Tennessee Titans: Facts are facts give Derrick Henry the ball, and you win

Before the Tennessee Titans played the Chiefs this Sunday, I said that Derrick Henry needs to get his touches if the Titans wanted to win, and it worked.

When you look at most of the Tennessee Titans’ losses and Derrick Henry‘s stats, it shows why the Titans lost. This offense is not good enough to simply put the ball in Marcus Mariota or Ryan Tannehill‘s hands and expect them to win the game on their own.

When you do that, you make it very easy on the opponent to find ways to shut your passing game down; if they know that you’re not going to run the ball, then they can gameplan on how to beat Tannehill.

Arthur Smith finally listened and took the ball out of Tannehill’s hand and shared some of the workload with Henry. This not only forced the Kansas City defense to have to worry about one other player on offense, but I would argue it made Tannehill play better.

Giving the ball to Henry ten times more a game also creates a better opportunity for Henry to break away for a 68-yard touchdown run. Oh wait, that’s exactly what happened. I wonder why that is. Maybe because when he’s used appropriately, he can be really good.

In fact, Henry finished the day with 188 yards and two touchdowns. Henry had a heck of a day on Sunday against a very good Chiefs defense. I hope the coaching staff realizes this and plans to use Henry more often in the future.

There aren’t very many defenses that have the ability to consistently stop Henry. The Titans have some decent defenses coming up, so they need to take advantage of those defenses and run Henry.

After the big win, the Titans will now get a week off to rest and get ready for back-to-back division matchups that could decide the Titans’ playoff fate.