but the first move it made to replace him was to sign future the Hall of Famer Peterson, who was last seen as the lead back for the Lions in the first half of 2020.
1:31
Marcus Spears and Mike Tannenbaum explain what Adrian Peterson brings to the Titans' run game with Derrick Henry being out because of injury.
Prime Peterson, of course, would be a wonderful replacement for Henry, but the former Oklahoma star is 36 years old and has more than 3,300 NFL carries of wear and tear on his body. He hasn't played on great teams recently, but even given the middling offenses around him, he hasn't been able to get much more than what has been blocked. NFL Next Gen Stats track a measure called rush yards over expectation, which use the location, speed and acceleration of every player on the field at the time of a handoff to estimate how many yards a runner should gain.
The NFL has this data going back through 2018, and Peterson has been almost exactly league average. On 607 carries, he has rushed for 46 fewer yards than what the rushing model would have expected from a typical back in those same situations. That's just below average. Henry, as you might expect, has blown away this model; on 1,089 rush attempts over that same time frame, he has run for 982 more yards than a typical back would have produced, an average of 0.9 yards above expectation per rush. (A small number of carries for each back isn't included in this sample for technical reasons, which is why the rush attempts above don't line up with their total carries over.)
Most of that production, though, came before 2021. This year, while Henry has absorbed an enormous workload, he hasn't been hugely valuable as a runner by this metric. His 217 trackable carries have produced 928 yards when a typical runner in the same situation would have run for 917 yards. An 11-yard gap over 217 carries amounts to one extra yard every 19 carries or so, which isn't much.
By a more traditional metric, Henry had dropped from averaging 5.1 yards per carry in 2019 and 5.4 yards per carry a year ago to 4.3 this season, including 2.7 yards per carry over the past two weeks. It wouldn't be a surprise if he had been feeling the effects of this injury for a couple of games now. If you're a Titans fan hoping this injury won't hurt as much as it seems, this is probably the best argument I can make in favor of that possibility.
Henry's true uniqueness has come as a player who can both shoulder an enormous workload while still creating huge gains. Since the start of 2018, he has produced 11 plays of at least 50 yards, which ranks second in the NFL. Only Saquon Barkley (14) has more, and Barkley has struggled to stay healthy. Nobody else in the NFL has more than eight. The extra touches help, of course, but Henry is one of the rare backs who can physically overwhelm linebackers and run past defensive backs. We saw that as recently as Week 6 against the Bills.
Peterson could keep the Titans on or near schedule when healthy, but that big-play ability really isn't there anymore. He had three plays of at least 50 yards in 2018 but none across his 406 touches in 2019 and 2020. He did take a run 90 yards to the house against the Eagles in 2018, but while three years might not seem that long ago, consider that the other guys on offense for Washington on that play included Mark Sanchez, Josh Doctson, Maurice Harris and Vernon Davis. If the Titans can't generate long runs with their primary running back, it's going to drastically cap the effectiveness of their running game.
The other problem is that Peterson isn't going to offer much more than what he does as a runner with the ball in his hands. He has never been regarded as a plus blocker. As a receiver, he has averaged 1.3 yards per route over the past three seasons, which is below the league average for backs. The Titans weren't going to line up Henry in the slot like he was Steelers-era Le'Veon Bell, but Peterson has probably been restricted to slip screens and dump-offs.
Peterson also has dropped five passes on 67 targets and fumbled six times. The average back has fumbled about once every 124 touches over the past three years; Peterson has fumbled once every 112 touches over the past three seasons and once every approximately 73 touches as a pro. When he was one of the league's most productive backs, the fumbles were just part of the cost of doing business. Now, while he's closer to league average, there's less good outweighing the bad.
Barring a dramatic late-career renaissance, I would argue that Peterson is an uninspiring choice to replace Henry. Getting a back who creates more big plays, does more as a receiver or even simply does a better job of avoiding fumbles would be a better move for the Titans, even if it came at the cost of a late-round pick. Among free agents, I might have preferred Todd Gurley or Kerryon Johnson, although it's unclear whether either player is as healthy as Peterson is right now.
Of course, Peterson isn't going to get Henry's workload, which means the Titans will likely pass more than they have in years past. What happens when they do will also be a referendum on how Henry and great backs like him impact the passing game.
