The record holder is not dismissing it
Emmitt Smith has watched Derrick Henry climb the all-time rushing list and decided the chase is real. Speaking via DraftKings, the Hall of Famer said he considers it possible that Henry passes his mark, pointing to Henry’s size, his condition and the care he takes of his body.
Smith then produced the detail that sticks. Henry already took one of his records, the Florida high school rushing mark Smith set long before Dallas, the Super Bowls and any of the rest of it. A teenager out of Yulee erased it, and Smith clearly filed the memory away.
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Sunday served as another reminder
Henry, now 32, ran for 144 yards and three touchdowns in Baltimore’s 41-23 win over Indianapolis last weekend. At 6-foot-3 and 252 pounds he remains the heaviest problem in the league for any defence asked to bring him down in the fourth quarter.
His career total sits at 13,162 yards across 154 games with Tennessee and Baltimore. The former Heisman winner has five Pro Bowl selections behind him and, judged against the usual lifespan of the position, an unusual amount of tread left on the tyres.
The arithmetic stays brutal
Smith finished on 18,355 yards, most of them with the Cowboys before a closing stint in Arizona. Henry needs 5,193 more to reach him.
Break that down and it means four seasons at 1,300 yards, carrying Henry to 36, or three at 1,730, a rate almost nobody sustains at any age. Henry has cleared 1,500 in a season before. He has also been written off before. Neither fact decides this one.
What Smith offered was an opinion that the door remains open, which is further than most people will go about a running back in his thirties.
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