How Derrick Henry's injury put him on a mission to win Tennessee Titans' most elusive prize — the Super Bowl

Bobby Ramsay was nervous to reach out to Derrick Henry.

From a sports bar in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, he watched the Tennessee Titans running back suffer and play through what he thought was an insignificant foot injury against the Colts on Oct. 31, only to see reports the next day suggest he could be out at least eight weeks.

Ramsay remembered how upset Henry was after breaking his leg ahead of his freshman season at the University of Alabama. How would he handle what appeared to be another serious injury?

Ramsay decided he’d let the dust settle; wait a day before sending the text.

When Ramsay did reach out, he was impressed.

“I was put at ease by his mindset,” Ramsay, Henry’s coach at Yulee High School in Florida, told The Tennessean. “I felt like, ‘OK, I don’t need to check on him a ton. He’s good. He’s going to get himself ready to go. He’s taking this like a pro.’”

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Henry is expected to make his return to the field Saturday after missing nine games with a foot fracture, and the stage couldn't be much bigger. The top-seeded Titans (12-5) will face the Cincinnati Bengals (11-7) in the AFC divisional round at Nissan Stadium (3:30 p.m. CT, CBS), and Henry will carry Super Bowl-sized expectations of a city and franchise.

Ramsay said Henry seemed “upbeat” during his absence. Henry felt pain after his foot surgery Nov. 2, according to Ramsay, but otherwise flashed optimism in their text message conversations.

“I know he rehabbed like a champ," Ramsay said. "... I think he handled it in an even keeled way. He didn’t let it get the best of him. I think he took it in stride. … It was the things he said, the tone (of his text messages). The exclamation points. The conversation being kind of light-hearted asking how I was doing.

“It was really kind of like, ‘Yeah, I got injured. It’s OK. I’m going to be fine. I just kind of want to get back to life as it was.’”

‘F—, Derrick Henry!’

In Yulee, pressure came from just being Derrick Henry. The pressure to perform.

As a ninth grader on varsity, his dominance was a cool story in northeast Florida. It grew to the greater Jacksonville area as a 10th grader. And by the time he was a junior, after he initially committed to Georgia instead of Alabama, his profile had skyrocketed to national circles. He never had fewer than 100 rushing yards in a game during his high school career.

Before facing Yulee, opposing players would chant “f–, Derrick Henry!” But after the game? "They’re running up and getting pictures taken with him,” said Ramsay.

He carried the ball 46 times or 48 times or 50 times or 57 times for Yulee — and not for the stat padding. His team needed every one of those carries to compete against bigger schools.

Henry prepared his 6-foot-3 frame for the workload. He’d put an Ford F-150 pickup truck in neutral and push it around the track that circled the football field before practice every day. With his running backs coach, the late Pat Dunlap Sr., he'd visit the local Anytime Fitness to do cardio, go to practice, then go back to the gym for weights.

On the Monday before Henry broke Ken Hall’s 59-year-old national record for career rushing yards, Ramsay decided to give Henry the day off from practice. Within 40 minutes of practice starting, Henry took the field with a helmet and shoulder pads.

“I’m like, ‘Hey man, I thought I told you you didn’t have to practice today?’” said Ramsay. “He’s like, ‘Yeah, I got bored.’

“He ended up going through the rest of the practice.”

A broken leg

Henry was forced to sit out to begin his career at Alabama.

He fractured his fibula in an April scrimmage ahead of his freshman season, sidelining him for the spring. And while he was able to return by fall camp, the injury was hard on Henry, according to those close to him.

It was his first serious injury, Ramsay said. He never missed time in high school.

An early enrollee at Alabama, Henry returned to Yulee for graduation on crutches, Ramsay recalled.

“I just told him, ‘Hey, man. Look: you’re going to be alright,’” said Ramsay. “‘You’re in a great place where they’re going to take care of you.’ It was tough on him. ... And here he is at Alabama trying to compete for playing time and have that kind of injury that’ll put your freshman year in jeopardy. For a player, if you’re 18-19 years old, the world is ending. So it was tough for him. At the time, I really just wanted to reassure him.”

“Not to say he didn’t handle it great at Alabama, but he was torn up about it, thinking about the worst,” added Pat Dunlap Jr., the son of Henry’s high school running backs coach. The younger Dunlap’s 7-year-old son, Kellan, is Henry’s godson.

Ramsay and Dunlap both see differences in how Henry, in his sixth NFL season, has handled his foot injury with the Titans.

They both point to the fact he has a family now. He has a 1-year-old daughter, Valentina, with his longtime girlfriend, Adrianna Rivas. They believe it helped keep everything in perspective.

“I think everyone knows that when you play in that league that you’re going to get hurt at some point,” Ramsay said. “How bad you get injured (is unknown). But I think it just shows that he’s a veteran, he’s got a lot of perspective and I think, again, it showed a lot of trust in his teammates and trust in the organization that this place is going to help me get back to 100% and they’re going to do right by me.”

Henry said Wednesday, in his first news conference since the injury, that it was initially shocking to learn of his foot fracture, but he realized he couldn’t do anything about it.

“Whatever doesn’t break you, it makes you,” Henry said. “That’s the mindset I have.”

Wanting another chance

Henry returns for the Titans motivated.

He wants to win a Super Bowl “more than anything,” according to Dunlap, who said last season’s wild-card loss to the Baltimore Ravens still stings. He was held to 40 rushing yards on 18 carries in that game. The 2.2 rushing yards-per-attempt average marked the lowest of his playoff career (six games).

“That was all he would talk about,” said Dunlap. “It ate up at him.”

He took the loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2019 AFC Championship game especially hard, Ramsay said.

“When I talked to him after that game, the first thing he said was, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever get back here again,’” Ramsay said. “I was like, ‘What can I say?’ Like, that’s true. You might not. … I think it showed that he knew the opportunity they had was special and it doesn’t come (often).

“I think that’s really going to drive him and that’s why I expect him to play really, really well because that loss to Kansas City was tough. He wants to get back.”

If there’s a silver lining in Henry’s absence, it’s that it has given him prolonged rest for the first time in his professional career.

He led the NFL in carries, rushing yards and rushing touchdowns in 2019 and 2020 and was on pace for a third straight triple crown before injuring his foot.

“I told him the other day, this could really turn out to be a blessing in disguise,” Dunlap said. “You have all these other playoff teams, their defenses are tired. They’ve been playing 17 games. He’s been doing nothing but rehab in the last 11 weeks.

“A 250-pound running back with fresh legs against that defense?”

Ramsay was texting with Henry on Jan. 10, during the national championship game between Alabama and Georgia. After Alabama star receiver Jameson Williams’ knee injury, they talked about the turf at Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium, where the game was taking place.

But it wasn’t too long into the conversation when Henry sent him a message he didn’t understand:

"On the road to L.A."

Ramsay wrote back: “You’re in L.A. again?” He had been there shooting a commercial during the Titans’ bye week, Ramsay recalled. He figured he went back there another commercial.

“He said, ‘no,” explained Ramsay.

“‘That’s where the Super Bowl is.’”

Ben Arthur covers the Tennessee Titans for The USA TODAY Network. Contact him at barthur@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter at @benyarthur.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: For Tennessee Titans' Derrick Henry, injury put him on road to Super Bowl