Henry, McCaffrey shine with milestone games

Derrick Henry and Christian McCaffrey had milestone weekends.

The two star running backs had memorable games on Sunday with Henry rushing for 219 yards and two TDs against Houston and McCaffrey having a rare touchdown Triple Crown against the Rams.

Henry had his sixth career game with at least 200 yards on the ground, tying Hall of Famer O.J. Simpson and Adrian Peterson for the most in NFL history.

Henry has also run for at least two TDs in all six of those 200-yard games — twice as many games with at least 200 yards rushing and two TD runs than any other player in history.

Perhaps even more noteworthy is that four of those have come in his last four games against the Texans, meaning Henry has more 200-yard, two-TD games against Houston than any other player has in their entire careers. Hall of Famers Jim Brown, Barry Sanders and LaDainian Tomlinson did it three times.

McCaffrey matched another mark held by Tomlinson when he threw, ran and caught a touchdown, becoming the fourth player since the merger to do that in a single game. The last to do it was Tomlinson against the Raiders in 2005.

David Patten also did it for New England in 2001 against Indianapolis and Walter Payton did it in 1979 against Minnesota.

McCaffrey became the first player to do it while having at least 30 yards rushing, passing and receiving since Gene Gedman did it for Detroit against San Francisco in 1958.

SHORT RANGE Big-play touchdowns are eluding the Pittsburgh Steelers early this season.

Pittsburgh’s longest offensive touchdown of the season was an 8-yard throw from Mitchell Trubisky to Pat Freiermuth in Week 2 against New England. Six of the Steelers other 10 TDs on offense came from inside the 5, along with two 6-yard scores and a 7-yard pass from Kenny Pickett to George Pickens.

The Steelers are the first team since at least 1991 to fail to score an offensive touchdown of at least 10 yards in the first eight games. Five teams in that span had only one: Washington (2015), Cleveland (2009), Denver (2007), the Jets (2005) and Arizona (1994).

FORBIDDEN TERRITORY

There seemed to be an invisible fence at the 50-yard line for the Raiders offense at New Orleans.

The Raiders failed to cross the midfield stripe for the first 58 minutes of a 24-0 loss to the Saints. Las Vegas didn’t run its first play in New Orleans territory until garbage time after the two-minute warning, the second longest a team has gone without crossing the 50 in the past 16 seasons.

Arizona didn’t do it until the final play of a Week 2 loss to the Rams in 2018.

The Raiders nearly became the fifth team since 1991 that didn’t cross the 50 for an entire game. The only teams to do that were the Giants in 2006 against New Orleans, Chicago in 2000 against San Francisco, Cleveland in 2000 against Jacksonville and Minnesota in 1991 against New Orleans.