I sure hope Derrick Henry is a beast this year

He’s always been like that, even during his best years, he needs momentum first. DH22 is one of the most unique running backs the NFL has ever seen. He’s the same size as Brandon Jacobs, but not necessarily a power back. He has one of the fastest top speeds, but not necessarily shifty. His hybrid DNA has both its up’s and down’s, he’s an easy target to tackle when the LOS collapses, but once he gets momentum, he’s dangerous.

 

Totally agree. People act like Henry is/has been a power back, but that's really never been his identity. He's a big back with crazy speed. Hard to take down once he gets going, but he's "top heavy" and runs upright so he can be taken down if he doesn't have momentum.

That's not to say he can't run people over...but that's never been his game. He needs space to get going...that's when he's dangerous.

I know I pretty much repeated what you already said. But it's pretty spot on and I know people are going to start saying Henry is done because of his 1 injury and use this as an example. "He goes down easy". Always has.

 

Which is why the OL should have been a bigger focus

 

Not great

 

Yep, that was my whole point. His entire career he has dropped at the LoS with just a hand touching him. He has to be given a hole to get past the LoS and hopefully the LBs. Once he gets some space he is a monster. Our O-line gave him those holes for about half of the first half, then they fell apart, and then he couldnt get past the LoS for any good gains...Fire Carter and bring in a real O-line coach.

 

Tall, runs upright, long legs… unfortunately his body and style makes him easy to tackle if he doesn’t have momentum. Like you mentioned, when he got holes in the first half, he was beasting, pretty much every run in the first half, he was running someone over and would fall forward for extra yards after getting tackled.

Then we had situations in the second half where it was 4th and 1 I believe, and there were 4 defenders in the backfield before he even got the handoff, like what did we expect him to do there lol

 

That's because they had him lined up about as far back in the backfield as you'll ever see. I guess the point is to get him a head start...but when there's 1 yard to go and DH has to run 15 yards to get that 1 yard, this OLine isn't capable of holding up.

 

Downing needs to simplify the run game and lean heavily in our zone concepts. Last season he added a lot more power running concepts in but our OL is just not able to handle them.

Brewer is too small to handle defensive lineman in a power O scheme. Nate Davis is not great at pulling. He is good at beating the guy in front of him.

The zone running scheme also lets Derrick Herny use his best asset which is his vision. Henry has always reminded me of Chris Johnson in the way he is able read the defense.

 

We need to run more tosses to the left when our starting LT is down. That'll fix things.

 

I would mix in a rookie TE sweep every so often