Chris Hays: Derrick Henry is best running back to ever play

ORLANDO, Fla . — For the first time in Derrick Henry’s 12 1/2 years of football, something has slowed the Tennessee Titans’ behemoth of a running back. He had surgery on a broken foot Tuesday, and there is no timetable for his return.

As sure as a football field is green, however, Henry, a 6-foot-3, 247-pound beast, will be back.

I would never count him out of anything. If they say he’s out for the season, he’ll be back in time for the playoffs. If they say he’s out for three games, he’ll be back in two.

The Titans have placed no public timetable on the return of the NFL’s leading rusher, but he’ll be back.

He’s proven people wrong since he was 14 years old.

When I saw Derrick Henry for the first time, I thought he was a grown man, even at age 15. Even though he was wearing a Yulee High jersey, it took some convincing from his coach to assure me that Henry was only going to be a sophomore.

Yulee High, which is just north of Jacksonville, was coached by Bobby Ramsay at the time, and he did not mince words when first asked about Henry. Ramsay, who now coaches Jacksonville Mandarin, said clear back in 2010 that Henry was destined to become one special individual.

Special was actually an understatement. What the Tennessee Titans running back has gone on to accomplish is something many thought would never be done. At Yulee, then Alabama and on to the NFL Titans, Henry has rushed for nearly 13 miles (22,512 yards) with the football and scored 260 touchdowns on 3,400 carries (seven yards per carry).

In 12 1/2 years of football, nothing has stopped Henry. Well, until now. Henry is recovering, but he’ll recover faster than the average man. He lives with a near superhero persona, minus the cape.

In 2010, the kid was already huge at 6-foot-2 and about 210 pounds and could run circles around most anyone who dared go head-to-head in the 40-yard dash.

I was in awe of what he did. A player that young and that big running sub-4.5-second 40s was unheard of.

What he did on the football field will go down as legend.

I saw him the summer after he already had established himself as one of the best running backs in the state with 2,465 yards and 26 TDs on 313 carries as a freshman.

I embarrassingly had never heard of Henry, but I began to take a special interest, looking up his stats every Saturday morning. He was unstoppable.

In his sophomore season, he had 313 carries again, but this time for 2,788 yards with 38 touchdowns and followed that with 309 carries for 2,610 yards and 34 touchdowns as a junior.

Then came that incredibly ridiculous senior season. He had business to attend to. The all-time high school career rushing record had stood for 59 years.

Henry had 7,863 yards after three seasons. He set his eyes on the all-time record of Ken “Sugar Land Express” Hall of Sugar Land (Texas) High School in 1953. The mark was 11,232. Henry needed 3,369 yards in his final year.

They said it couldn’t be done. I would have bet on Henry. Nothing or no one could stop him. He did it, of course, and the record stands — and will stand likely forever — at 12,124 yards. It took nearly 60 years for someone like Henry to come around, and there won’t be another one.

He had everything, and still does — strength, speed, agility, vision, power and sheer determination. Not many have had that complete package. Not many ever will, and even if they do, accomplishing what Henry has will be next to impossible, especially in a game that now favors the pass.

I had the opportunity to see him live a few times in 2012, once during a 42-14 mauling of the Groveland South Lake defense, in a game that a scrappy South Lake team made him fight for every yard. Still, he wound up with 303 yards and five touchdowns on 41 carries.

That’s right; FORTY-ONE carries. And people say the big fella is overworked now as a sixth-year two-time All-Pro running back for the Titans. This is child’s play for Henry, who knocked down South Lake defenders that night, as he did numerous others, like they were department store mannequins.

South Lake coach Mark Woolum, like many before him and numerous more after, was in awe.

“He is what he’s all cracked up to be. He’s the real deal,” Woolum said in 2012, Henry’s senior season. “The first touchdown, we had perfect position on him. We had two or three tacklers on him and he just broke it back and went the other way with it. It was a busted play and he went 60 yards on us.”

Still, there were those who said he couldn’t play college running back.

“He runs too upright and doesn’t put his shoulder into his tacklers,” some said.

What? They must not have bothered to watch film.

Florida coach WIll Muschamp at the time wanted Henry to come play linebacker for the Gators.

I asked Henry about that prior to his commitment to Alabama, and he said, “Why would I do that? I’m a running back.”

Indeed.

Nick Saban didn’t try to change him and he had an impressive career with the Crimson Tide. Saban took it easy on Henry, running him an average of 15 times in 39 games, but he still managed 3,591 yards and 42 TDs in just three seasons in Tuscaloosa. After his third season, in which he ran for 2,219 yards and 28 TDs, he won the Heisman Trophy, then entered the draft.

Not too shabby for a guy they said couldn’t make it big as a college running back.

Of course the naysayers still rushed to early judgment. They said he couldn’t play in the NFL.

He had been burdened with too much of a workload at Yulee and Alabama. Scouts feared that would take a toll over time. They also said he took too long to build up speed. He was even diagnosed with a lack of ability in the passing game, a lack of outside speed, more of a run finisher than tackle-breaker, and on and on.

Huh? Were they basing their scouting on the same Derrick Henry I had been watching for seven years. Obviously not.

The nonbelievers were plentiful then. He dropped into the second round of the 2016 NFL draft and the Titans took him as the No. 45 overall selection.

He left numerous NFL general managers looking like idiots.

The believers are lined up now, applauding Henry like he is Walmart’s Blue Light Special on Black Friday.

Now he’s in the NFL and making tacklers look the same as he did during those nights in Florida in Groveland and Jacksonville Jackson, against whom he set the state’s single-game rushing record at 502 yards in 2012.

That record was broken two weeks ago, and Henry was gracious in his applause. Kayleb Wagner of Baker High in the Panhandle, a player who was born without his left hand and only part of his forearm, bested that feat by Henry with a 535-yard and 6-touchdown game against South Walton. He only needed 25 carries to pull off the feat.

Henry told reporters last week, “It’s incredible ... really cool. I got to talk to him a little bit on Instagram and hopefully he breaks some more. [Wagner is] definitely an inspiration to me and I am sure he is an inspiration to his team and everybody over there in that community. It was definitely cool to see and hopefully, I can do something for him these upcoming weeks.”

The two eventually did speak.

Wagner told MaxPreps, “He congratulated me, said he would send me a pair of his cleats and game gloves. It was very, very cool. I think it really hit me then that I had the record.”

Henry suffered his first real setback of his football career this past Sunday. But I would never bet against his return this season. His surgery Tuesday went well, but the Titans are not giving a timetable for his return. I would expect Henry to return from this injury sooner than even team doctors expect. He’s just that kind of player and that kind of person.

Determination goes a long way, and Henry has more than most.

He has proven over time he can take a beating. Last season he averaged 24 carries a game and piled up 2,027 yards and 17 touchdowns.

This season he has averaged 27 carries a game and racked up 937 yards and 10 touchdowns in just eight games. That’s a career year for most NFL running backs.

About the only thing he hasn’t done, beside win a state title in high school, is win a Super Bowl, and Tennessee appeared to be a heavy favorite until Henry went down.

But for Derrick Henry, down never means out.

He’s the best running back there ever was. Count on him.