Derrick Henry Can Hijack the AFC Super Bowl Race for the Tennessee Titans

It's happening again. 

At this time last year, Tennessee Titans running back Derrick Henry established himself as one of the most dominant and impactful offensive players in the league when he heated up and carried the Titans all the way to the AFC Championship Game. 

In the eight games leading up to that late-January tilt with the eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, Henry compiled an unbelievable 1,344 scrimmage yards and 11 touchdowns. 

One year later, the bruising Alabama product is again tearing it up during the home stretch for a first-place Titans squad that continues to be overlooked because it isn't a flashy team from a major market. 

After rushing for 215 yards and two touchdowns in a 31-10 Week 14 victory over the feisty division-rival Jacksonville Jaguars, Henry now has 586 rushing yards and six touchdowns in his last four games. It was also his fourth game with 130-plus rushing yards since Week 6 and his eighth 100-plus-yard game of the year. 

No other player in the AFC has more than two 130-yard rushing performances all year, and no other player in the NFL has more than seven 100-yard games. 

At the age of 26, Henry just moved ahead of Hall of Famers Jim Brown, Barry Sanders and LaDainian Tomlinson to become the first player in NFL history with four 200-plus-yard, two-plus-touchdown games as a rusher. 

Three of those performances have come in his last 14 regular-season games. 

It's such a quarterback-driven league that the Super Bowl race is often framed by comparisons of Patrick Mahomes, Ben Roethlisberger, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson in the AFC and Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Russell Wilson and Tom Brady in the NFC, but Henry is such a force that he has game- and race-changing ability even at a significantly devalued position. 

Yes, the Chiefs are 12-1 and they held Henry in check in that 2019 conference title game. But Kansas City's last five wins have all come by six or fewer points over opponents with worse records than Tennessee. And a Kansas City run defense that ranked 26th in DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average at Football Outsiders) last year has been even worse in 2020 with a 30th rank in that metric. 

It's worth noting that when Tennessee and Kansas City met in the regular season last year, Henry rushed for 188 yards and two touchdowns in a Titans victory. 

A cacophonous Arrowhead Stadium was undoubtedly also a factor when the Chiefs overcame a double-digit-point deficit to beat Tennessee in last year's playoffs, but with attendance limited by the COVID-19 pandemic, three of Kansas City's last four home games have been decided by a single score. 

"This year especially, with no fans, the home-field advantage is really going to be out the window," Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians said recently, per Greg Auman of The Athletic. "It's just going to be lining up and playing in empty stadiums. What has been a big, big part of the playoffs in the past is home-field advantage, [but] I don't think it's going to be an advantage this year. It's just a matter of getting in."

Stephen B. Morton/Associated Press

Meanwhile, Henry has gone over 100 yards in nine consecutive regular-season road games and also tore up the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens away from home in last year's playoffs. Altogether, 64 percent of the 110-plus-yard performances in his career have come outside of Nashville. 

Partly as a result, the Titans are 10-1 in their last 11 road games outside of that January visit to K.C. under extremely different circumstances. 

That all bodes well for Tennessee's chances of making a run despite the fact that it will almost certainly have to go on the road at least once in January. Henry won't be afraid of that Chiefs run defense in a near-empty Arrowhead Stadium, and he won't likely be scared of a Pittsburgh Steelers team that has been hit hard by injuries in the defensive front seven (no Devin Bush Jr. or Bud Dupree, and no Robert Spillane for now) and hasn't defeated a team that currently has more than two wins by more than a handful of points since the middle of October. 

Those two are the most likely candidates to host the Titans if they win the AFC South and reach the divisional playoffs. And realistically, the chances are in favor of Tennessee playing both on the road in January if it can beat one or the other after a wild-card victory at home. 

For what it's worth, the AFC's other division leader, the Buffalo Bills, also had a below-par run defense in terms of DVOA through 13 weeks. Ditto for the Cleveland Browns and Miami Dolphins, both of whom are currently in the wild-card picture. Among teams in AFC playoff positions right now, only the Steelers possess a top-10 run D using that metric. 

So the path is as clear as imaginable for Henry to set the tone in the AFC Super Bowl race despite the fact he's not Mahomes, Allen, Roethlisberger or even Ryan Tannehill, although it doesn't hurt that the Titans quarterback was the league's sixth-highest-rated passer before completing all but five of 24 passes in another strong performance Sunday.

The way Henry is running, with current dynamics in place in the AFC, the Titans can do this. 

Brad Gagnon has covered the NFL for Bleacher Report since 2012. Follow him on Twitter: @Brad_Gagnon.