Opinion: Titans' Derrick Henry can make a serious run at a 2,000-yard NFL season
A quick rundown on items of interest as Week 13 kicks off in the NFL…
Who’s hot: Derrick Henry. One week, King Henry stiffed Baltimore with a walk-off TD run in overtime. The next week, he embarrassed Indianapolis to help lift the Titans into the AFC South lead. As the stretch run heats up, it is an ideal time for the NFL’s reigning rushing champ to hit his stride. Henry heads into Sunday’s game against Cleveland with a streak of three consecutive 100-yard games, including the 178-yard, three-TD effort against the Colts in Week 12. With an NFL-high 1,257 yards on 256 carries, he’s on pace for an 1,800-yard season that would top last year’s regular-season output…which paved the way to a playoff hot streak that the Titans rode to the AFC title game.
It would make for great theatre if Henry can make a run at a 2,000-yard season. History would suggest he’s up to the task. Since Henry entered the NFL in 2016, he’s rushed for an NFL-best 1,511 yards (with 18 rushing TDs) in the month of December. The next-best in December during that span: Ezekiel Elliott (1,284 yards). Then again, Henry already has a 2,000-yard season by another measure. Over his past 16 games (13 regular-season, three postseason), Henry has rushed for exactly 2,000 yards, averaging 125 yards per game with 17 TDs.
Pressure’s on: Drew Lock. He's back from the COVID-19 list after he and backup quarterbacks Brett Rypien and Blake Bortles were ineligible for what turned out to be an exhibition loss to the Saints, as practice-squad receiver Kendall Hinton was elevated to play QB. Lock will be pressured on Sunday night in Kansas City to keep up with Patrick Mahomes and the NFL’s highest-scoring team. On top of that, Lock might also sense pressure from within the locker room as some teammates were miffed that the quarterbacks defied NFL protocols and met at team headquarters when it was off-limits following Jeff Driskell’s positive test.
Lock and the other quarterbacks in violation were fined undisclosed amounts by the team, and Lock took a damage-control step with an apology on Twitter. Yet it’s still plausible that he will have to mend fences with some teammates after his actions contributed to the Broncos playing a game without a quarterback. Lock, Rypien and Bortles have all tested negative for COVID-19 multiple times since last week’s episode and have all been cleared. Bortles, though, is being kept in isolation away from the team as a COVID-19 emergency measure that theoretically will prevent the team from having to tap Hinton again to play quarterback.
Key matchup: DeAndre Hopkins vs. Jalen Ramsey. Of course, top-shelf rivalries can travel across division lines as the former AFC South foes square off in their first NFC West showdown. Even better, the stakes are high, with Arizona (6-5) and Los Angeles (7-4) in the thick of playoff chases. Expect Ramsey to spend much of Sunday at State Farm Stadium assigned to Hopkins, who ranks third in the NFL with 77 receptions and incidentally has tallied more receiving yards than anyone against Ramsey (396, according to Pro Football Focus) since the corner entered the NFL in 2016.
Since they last met, another significant change has been money. Ramsey is now the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history, averaging $20 million per year on his new Rams contract. Hopkins is the highest-paid receiver by one measure, the $27.25 million he averaged with a 2-year, $54 million extension signed with the Cardinals in September. What hasn’t changed with money: The fierce competitors are arguably the NFL’s best at their respective positions.
Next man up: Alex Highsmith. With Bud Dupree lost for the season with a torn ACL, the undefeated Steelers (11-0) head into Monday night’s matchup against Washington with the third-round pick from Charlotte. He'll need to demonstrate he has the stuff to become another in a string of homegrown outside linebackers to make a mark in Blitzburgh. Highsmith clearly has big shoes to fill.
Dupree (eight sacks) was on pace to top last year’s career-high 11½ sacks. The scenario is also an unfortunate coincidence for the Steelers, who have now lost half of their starting linebacker crew to season-ending torn ACLs, with second-year inside linebacker Robert Spillane stepping in after Devin Bush went down in Week 5.
Rookie watch: Tyler Bass. The Bills admittedly gambled in cutting veteran Stephen Hauschka to make room for the sixth-round pick from Georgia Southern. But after some shakiness during the first half of the season (including two chip-shot misses in the season opener, plus two more misses in the rematch against the Jets), Bass has found his groove.
The past four games, he’s made 9-of-10 field-goal attempts and converted all 14 of his PAT kicks. Now, with Buffalo traveling to face San Francisco on Monday night, Bass returns to the site of his best game of the season as the 49ers are forced to play home games at Arizona due to COVID-19 restrictions in Santa Clara, California. Not only was Bass perfect in the Week 10 game against the Cardinals, all three of his first-half field goals exceeded 50 yards, including a career-longest 58-yarder as time expired before halftime.
Stomach for an upset: Lions at Bears. Maybe Detroit will get an “interim bump” as O-coordinator Darrell Bevell takes the reins from Matt Patricia, who was fired after the Lions suffered a second consecutive blowout loss on Thanksgiving and have lost four of five games since a 3-3 start. Hey, it’s been a 2020 trend.
The Texans beat Jacksonville for their first win in Week 5, when Romeo Crennel replaced Bill O’Brien. The Falcons beat Minnesota for their first win in Week 6, when Raheem Morris took over for Dan Quinn. Now the Lions hope to make good in Bevell’s debut and avoid being swept by the Bears for a third year in a row. Detroit, a three-point underdog, almost beat Chicago in the season opener as it carried a 23-6 lead in the fourth quarter before the bottom fell out and the Bears rallied for 21 unanswered points – just the type of meltdown that led to Patricia’s ultimate dismissal.
If the playoffs were today… The Ravens (6-5) would be at home on the couch. With a three-game losing streak, including the double whammy of a recent COVID-19 outbreak, the decline after posting the league’s best regular-season record in 2019 has been stunning. Baltimore trails Cleveland (8-3), Indianapolis (7-4) and Miami (7-4) in the race for the three AFC wild-card slots, while Pittsburgh (11-0) is on the verge of clinching the A-North crown won by the Ravens the past two seasons.
But there’s still hope for a B’more playoff run. Beginning with Tuesday’s game against Dallas (3-8), the Ravens' opponents over the final five weeks are a combined 18-36-1. Take Cleveland out of the mix as the only opponent with a winning record, and the other four are 10-33-1. In other words, there’s nothing like a slate featuring some of the worst teams in the NFL when you’re needing a late-season rally to get into the playoffs.
Did you notice? Giants quarterback Colt McCoy, pegged to fill in for the injured Daniel Jones (hamstring) on Sunday night in Seattle, is seeking his first victory as a starter since 2014, when he led Washington to an overtime win against the Dallas Cowboys…who were coached by McCoy’s current offensive coordinator, Jason Garrett.
Stat’s the fact: Last weekend, Packers star Aaron Rodgers became the 11th player in NFL history to pass for 50,000 yards. As an encore, A-Rod is poised to notch his 400th career scoring strike in record time. With three TDs against the Eagles on Sunday, Rodgers can hit the milestone in 193 games. It took Drew Brees 205 games to become the current fastest-to-400 thrower, while Peyton Manning cracked the mark in 209 games and Tom Brady took 212 contests.