Derrick Henry and James White: A Tale of Two Extremes
David and Goliath. Chris Johnson and LenDale White. Niall Quinn and Kevin Phillips. Something about big/small pairings just resonates in we humans.
Derrick Henry is an archetypical big man running back. He’s the size of a house and his game is built around power. James White is the opposite. He’s small and agile and he makes people miss rather than running over them.
This article is about the contrast between them – but also the similarities with where they are right now.
Henry is entering his fourth season in the NFL with a ton of hype. He is 6’3” and 247 pounds of bad intentions. He won the 2015 Heisman Trophy at Alabama built on a college career of smashing runs and broken tackles.
After entering the NFL as the 45th pick in 2016, he was a little underwhelming for his first two seasons with just 310 touches combined (he had 406 in his last college season), 1,507 yards and 11 touchdowns.
In 2018 he managed 230 touches, 1,158 yards, and 12 scores and many think he’s primed to go into 2019 as a breakout, workhorse back.
White, on the other hand, is very much unlike Henry. He’s just 5′ 9” and 204 pounds, giving up six inches and 43 pounds to Henry.
He had nowhere near the success as Henry did as a college athlete although he did play on some good Wisconsin teams. As a result, he fell all the way to the fourth round of the 2014 Draft, and few expected much of him.
His career in New England started slowly, and he managed just 76 offensive touches in his first two years combined. Since then though, he’s become the Patriots’ best receiving back and averaged 126 touches, over 800 yards, and seven touchdowns while going to three consecutive Super Bowls.
So, the two players are very different. 2018 is where they start to come together though. In 2018, Henry managed 1,158 offensive yards with White on 1,176. Both scored 12 touchdowns. Given their extremely similar production last year, shouldn’t they be valued similarly? They’re only two years apart in age (White is 27, Henry 25) but they are thought of very differently with Henry valued a lot higher in dynasty leagues. Let’s dive into why this is.
As most people know, how they compiled those stats is very different. This chart shows that Henry was used primarily as an early-down rusher in 2018 while White was a much more flexible and versatile player.
Henry had 215 rushes and 18 targets. White managed just 94 rushes but did have 116 targets. Henry had more volume but targets are worth more than carries in fantasy football as they provide more yards as well as PPR.
Many people think that because of their physique and skills, they are used in different ways. These two charts show the gaps which both players were run through in 2018 (along with rushing yards per gap):
So if you thought Henry was a bruising, inside runner and White was a shifty guy who ran off tackle, you were wrong. They actually ran similarly. This doesn’t account for run concepts and the use of power or draws varied for them but this is still interesting.
The following chart shows how much each back was used by down.
Henry saw 95% of his targets and carries on early downs whereas White was down on 78%. This is a significant difference because third downs tend to be (slightly) more productive than early downs.
The next chart shows their scoring rate against all RBs in 2018. Henry is the dark blue dot. White is the red one.
Both of them were very efficient for their touches and should expect regression next season in efficiency. They could both feasibly score 12 TDs again but they’d likely need more touches to do so.
In terms of relative value, here’s how their ADP has been tracking. This data can be accessed via the DLF ADP tool.
For the last 18 months, White has been consistently valued below Henry aside from two months at the start of last season when White was consistently producing and Henry was not. And even now, White is trending clearly down whilst Henry is trending up.
And here are their career game logs (regular season only) for yards from scrimmage.
As you can see, White has been steady, consistently recording around 100 yards from scrimmage week in and week out. Meanwhile, Henry has had a long litany of bad games – with two huge games at the end of last season.
So that begs the question – can Henry keep producing like he did last year? Or was it just a weird few weeks?
To answer that, we need to know why Henry suddenly exploded. Did he suddenly get better? Or the team figured out how to use him? Neither really. The main answer is just that they were playing bad teams and used him more.
In the two huge games he had, the Titans beat the Jacksonville Jaguars 30-9 (the Jags were 4-9 going into the game and well out of contention) and the New York Giants 17-0 (5-9 and also well out of contention). In the other two games, they played the 5-10 Washington Redskins (Henry had 21 carries as they won 25-16) and lost to the Indianapolis Colts in week 17 in what was effectively a knockout game.
So, what can we expect going forward? According to current DLF rankings, Henry is the 25th most valuable back to own. White is the 32nd. But in ADP terms, Henry is going at 42 (around Cooper Kupp, Sammy Watkins, and Aaron Jones) with White at 93 (next to Tevin Coleman, Noah Fant, and Robby Anderson). This feels like a major discrepancy.
Over at Pro Football Focus (using PPR scoring) Henry is projected to be the 25th best RB in 2019. White is the RB16. In non-PPR, Henry is at 15 with White at 25. So, depending on your scoring system, either of them could be better than the other. Let’s call that a push.
So, we’ve got two backs with very similar recent production and fairly similar projected 2019 production, but one has all the hype in the world, and one seems to be very undervalued. These two players may both be labeled running backs, but they could not be more extreme in how they’re currently being seen by dynasty owners.
The easy action to take is simply to buy James White but it’s more than that. We need to start delving deeper into players and not just looking at total points and ADP as guidelines.
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