Can the Titans be a pass-first team?
As you can probably surmise given Henry's workload, the Titans are one of the most run-happy teams in football. On early downs in neutral game scripts -- when both teams have at least a 20% chance of winning the game -- they have run the ball 55.8% of the time this season, which is the third-highest rate in the league. It's nothing new for Mike Vrabel & Co.; they actually ran the ball even more frequently in 2020, when they were on the ground 58.3% of the time in neutral situations. Either way, with Henry in the fold, the Titans have been among the NFL's most run-dominant teams.
In the classic formula of the running game mixing with the pass, the Titans have thrived off of play-action. Since Ryan Tannehill took over as Tennessee's starter in Week 7 of the 2019 season, he has been the king of play-action. He has the league's best QBR (83.9) on play-action over that time frame while averaging 10.9 yards per attempt. When he hasn't used a play fake, he ranks 16th in QBR and averages 7.1 yards per attempt.
Over that period, the Titans have unsurprisingly committed to heavy doses of play-action. They have used a play fake on 31% of their pass attempts since Week 7 of 2019, which is the second-highest rate in football. I was concerned that Downing would take them away from their play-action game after an ugly performance against Arizona in Week 1, but since then, Tannehill has thrown off play fakes 30.1% of the time. The formula has been simple, reliable and effective.
Now, presumably, that all changes. The Titans won't be running the ball as frequently, and when they do, the guys running it probably won't be as threatening to opposing defenses as Henry. Logically, it would make sense on some level that they won't be as effective at play-action without Henry in the fold.
And yet, on a leaguewide level, we have evidence that teams don't need to "establish the run" or be a great running team to thrive off of play-action. Ben Baldwin's research into play-action suggests there isn't a significant difference in terms of play-action success between teams that are great running the football or teams that can't run a lick.
The best QBRs on play-action this season belong to the Bills, Washington and Tampa Bay, teams that aren't exactly juggernauts on the ground. Since Tannehill took over, the only team with a better QBR on play-action has been the Buccaneers, who have fielded drastically different quarterbacks and a range of different running backs across that time frame. Even on the anecdotal level, this also makes sense: Henry has been a devastating runner for years now, so there's no reason why he would need to run 10 times to start a game before Tennessee's opponents started to follow their keys and chase down the run.
The Titans are the league's ultimate test case for this idea. Their offense has been built around both Henry and the threat of Henry. Now, both are gone. They are still going to be able to run the ball some, but does their competitive advantage on play-action disappear when he isn't part of that action? If that happens, how do they respond? What does that tell us about their decision to invest in Tannehill? And if it doesn't go away, what does that tell us about what we tell ourselves about Henry? All of this might be academic, but it's going to be valuable to teams as they think about how to construct their own rosters in the years to come.
There's also the reality that Henry impacts who the Titans will face on defense. Defenses facing Henry and the Titans have been more inclined to stay in their base defense against Tennessee's core personnel groupings than the rest of the league. When offenses around the NFL in 2021 use 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end, three wideouts), opposing defenses stay in their base personnel with four defensive backs 3.7% of the time. The Titans have faced base defenses on 5.8% of their 11 personnel snaps this season.
More significantly, when the league gets into 12 personnel (one running back, two tight ends, two wideouts), opposing teams typically respond with their base defense 51.6% of the time. When they face the Titans, though, defenses see 12 personnel and stay in their base sets 73.8% of the time. Adding more defensive backs to the field should make it more difficult for the Titans to pass, play-action or not.
When the Titans don't use play-action, Tannehill's numbers are worse. Those numbers decline further when we take Henry off the field. When each team has a win expectancy of at least 20% and Tannehill attempts a pass without play-action, he has posted a 60.1 QBR on 170 dropbacks with Henry on the field. His QBR falls to 52.4 on 267 dropbacks without Henry in the lineup.
There are other effects. Henry is obviously a devastating short-yardage back, both for his own size and for his ability to draw defenders. One of Tennessee's best plays in short yardage has been using Tannehill on the zone read; that probably won't be as effective without Henry. The Titans have been the league's best red zone offense since Tannehill took over, scoring touchdowns on 74.6% of their trips inside the 20; the quarterback obviously deserves some credit there, given that they were actually below league average in the red zone between Henry's breakout game against the Jags in 2018 and the end of Marcus Mariota's reign in 2019, but it's tough to imagine that they'll be quite as good without Henry.
