On a warm day in Tennessee during week 7 of the 2020 NFL football season we saw the Titans run power up the gut on third and goal and witnessed what might be one of the rarest outcomes to a play in the history of the league. Derrick Henry got tackled. He didn’t trip, he didn’t get forced out of bounds, he didn’t go down in a pile, he got straight up tackled. This very play, which will be linked below sparked an interesting debate amongst the most dedicated of football fans. Have we ever seen Derrick Henry get tackled before? For the answer to this question we had to go to the archives. Not a single person in the brotherhood that is NFL football fandom could remember a play where Derrick Henry got TACKLED.
A quick google later and we come to find out that there is only ONE other time that someone has tackled Derrick Henry and that came on September 14th of 2020. I know what you’re thinking, tackled twice in the same year after NEVER getting tackled before that... Is Derrick Henry burnt out? Is he pulling a Jerick McKinnon and crying “tired legs”? Those are questions to be answered in another blog, what really matters right now is the fact that unless you have had several fingers amputated, you at home can count on one hand the amount of times that Derrick Henry has been tackled (sorry Jason Pierre-Paul, use your left hand maybe).
You probably think this is a joke. I can assure you that it is not. If you have made it to this point and don’t believe what I am saying then try it out for yourself. Go on YouTube, type into the search bar “Derrick Henry gets tackled” and I GUARANTEE you that other than those two plays you will find nothing else. In fact, YouTube will populate results on your suggested videos such as “Derrick Henry stiff arm compilation”, “Derrick Henry truck stick”, and will even go as far as to show videos of OTHER running backs getting tackled due to the lack of footage out there of Derrick Henry getting tackled. Sit there and cry about it all you want, there are only two people on this planet who have ever tackled Derrick Henry and they are Robert Spillane and Josey Jewell.
It’s so so sad that in this day and age we only have two pure bruiser running backs capable of this feat, Derrick Henry and David Montgomery. Make football great again and run the damn ball.