Handling Titans’ Henry will be big challenge for defense
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The question posed to Robert Saleh was one lots of coaches around the NFL have failed to answer:
How do you stop Derrick Henry?
That’s the major task at hand for Saleh and the winless New York Jets when the league’s leading rusher comes to MetLife Stadium with his Tennessee Titans on Sunday.
“Oh, man. Have you guys ever seen him in person? Ever?” Saleh said. “Wait until you guys see this one. He is a massive human being.”
Henry is a 6-foot-3, 247-pound bulldozer with incredible power mixed with tremendous speed. That combination helped him lead the NFL in rushing the past two seasons, and the reigning AP Offensive Player of the Year has picked up where he left off with a league-best 352 yards on 80 carries in three games.
“When this man gets rolling, he is all of — whatever height he is and size — he looks like an offensive lineman carrying the football,” Saleh said.
Despite the Jets’ 0-3 start, the defense has performed relatively well. New York ranks 10th in overall defense, including 14th against the run. But the Jets know Henry is quite a handful — and different from most running backs.
“He’s bigger than most people on the football field,” said linebacker C.J. Mosley, a former Alabama teammate. “We have to do a great job of getting him down and we all know the stiff-arm’s coming.”
Henry has been a workhorse for the Titans, a throwback of sorts to when most teams had a primary
ball-carrier rather than the mix-and-match backfields several squads use today — including the Jets. Henry has had 20 or more carries in regular-season games 21 times over the past three seasons, including four of 30 or more. He had 35 attempts for 182 yards and three TDs in Tennessee’s 33-30 victory over Seattle two weeks ago.
“I have said it time and time again, the guy is unbelievably durable,” Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill said. “The consistency he shows week in and week out over the course of the season since I have been here, two-plus years of him getting a lot of touches and just being consistent week in and week out, I have ton of respect for that and the work he puts in to prepare himself to do that.”