I suppose there's a universe in which this all works and the Titans don't skip a beat. Passing is generally better than running, and the Titans are almost definitely going to throw the ball more frequently than they have in years past. Julio Jones has struggled to stay healthy, but if the Titans ever get Jones and A.J. Brown on the field together for an extended period of time, they'll give Tannehill an excellent one-two punch for that passing game. Maybe the offensive line is good enough to make Peterson roll back the years.
More realistically, the Titans are going to miss their star. The only question is how much.
Can the Titans win without Henry?
At 6-2, the Titans have probably already done enough to host a playoff game. It would take a spectacular collapse for them to not win the AFC South. ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI) gives the Titans a 97.8% chance of winning the South and a 98.8% chance of making the playoffs. They have already beaten the Bills and Chiefs, giving Vrabel's team a pair of important tiebreakers; and they have a pair of victories over the Colts, who have the only realistic hopes of competing with Tennessee for the division title.
We've also seen Tennessee win games without getting significant contributions from Henry. It has won in each of the past two weeks and has scored a combined 54 points on offense in games in which Henry combined for 154 rushing yards on 57 carries. (He did throw a touchdown pass against Kansas City.) He probably made life easier for the rest of the offense, but the Titans can win games without getting 150 yards from scrimmage from him.
0:59
Stephen A. Smith says the Titans season is over if Derrick Henry is done for the year.
It's true, though, that we've seen their playoff runs over the past two years end with the opposing team taking Henry out of the contest. The Chiefs held him to 69 yards on 19 carries in the 2019 AFC Championship Game, and the Ravens limited him to 40 yards on 18 attempts in the wild-card round last postseason. When the offense fell on Tannehill's shoulders in those games, the signal-caller wasn't able to keep up with the best teams in the AFC.
The good news for the Titans, at least in the short term, is that they won't play many great teams over the next six to eight weeks. They must travel to Los Angeles to face arguably the league's best team in the Rams during Week 9, but from that point forward, they might have the league's easiest schedule. They will see the Saints (without Jameis Winston), Texans and Patriots before their Week 13 bye. Afterward, the Titans get the Jaguars, Steelers, 49ers, Dolphins and Texans again to finish their season. Four of their final eight games are against the NFL's worst teams. The only one with a winning record might be starting a third-string quarterback.
Tennessee should be able to win most of these games, even without Henry. FPI gives it a 26.7% chance of claiming the top seed in the AFC, and if it can pick up a first-round bye and home-field advantage, anything's possible. Remember that the Eagles lost Carson Wentz in the middle of an MVP season in 2017, but in part because the Eagles were 10-2 when Wentz went down, they finished with the top seed in the conference. Home-field advantage helped them earn victories over the Falcons and Vikings, before Philadelphia upset the Patriots in Super Bowl LII.
Losing Henry, though, reduces the margin of error for the rest of this roster. The Titans have won despite their up-and-down defense at times over the past two seasons, with safety Kevin Byard & Co. ranking 29th in defensive DVOA last season and 22nd before allowing 31 points to the Colts. Pass-rusher Harold Landry is having a career season, and defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons is one of the best young linemen in the league; but edge rusher Bud Dupree has just one sack in five games, and cornerback Janoris Jenkins has allowed 17.7 expected points added as the nearest defender in coverage. The defense has to be a larger part of the solution for this team.
The Titans are holding out hope that Henry will able to return in time for the postseason, although sources have told ESPN's Adam Schefter that he is expected to miss the rest of the season. Regardless of whether Henry comes back in eight weeks or we don't see the league's most productive running back again before 2022, the Titans are going to need to find their identity without him.
I'm not sure he's the best or most important player in football, but no team in the league has built its identity around one player more than the Titans have with Henry. Now, after relying on the league's most traditional formula for three years, Tennessee might finally have to reinvent itself to stay on a path to the Super Bowl.
Derrick Henry injury: The Titans' winning formula changes, but they could still thrive and get home-field advantage in the NFL playoffs - ESPN
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