Forget the Titans’ run-lost opener. Seahawks are expecting the full Derrick Henry Sunday
The Titans have added Julio Jones to A.J. Brown at wide receiver.
Yet even with an All-Pro joining a Pro Bowl selection in its passing game, ticked-off Tennessee (0-1) comes into Lumen Field Sunday for the Seahawks’ (1-0) home opener the same team it’s been for years.
That is, Derrick Henry first, last — and most punishing.
The All-Pro running back finished last season with 2,027 yards rushing. That was the fifth-most in any season in NFL history. He led the Titans to 30.7 points per game and the AFC championship game.
Henry romped for 1,540 yards in 2019. That’s 3,567 yards with 33 touchdowns rushing the last two seasons. The unusually large yet fast running back has been the league’s leading rusher for the last two years.
He’s 6 feet 3 and 247 pounds with a 40-yard dash time of 4.54 seconds that is absurd for his size.
So, yes, as sure as there are the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee Henry and his wicked stiff arm are coming right at Seattle on Sunday.
“He’s really unique,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said. “There have not been very many guys like him over the years.
“Because he’s really fast, a big strider, and runs through things.”
And people.
Yet last weekend in the Titans’ face-plant opener, Henry didn’t run much at all. Not by his standards.
He’s averaged 22 carries per game the last two seasons, and 21 rushes per start since he became Tennessee’s featured back in 2018. Last season the Titans ran the ball 521 times, second-most in the NFL to Baltimore’s 555 rushes, and threw it 485 times (third-fewest in the league). The Titans got one win away from the Super Bowl.
But last weekend in their opener at home, the Titans got ransacked by Arizona early. The Cardinals raced out to 17-0 lead with just 4 minutes gone in the second quarter. Tennessee junked its game plan, desperately trying to rally quickly. That meant more passing and much less of Henry running than planned — and almost required for the Titans to win.
The Titans ran 22 times, just 17 by Henry (for 58 yards). They dropped back to pass 42 times. Arizona sacked Ryan Tannehill six times, five by Chandler Jones, and Tennessee got smoked like its mountains 38-13.
The Seahawks are expecting the opposite from Tennessee. They aren’t expecting Henry to get only one-third of the Titans touches again this Sunday.
“At the end of the day, they’re going to give (Henry) the ball and get out of his way,” Seahawks All-Pro middle linebacker Bobby Wagner said. “I think they just try to find different ways to get him the ball.
“The last game, you can’t really judge that from them because they got behind so quick that they couldn’t use their run game to get back in the game, so they had to pass the ball. I know their style is predicated on that run game.
“We’ve got to get up quick, too, so they don’t have to do it.”
In Seattle’s opener last week, the Seahawks unveiled a change in scheme to the defensive front. It throttled big back Jonathan Taylor and the Colts’ running game, a large reason Seattle controlled throughout and won 28-16 at Indianapolis in a game that wasn’t even that close.
Taylor rushed four times for 18 yards and the Colts ran it on eight of 14 plays to a field goal on the game’s opening possession. Then the Seahawks went from four to five defensive linemen. They played with three defensive tackles — Poona Ford, Al Woods and Bryan Mone — and two ends. At times, the 330-pound Woods was outside at defensive tackle opposite end Darrell Taylor, who played more on the line than as the dropping strongside linebacker coaches also made him this offseason and preseason.
Coach Pete Carroll tried to act as if five defensive linemen didn’t happen for Seattle against Indianapolis.
“Well, we’ll see. I don’t know. That might have been a mistake in the substitutions today,” Carroll said.
He laughed.
“The reason we’re able to do that is because of the versatility of the players, the edge players,” Carroll said of Seattle’s roster loaded with ends. “So, we’ve been developing that ability for a while now to see how flexible we can be. We have a number of guys that can all do it. We didn’t see a whole lot of Alton (Robinson against the Colts, 12 snaps), but he’s in that mix, too.
“It’s just part of it.”
Rather than stay with their game plan, and the best way to beat Seattle, the Colts countered the Seahawks’ five-man defensive line by mostly shelving Taylor and having Carson Wentz throw it. That’s exactly what the Seahawks wanted.
The Colts ran eight times in the first 14 plays. They ran just five times and called 14 pass plays over their final 19 snaps of the first half. Taylor had 6 yards rushing in the half after that first drive. The Seahawks went from down 3-0 to up 21-10, and cruised from there in the second half to their 12-point win.
Unless — or perhaps even if — the Seahawks go up 17-0 on the Titans in the first 19 minutes as the Cardinals did, look for an obvious emphasis and reliance by Tennessee on Henry’s runs Sunday, no matter how many defensive linemen Seattle uses.
Defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. is emphasizing to his unit this week the need for every Seahawks defender possible to converge on Henry to end his runs before he wants them to end.
“We’ve all seen the film. He’s a big, strong, tough running back. It’s important that everyone plays sound gap control, but everybody’s involved in tackling and getting him down,” Norton said. “You want to see more than one person at a time get around him. You want to see a gang of Seahawk bodies just jumping on him and pulling him down. It’s a team effort and we expect all 11 guys to be around the ball constantly.”
Counting playoffs, the Titans are 25-8 when Henry gets at least 18 rushes in a game. That’s a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg proposition, of course. Tennessee, and any team, runs more when leading. So Henry gets more carries to close out games then the Titans would give him if they were trying to come from behind and needing to throw to stop or slow the game clock.
Yet Carroll made it clear running far more than roughly one-third of the time, as Tennessee did last weekend, is coach Mike Vrabel’s M.O.
“Coach Vrabel wants to hard-ball it,” Carroll said.
And his stick is Henry.
Norton compares Henry to Christian Okoye and some of the biggest, baddest, best running backs in the league during the 1980s and ‘90s. That’s when Norton was a Super Bowl-winning linebacker for the 49ers and Cowboys.
“You see a big back like Henry you think of the ‘Nigerian Nightmare’ (Okoye), Barry Word,” Norton said. “Herschel Walker was a big one. Eric Dickerson was big. Marcus Allen was a big guy. Eddie George. ...there were a lot of big backs in those days. They all had different qualities about them, but they were all strong and tough.
“Derrick Henry is just like that.”
Wedington returns
Two weeks after waiving him among their final preseason cuts, the Seahawks signed back former Sumner High School star Connor Wedington to the practice squad
.
The team got low on wide receivers during the opening game last week. Only five were active for the win at Indianapolis. Then Penny Hart and top rookie draft choice Dee Eskridge each got concussions during the game. That left the Seahawks with Tyler Lockett (two touchdown catches), DK Metcalf (one TD) and Freddie Swain as the only available wide receivers.
The Seahawks’ medical staff kept Eskridge home from practice Wednesday. He is in the NFL’s concussion protocol. His status for Sunday’s game will be a weekend determination.
Hart was back to practice Wednesday.
The team also signed wide receiver De’Quan Hampton and tight end Michael Jacobson to the practice squad.
Rhattigan move official
The Seahawks made official the move that had become known on Tuesday: they signed undrafted rookie linebacker Jon Rhattigan from Army to the active roster for the rest of the season. Rhattigan was promoted from the practice squad Saturday to play against the Colts. He did. When he ran down on the opening kickoff, on the coverage team, he became the first West Point graduate to play for Seattle.
Rhattigan will replace Ethan Pocic on the roster. The team put Pocic, the backup center who also played guard and tackle his first three years in the league, on injured reserve because of a sprained knee. Carroll said the team believes Pocic may be able to return in three weeks. That’s the minimum time a player must miss while on IR before he can return to play.
This story was originally published September 16, 2021 at 7:28 AM.
