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By Ken Belson
In the age of instant videos on social media, a forgettable 4-meter race in a different way has gone viral. Tennessee Titans assassin Derrick Henry was the star: he lured a 200-pound cornerer, grabbed him by the shoulder and simply drove. The full video clip, from start to finish, took only a few seconds.
The fact that the race was cancelled for compensatory consequences may not have been less important. King Henry had humiliated Josh Norman, a former All-Pro, and added him to a collection of prominent defenders he had destroyed with the oldest of the football moves: the stiff arm.
“You use all the weapons you have,” said Bobby Ramsay, who in his time as coach at Yulee High School in Florida helped Henry improve his stiff arm, which then used to set a national high school record. “For some kids, it’s the juke, for others, it’s a rotational movement. Derrick is the ability to use his loose hand to keep kids away. “
Norman’s disappearance is just one of the highlights of Henry’s developing list for more than 3 seasons, from a 99-yard run in 2018 to the dominant playoff performances that led Tennessee to last season’s championship game, in its 264-yard line in a Week 6 win over Houston Henry used such an outdated move that he is immortalized in the Heisman Trophy, which Henry won for Alabama in 2015.
What’s scary is that Henry doesn’t just have a stiff arm technique, he got three.
Ramsay, who is now a coach at Mandarin High School in Jacksonville, described one of Henry’s stiff arms as a “social estrangation” movement, in which Henry leaves his long arms stretched before contact, keeping defenders away. to bed, son “movement where a defender makes the mistake of attacking Henry’s size, so that Henry pushes the defender’s helmet, like a father stroking his son’s head.
For the Norman move, Henry used what Ramsay called the “bar, stay away from me” movement. It’s an edition of the rigid arm reserved for a defender who’s already around, and it’s not as simple as Henry suggests.
Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill watched the game stretch just a few feet away, which led him to use salty language on the field. He marveled at Henry’s strength, even after his team’s 42-16 victory over Buffalo.
“It’s probably one of the steepest arms I’ve ever seen,” he says. “No doubt. “
Henry turned down attention when he sent Norman.
“I’ve made too many curls, ” he said with a smile. I have to leave my arms. “
Jokes aside, the stiff arm, dating back to the early days of football, has endured, with Jim Brown giving way to Walter Payton and so many others. Players like Garrison Hearst and Marshawn Lynch have made their way through videos highlighting Stiff’s arms nibbling on YouTube clicks.
Although Henry’s taste for bruises is not very elegant in the NFL’s stiff arm, today it can be almost a trap code for players who overcome it. considered fortuitous.
Impertinent. The most prominent example of the motion is the placement of Ed Smith in the trophy named after John Heisman, but some stiff arms in the NFL may fit into the bets and winnings of the presented through John Riggins in the Super Bowl that followed in 1982. Season.
With Washington 17-13 in the last quarter, Riggins, fourth and 1, broke on the left side and used his right arm to eliminate Dolphins cornerer Don McNeal, and then loaded 43 yards into the finish zone for the approval touchdown.
Riggins claimed that he had not practiced arm stiffness or developed any special techniques for this. “Fundamentally, everything I did was instinctive,” he said in a phone interview. “If someone tries to catch you, look to keep it away. “
In his outstanding Super Bowl career, Riggins gave his teammates a little luck. Before the slam, the closed end Clint Didier moved to the right, then left to block Riggins. McNeal followed Didier on any of the instructions but slipped when he reversed his trajectory.
“That’s what stopped him from taking a hundredth of a moment from taking a higher percentage of me,” Riggins said. “It would have been embarrassing for me not to have damaged that tackle. “
Whether Riggins or Henry, a good, uncompromising arm can make a player stand out at any time, but with groups running so hard to concentrate on passes, and with the smallest and most flexible midfields in fashion, Henry, who embraces his length that looking to suit the taste of smaller runners, has become the ultimate return. Standing 6 feet 3 inches and weighing 247 pounds, he is the largest ball carrier since the Dallas Cowboys’ NFLEzekiel Elliott, who also entered the league in 2016, is 3 inches lower and 20 pounds younger, while Kansas City Chiefs rookie Clyde Edwards-Helaire is just five feet 7 inches tall and weighs 207 pounds.
In addition to its size, Henry has long arms, measured at 33 inches before the N. F. L. drafted in 2016, has a longer diversity than all 3 draft ball bearings measured in more than five seasons.
This length has not been considered an advantage. Ramsay said many recruiters had rejected Henry’s apparent talents in high school because they felt he was too tall or “running big” in the language of football. Everyone was looking for corridors with a declining center of gravity.
But Henry is incredibly fast for his length (he ran 4. 54 on the 40-yard marker) and uses his length and strength to break tackles and enter the defensive field. He averaged 5. 1 yards consistent with the race last year, while running for a league leader. 1,540 yards and 16 touchdowns. This year, he averages 4. 8 yards consistent with the race, but also carries the ball more: 24. 6 times consistent with the game, to 20. 2 times consistent with last season’s game.
Henry can arm an opponent well with either arm, but something else that does it aside, and any opponent who makes the decision to attack his legs won’t locate him much more easily.
“You hear other people say, “Advocates just have to go under,” said Dave Anderson, a member of the N. F. L. Wide Receiver and CEO of BreakAway Data, an athlete progression company. “The challenge is that defenders can’t do that when they run full speed at an angle, in the ball carrier’s vision and are overtaken by 50 pounds. this interrupts a defender’s time. “
Anderson compared looking at a player’s time-taking of Henry’s length and speed with “looking to jump into a car driving at 20 miles consistent with the hour. “
None of this is new to Henry, who has used his height, weight and influence wisely since at least ninth grade. Ramsay said Henry, who is more than six feet tall in high school, is not a smart runner like Barry Sanders. His merit in height, reducing his shoulder on the chest of a lower defender would have slowed him down. Ramsay let Henry break the tackles with his deck and use his speed to escape the pursuers.
“I’ve been doing it since I was a kid, ever since I played football, and it came here naturally because I have long arms,” Henry said in September. “So that’s the first thing I use to break a shot of or get away from the defender. “
In the game where he set the national ground record at best school, Henry loaded the ball 58 times for 482 yards and six touchdowns, typical last-year functionality in which he scored 55 touchdowns, some defenses put up to 10 players. in the pounding line. ” There was no secret about what we wanted to do,” Ramsay said.
There’s none yet. While Tannehill showed his ability to stretch the area with aerial play, Tennessee passes his attack through Henry and no matter how well the groups adapt, Henry turns out to be locating tactics to make paintings. Henry will verify that domain. Sunday, when the Titans face the Pittsburgh Steelers 5-0, a team featuring the NFL’s effective defensive maxim, but if there’s one player who can make things stand against any defense, that’s Henry.
And as his star continues to rise, Henry can count among his fans who he turns out to be an icon of the Titans franchise since his days as Houston Oilers, and that he thinks Henry doesn’t use his arm stiff enough.
“How the hell don’t you use this uncompromising arm anymore?” Earl Campbell asked Henry to make a stopover with the team last year. “Put that bone on it. Let them know he’s got it.
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