Derrick Henry, in case you weren’t aware, is a beast. He led the NFL with 1,540 rushing yards and 16 rushing touchdowns this season, and he was a sledgehammer in the Titans’ 20-13 win over the Patriots this past weekend, rushing 34 times for 182 yards and a touchdown.
But if the Titans want to beat the Ravens in Baltimore this Saturday, they’ll need a strong game from Ryan Tannehill, who attempted just 15 passes against New England.
“At some point, Derrick Henry is going to get you so far, but Ryan Tannehill has to be able to get you over the hump,” Hall of Fame running back Terrell Davis said on Tiki & Tierney. “If a team really wants to stop [a running back], it is not a pretty day when they really want to stop you. It’s 29 yards on 15 carries. It’s penetration, they’re blitzing, they’re run blitzing – they don’t care if you gash them in the pass; they want to stop you in the run.”
Don’t be surprised if Henry gets 20+ carries this weekend, but Tannehill, who is 8-3 as a starter this season, will need to make clutch throws in clutch situations.
“There’s going to be critical throws on third down that a quarterback has to make,” Davis said. “Let’s say you lose on first down and now it’s 2nd-and-12, 2nd-and-13, you run again and now it’s 3rd-and-8. You got to convert. You’re not running for that.”
Davis actually picked the Titans to beat Tom Brady and the Patriots for one simple reason: the Patriots didn’t have enough offensive weapons to win in the playoffs.
“They didn’t have Gronk in those key third-down situations,” Davis said. “I felt like if [the Patriots] got behind the chains, they could not make up for that.”
The Patriots rushed 22 times for 98 yards and a touchdown against Tennessee. Only one player, James White, had more than three catches or 40 receiving yards.
“They had to almost be perfect in drives in trying to get the ball down the field, and that’s hard to be perfect,” Davis said. “Something is going to happen. You’re going to have a holding call, a penalty – something is going down. You can’t get past that.”