Tennessee Titans: Ryan Tannehill, not Derrick Henry, must be the star

Derrick Henry has carried the Tennessee Titans to the AFC Championship Game but Ryan Tannehill finally needs to be the star against the Chiefs.

Over the past couple of seasons, Tennessee Titans running back Derrick Henry has established himself as a player that comes on strong at the end of the year. He continued that trend in a playoff-clinching Week 17 effort against the Texans, rushing for 211 yards and three touchdowns, an effort that also gave him the NFL rushing title. The question was if he could keep it rolling in the 2020 NFL Playoffs.

Now in the AFC Championship Game, Henry has answered those questions emphatically. In the Wild Card win over the Patriots, Henry was dominant with 34 carries for 182 yards and a touchdown along with 22 receiving yards. That kept on against Baltimore with the back rushing for 195 yards on 30 carries and also throwing a touchdown pass.

With a trip to the Super Bowl now hanging in the balance, the legend of Henry has continued to grow. And considering that the Titans are facing the Kansas City Chiefs, a team that Henry put up 188 yards on in Week 10 of the regular season, it’s reasonable to expect him to continue that. However, he won’t be the biggest X-factor against Kansas City.

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Instead, it’s Ryan Tannehill‘s time to shine.

The narrative around Tannehill has turned on its head this season. After mulling away on bad-to-mediocre Dolphins teams, the Titans traded a late-round pick for him this past offseason. And after a 2-4 start with Marcus Mariota at quarterback and leading a stagnant offense, head coach Mike Vrabel made the change and gave Tannehill the ball. Both he and the team never looked back.

Tannehill led Tennessee to a 7-3 record over the final 10 games of the regular season and, obviously, has been at the helm for their two playoff wins this year. Having said that, Tannehill has not been asked to do all that much. He’s completed only 15 passes combined in the two victories and has just 160 yards, though he does have three passing scores and a rushing touchdown.

What the Titans have excelled at while beating New England and Baltimore, though, is controlling the game. Their defense has come up big with terrific gameplans to neutralize their opponent, thus allowing them to put the ball in Henry’s hands and let him own the clock and the game flow. Tannehill has been asked simply to make plays when necessary, hence his limited production.

Having said that, the Chiefs are a different animal entirely. While Lamar Jackson is the likely MVP, his supporting cast leaves a lot to be desired — and the Patriots offense was their Achilles heel all year. Kansas City, on the other hand, has weapons everywhere you look.

Patrick Mahomes is the reigning MVP and has elite weapons in Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce, both of whom pose matchup nightmares given their physical tools. Meanwhile, guys such as Sammy Watkins, Mecole Hardman and Damien Williams have explosive ability to change the game with one play. Frankly, it’s the most difficult task Vrabel and his staff will have had to gameplan for.

While the Titans won the regular-season matchup against the Chiefs, Mahomes was not fully healthy and neither was Hill, the offensive line or the heart of the defense. That’s not the case for the AFC Championship, though. Subsequently, it becomes far less likely that Tennessee will be able to dominate the game flow as emphatically as they have in the postseason to this point.

The result of that is the Titans won’t be able to just ride Henry to the Super Bowl. Yes, he may have a big day still but Tannehill is going to have to make more plays than he has at any point in the playoffs yet if Tennessee is going to return to the Big Game for the first time in two decades.

While Tannehill isn’t Mahomes, he’s proven more than capable of making big plays and stepping up when asked since taking the reins of the Tennessee offense. He had six regular-season outings with at least 250 yards passing, three with 300+ yards and multiple touchdown passes in all but one of his 10 starts on the year.

Armed with weapons that pose their own matchup problems, such as A.J. Brown, Corey Davis, Jonnu Smith and even someone like Kalif Raymond, Tannehill has shown the ability to make plays. And if Henry is effective when he does get the rock, that becomes even more possible for Tannehill as the play-action attack will open up in a major way against an up-and-down Chiefs defense.

Put simply, no one should doubt Tannehill for how little he’s had to do in the playoffs because he’s shown what he’s able to do throughout the regular season this year. Having said that, the AFC Championship will put him in the spotlight.

If the Titans are going to advance to Super Bowl LIV, it’s not going to be by the same recipe that got them to this game in their playoff run. They will not just need another good-to-great game from Henry but they will need their quarterback to step up and be the game-changer that he was for this team in the regular season. And if he shines in the biggest moment yet, the city of Nashville can prepare to pack their bags for Miami as they can surely pull off another huge upset.