As potentially unbreakable NFL records go, the all-time rushing mark seems to be one of the most untouchable.
If any current player has a chance to get close enough to make things interesting, it’s Ravens running back Derrick Henry.
He’s the active leading rusher, with 11,423 yards. That puts him at 19th on the list, already ahead of Hall of Famers like John Riggins, O.J. Simpson, Earl Campbell, Jim Taylor, Larry Csonka, and Terrell Davis.
In the early weeks of the 2025 season, Henry will leapfrog Steven Jackson and Fred Taylor. Barring serious injury, Henry likely will finish 2025 in the top 10.
Here’s the real question. How high will he go? He’s 2,628 yards away from the top six, and 3,495 away from the top five.
And the Emmitt Smith record of 18,355 yards is a mere 6,932 yards away.
Yes, Henry (now 31) will need several more years of high-end performance to get there. That said, he has shown no sign of slowing down. While the end can come quickly (and Father Time remains undefeated), maybe Henry is the outlier — like Emmitt was.
Smith played through the year in which he turned 35, generating 937 rushing yards in his final season. Henry is 5.5 seasons away from catching Smith, based on Henry’s average of 1,269 yards per season.
He had 1,921 yards last year, at 30. He’s playing with a generational quarterback, whose mere presence makes it easier for Henry to find daylight.
It won’t be easy. But here’s the point. It’s never really been a serious consideration that Henry could catch Emmitt.
Maybe it should be. And Emmitt would be fine with that; he told us several years ago at the Super Bowl that he wishes Walter Payton would have been alive to congratulate Emmitt when he broke Payton’s record. Put simply, Emmitt wants to be able to shake the hand of the person who breaks his record.
While it’s hardly anything close to a lock, there’s a non-zero chance that Emmitt will eventually be shaking Derrick Henry’s hand. Much of it will depend on the rest of Henry’s body will defy the hourglass long enough to keep running through, over, and around defenders.
In his first year with the Baltimore Ravens, running back Derrick Henry did more than enough to earn a better deal than the $7 million he was due to make in 2025.
On Monday morning, he officially got his reward.
Per a source with knowledge of the terms, here’s the full breakdown of Henry’s new three-year deal, which was signed earlier today:
1. Signing bonus: $11.745 million.
2. 90-man roster bonus: $1 million, fully guaranteed.
3. 2025 base salary: $1.255 million, fully guaranteed.
4. 2026 option bonus: $9.7 million, fully guaranteed.
5. 2026 base salary: $1.3 million, fully guaranteed.
6. 2027 90-man roster bonus: $1 million.
7. 2027 base salary: $11 million.
It’s a two-year, $30 million extension and a three-year, $37 million deal. Of the amount, $25 million is fully guaranteed at signing.
The decision point will come in early 2027, when the Ravens will owe $1 million in a non-guaranteed roster bonus, followed by an $11 million salary. On January 4, 2027, Henry turns 34.
He’s still going very strong beyond his 30th birthday. And he’s showing no sign of slowing down. It made the Ravens willing to replace the $8 million he was due to make in 2025 with a two-year, $25 million commitment that has every penny fully guaranteed at signing.
The Titans did a lot of research on quarterback Cam Ward leading up to the draft and that means they also did a lot of research on wide receiver Xavier Restrepo.
Restrepo caught 69 passes for 1,127 yards and 11 touchdowns while playing with Ward at Miami last season and they got further looks at him at workouts after the season, which gave them even more insight into a player who was an All-American. Restrepo wound up going undrafted after running a poor 40 at the Scouting Combine and the Titans signed him after the end of the seventh round.
Head coach Brian Callahan acknowledged that the 40 time “matters,” but that “you see this speed that he plays with when he plays” and that bought him a chance to make it in Tennessee. Ward believes his college teammate will make the most of it.
“I was real excited when [the Titans] signed X,” Ward said, via the team’s website. “He’s somebody who was deserving of it. He’s worked hard every day. He is one of the most underrated players that was in the draft this year. I think every time he steps on the field, he remembers everything, and he is going to continue to prove it. He was one of the best route runners in college football last year, he is first team All-conference, he is All-American, he never lost in man coverage. He is a back-to-back 1,000-yard receiver, so why wouldn’t you push for him?”
The Titans signed Van Jefferson and Tyler Lockett before drafting a pair of receivers to go with the returning Calvin Ridley, so Restrepo has an uphill climb ahead of him. Chemistry with Ward won’t hurt his bid, though, and preseason action should show how much of a chance he has to stick into September.
