Quote:We'll have to disagree. At no time did Henry every look like the better NFL prospect to me. He basically has the same average per rush as Trent Richardson and Lendale White's average puts Henry's to shame. I'm looking at their last year in college. Yet Trent and White simply didn't have the burst needed to be productive. The difference with Henry is his size and strength may allow him to overcome his lack of burst. Me personally, I wouldn't take him until at least round 4-5.

 

You can't look at just rush average.  Derrick Henry's rush average is significantly better than Adrian Peterson's college rush average.  

 

The issue with Richardson wasn't athletic ability - he had plenty of burst and is a very good athlete.  The issue with him and Lendale was what's in between the ears.  The inability to play within a system and make the right reads combined with the lack of work ethic doomed them.  Trent was an open field runner - if you give him space he can make people look silly.  Unfortunately for him, NFL offensive lines aren't as dominant as his line was at Alabama.

 

Derrick Henry is another stiff big back, but he does have some elusiveness to him.  He has some smoothness which looks like came from Yeldon.  He has the ability to make hard cuts and leave people whiffing (just look at his last game against LSU).  His issue is going to be that he is a build to speed guy.  He can make a guy miss, but he's not fast enough afterwards to make a second guy miss and take advantage.  Like you said, the one thing he has going for him is his rare size.  He isn't just a big back.  He's quite a bit bigger than Steven Jackson big.  We've never seen a running back as big as him that is as highly touted as him.  Normally you say that a back won't be able to bull over NFL defenders the way he did in college, but Derrick Henry will still be bigger than most NFL linebackers and the size of small pass rushers.  Late first.

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