Giants DC Calls Henry 'Modern-Day Jim Brown'

The two-time NFL rushing champion had mixed results against Don Martindale's Baltimore Ravens defense over the past four seasons.

Derrick Henry hasn’t changed the game.

Dating back to Red Grange in the 1920s, NFL teams have looked for running backs with some degree of size, speed and power. If they were easy to find, every team would have – and would feature – one, but the fact is that they don’t come along all that often.

“I always get caught in comparing people and everything else, but he's like our modern-day Jim Brown, I think,” New York Giants defensive coordinator Don “Wink” Martindale said Thursday. “He's just that much different when he has the ball in his hands.

“So, it's a challenge every time he touches it.”

Brown, of course, is a Hall of Famer who led the league in rushing eight times in a nine-year career that began in 1957. He topped 1,200 yards rushing seven times (the regular season was 12 or 14 games when he played), made the Pro Bowl every season and was an All-Pro in all but one. Three times he was named the league’s most valuable player.

At 6-foot-2, 232 pounds, Brown was bigger than most at his position at that time yet still could outrun most defenders.

Henry is 6-foot-3, 247 pounds – massive by today’s running back standards – and is one of only two players in NFL history with two runs of 94 yards or more. He got free for 99 yards against Jacksonville in 2018 and two years later went for 94 yards against Houston. Since the start of the 2017 season, no one has more runs of 10 yards or more.

“We're going to have to have all hands-on deck and do the best job we can of running to the football and gang tackling, and you even see him on plays,” New York head coach Brian Daboll said. “He might have three or four guys on him, and somehow, he squirts through. He's just a unique player. He's very, very good.”

Martindale is in his first season running the defense for the Giants, a team Henry and the Tennessee Titans last faced in 2018, but he is well aware of the challenges Henry presents.

This if the fifth straight year Martindale has been tasked with crafting a scheme to limit the two-time NFL rushing champion. In four years as defensive coordinator with the Baltimore Ravens (2018-21), he faced Henry and the Titans every season – twice in the regular season, twice in the playoffs – with mixed results.

Henry’s 195 yards on 30 carries in the 2019 divisional round against the Ravens is the second-highest playoff rushing total of the last decade. Two years later, though, Henry managed just 40 yards on 18 runs, an average of 2.2 yards per carry that is the worst of Henry’s postseason career.

In the 2018 regular season, Henry ran it just seven times for 21 yards in a 17-0 defeat. In 2020, Henry rushed 28 times for 133 yards in a 30-24 Tennessee victory.

“I mean he's going to do what he does,” Giants cornerback Adoreé Jackson, a teammate of Henry’s from 2017-20, said. “… So, at the end of the day, just put 11 hats to the ball and just try to limit him as much as possible.

“I mean Derrick Henry, that's the top back in the league. Just go out there and play our keys and do what we know how to do and run to the ball.”

While there is no question that Henry is a back that is not seen all the time in the NFL, there is reason to wonder if everyone has seen the last of his dominance. A foot injury ended his 2021 season after nine games and required surgery that left him with a steel plate and some screws in the appendage.

Henry has said that he expects to be at full speed again this season. And that’s exactly how the Giants have prepared this week.

“He's a physical guy,” Martindale said. “And it could be one cut and go. And it can be whatever he wants it to be at certain times. He's just a very talented back.

“… There's a reason why they call Derrick Henry ‘The King’ because he's on the iron throne, for all you Game of Thrones fans. They just game him a raise … and I still don't think they gave him enough.”