The New England Patriots and the Baltimore Ravens couldn’t come up with an answer to a Tennessee Titans ground attack centered around Derrick Henry.
But the Kansas City Chiefs brought the former Alabama rusher to a halt on Sunday, recording a 35-24 AFC Championship Game win in Arrowhead Stadium, while limiting Henry to just 69 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Frank Clark knew the Chiefs couldn’t let Henry be dominant, and rehashed that in an expletive-filled postgame interview.
“(The Titans) come in here, they say they’re gonna run the ball. I know exactly what they were gonna do, you watching that film, you know what they’re going to do,” he told reporters. “The last two games, (Henry) had 200 yards each game, I knew damn well we weren’t gonna win the game if we let that happen. They come in here, call him the best rusher in the league. We sending his (expletive) home early.”
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There are a couple things wrong with this.
For one, Henry is the best rusher in the league — and it’s not a matter of opinion, but rather a matter of numbers.
Henry finished out the regular season with the NFL’s rushing title, totaling 1,540 yards on the ground and 16 rushing touchdowns.
Secondly, Clark hardly got a hand on Henry, though you’d think based on his talk alone that he had stopped the rusher all by himself.
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Clark also hurt his team with a costly encroachment penalty on a third-and-7, making things much easier for Ryan Tannehill, who then hit receiver Adam Humphries on the following play.
Clark and his defense undoubtedly got the job done and were the better team on Sunday, but four tackles – only one of which was solo – and a sack on Ryan Tannehill in the final minutes of the game when the Titans had already lost don’t really warrant this type of behavior.