The Titans used the No. 1 overall pick on quarterback Cam Ward. Yet, the Titans are one of only three teams not to have a primetime game.
NFL Vice President of Broadcast Planning and Scheduling Mike North explained the league’s reasoning for shutting out the Titans.
“We kind of have this adage that you play your way into primetime,” North told Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports. “You don’t draft your way into primetime. So the Titans are one of the teams that don’t currently have a national television window assigned. But that’s what things like flexible scheduling are for. And if you look down the stretch for the Titans, they play San Francisco in Week 15, Kansas City in Week 16. They’ve got the same opportunity every other team has to play their way into a national window.”
That’s all well and good, but the past two No. 1 overall picks — Bryce Young with Carolina in 2023 and Caleb Williams with Chicago in 2024 — had multiple night games as rookies despite both their teams coming off 7-10 seasons.
The last No. 1 overall pick not to have a primetime game was edge rusher Myles Garrett with Cleveland in 2017.
The last quarterback drafted No. 1 overall not to have a primetime game as a rookie was Cam Newton with Carolina in 2011.
Once upon a time, every team played at least once in prime time. More recently, every team played one — and only one — Thursday game after playing on Sunday.
While it forced fans to hold their noses and watch (or not watch) games like Titans-Jaguars on a Thursday night in December, it created some degree of equity and balance when it came to the demands placed on the various teams.
In recent years, that’s gone out the window. And for good reason. Better prime-time games featuring more attractive teams lead to bigger audiences. Bigger audiences allow broadcast partners to justify the massive rights fees they pay — and it seeds the soil for even larger rights fees the next time packages are available for bidding.
The new approach, with certain teams being overloaded by prime-time and other standalone games and multiple teams (this year, the Browns, Titans, and Saints) being treated like Michael Scott’s neon beer sign, creates a competitive imbalance.
“Certainly the better teams probably end up finding themselves more widely represented in the television windows, and therefore get out of the routine,” NFL V.P, of broadcast planning and scheduling Mike North said during a Thursday conference all with reporters. “The Chiefs, for instance, have been playing five, six, seven prime-time games, playing seemingly every day of the week. It doesn’t seem to have hurt them. So, yeah, that’s what comes with success.
North attributed the dynamic to a “constant balancing act” of “trying to figure out [how to] feed the fans, feed our broadcast partners with the games and the teams they want to see.” He said there’s “always . . . an eye towards competitive inequities, but it doesn’t seem to have hurt to the Chiefs.”
But the selection of prime-time games isn’t only about imposing on the teams that have been good. The process entails making a guess as to whether a team will be good, or at least interesting, regardless of whether the team has a history of playing well enough to deserve the burden.
Last year, for example, the Jets had seven standalone games in the first 11 weeks, including two Sunday-Thursday short weeks. The Jets got the chronically short straw, even though they haven’t been to the playoffs since 2010. At the time, North justified giving the Jets the scheduling business by explaining that the Jets “kind of owe us one” after Aaron Rodgers’s Week 1 season-ending Achilles tear made their 2023 prime-time games far less attractive.
In 2024, Rodgers started every game during the gauntlet, and beyond. And the Jets went 5-12.
This year, the Cowboys have six prime-time games (and a record four Thursday games) despite not making the playoffs in 2024 and, given their schedule, unlikely to do so in 2025. Likewise, a pair of non-playoff teams who aren’t currently regarded as short-list contenders — the Dolphins and Falcons — have been tabbed for FIVE prime-time games each. (Both teams also have an early-morning standalone European game.)
The league apparently is making a bet that Miami and Atlanta will be good. Having six standalone games could help make that a self-defeating prophecy.
The league also expects that the Titans, Browns, and Saints will be not too good. And it will be not bad for them to have the routine and normalcy that comes from playing most of their games at 1:00 p.m. ET on Sundays. (The Browns will play a standalone game in London.)
Two years ago, the Texans played 16 games at 1:00 p.m. ET, before landing on Saturday night for the de facto AFC South championship game against the Colts. Houston parlayed their low profile into a very unexpected playoff berth.
This year, don’t be surprised if the Titans make a run at the same accomplishment. Overlooked and disregarded (just like No. 1 overall pick Cam Ward was during the draft), the Titans can quietly go about their business, stack wins, and get themselves into postseason contention.
And then pay they’ll pay the piper with plenty of prime-time games in 2026. It’ll be better to do it that way, than to play well enough to not make the playoffs, but to catch the league’s eye when it’s time to make out next year’s schedule.
