I rarely knew Derrick Henry to enjoy media dealings. Got to admit, though, that he looked downright jovial in a video with Baltimore Ravens reporters in advance of a first game against his old team.
Henry told them that the Tennessee Titans are “still like family. He's said that “it’s always love.”
“Ain’t going to be much love on Sunday, though,” he added.
This dreaded day was coming eventually. Time won't make it any easier for Titans fans to endure King Henry stiff-arming their team, but most fall Sundays have become painful to watch for Titans fans. Much has happened to this franchise since its divorce with Henry after the 2023 season. Almost none of it has been good. There’s been losses and firings and more losing and more firings and now,
early in the 2026 season – take a wild guess – more losing.
Henry, clearly, has been missed. His exit was a symptom of a weakening franchise, though. It didn't cause the illness.
That'll stay true no matter how often years-old leftovers get shoved into a microwave, as if that'll change anything about Henry's exit or make the topic more digestible around here:
“They didn’t offer (to keep me). Not at all,” Henry told Ravens reporters about the Titans.
Yes, Henry said that to Ravens reporters. You've probably heard. Such a quote was catnip to angry Titans fans looking for another reason to blame this franchise for its own demise.
Fine. These Titans present an easy target. It's just that there's plenty of arrows available without having to resort to revisionist history.
Henry made it sound like he was just waiting breathlessly until the last minute to jump on any dollar amount the heartless Titans bothered to throw at him. That's not how I remember it.
I seem to remember Henry with a microphone at Nissan Stadium after the 2023 season finale, offering a heartfelt goodbye to fans. Pretty sure that's something a star player does when he already knows, long before the start of free agency, that he won't be returning.
Nonetheless, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard it referenced – incorrectly – how the Titans “traded” or “got rid of” Henry. It's an easy way of lumping his exit in with all the other 2022-24 missteps that turned a winning franchise into the chronic loser you still see.
Just to clear up any confusion: The Titans traded A.J. Brown and Kevin Byard. They benched Ryan Tannehill. They got rid of Jon Robinson and Mike Vrabel by firing them.
Henry signed with the Ravens as a free agent.
I do believe him when he says the Titans didn’t make an offer to keep him, though I don’t believe Henry would’ve stayed even if the Titans had made a last-ditch attempt instead of signing Tony Pollard. Henry had already made his peace with he and the Titans moving in different directions.
“And that’s OK. That happens,” Henry said after the 2023 season on former Titans teammate Taylor Lewan’s “Bussin’ With the Boys” podcast. “That’s the nature of the business. We want something to last forever. Nothing does, especially in this business.”
Henry had already telegraphed that he was going to be gone long before he actually departed. It made sense at the time, too, given all that’d transpired during a difficult 2023 season in which:
- The Titans posted their lowest win total – six – of Henry’s eight seasons with the team.
- The Titans' offensive line had been terrible, and Henry was punished for it during a bruising season. His averages of 4.2 yards per carry and 68.6 yards per game remain career-lows for him as a full-time NFL starter, leaving much of the league thinking he'd lost a step, which it was the team, not the player.
- Rumors had persisted since the offseason about the Titans shopping Henry and Tannehill while asking Byard to take a pay cut. This missteps by newly hired GM Ran Carthon hardly endeared him to the key leaders on his team. When Tannehill was benched and Byard got traded, it wasn’t difficult for Henry to tell which way the wind was blowing.
“I knew the writing was on the wall throughout that season, and they were ready to move on,” Henry told Ravens reporters. “Good things don't last forever. So it was time for me to find a new home.”
From the Titans’ perspective, things had grown stale. An offense built around Henry was no longer working. When the Titans fired Vrabel after the season, it removed any lingering hope of Henry returning to play for another coach in the early stages of the Titans' substantial decline.
I’d imagine Henry picked up on that and decided it’d be best to hit the road. Good for him. Obviously, it was a smart move. While the Titans have become the dregs of the NFL without Henry, he has revitalized his career with the Ravens, running for 1,921 yards in 2024 and 1,595 yards last season. He’s off to a solid start, too, in 2026.
Henry will probably run all over these Titans. But it won’t be because of additional motivation to prove someone wrong or make his old franchise pay for doubting him.
He’ll do it because that’s what great players do in the spotlight.
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Derrick Henry's Titans exit wasn't as simple as revisionist history suggests | Estes
