Prospect Profile: Darrell Henderson

DARRELL HENDERSON -- RB, MEMPHIS 

Michael DeMocker, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

Physical Measurables & Athletic Profile

Before the Combine, I wrote that Darrell Henderson would need to add 5-10 pounds to his 5'9, 200 pound frame in order to profile as a lead runner in the NFL, and then he did just that, coming in at 208 pounds and just over 5'8. That denser build is huge for his potential role: instead of looking like Ronnie Hillman or Austin Ekeler, he resembles pro workhorses like Ray Rice and Devonta Freeman. In addition to opening Henderson up to better comps, his Combine size makes him statistically more likely to receive a sizable workload in the NFL: players in his pounds per inch range (3.03-3.05) carry the ball an average of 35 more times per 16 games than players in the pounds per inch range he was previously thought to be in (2.89-2.91). 

Athletically, Henderson was a bit of a disappointment to me at the Combine. His performance on the bench was good, and the strength he showed there reenforces his ability to handle lead-back touches  -- Power Score combines body type, lower-body explosiveness, and upper-body strength into a metric that indicates a player's proclivity for a large rushing workload, and Henderson's 49.2 score is comparable to RBs like Maurice Jones-Drew, Mark Ingram, Kerryon Johnson, and Ahmad Bradshaw -- but he didn't test as explosively as he looked on tape, and while his 4.49 40-yard dash time is good, it's a bit slower than I anticipated for a guy whose bread-and-butter in college was the breakaway run. Henderson's athleticism is not a huge red flag for his professional prospects (guys like Nick Chubb and Leonard Fournette have no problem ripping off long runs with 4.51 and 4.52 speed, respectively), but I'd feel a lot more comfortable with projecting him for success if his ridiculous college production was backed up by elite measurables. Hopefully we get to see him test in the agility drills at his pro day, but for now, he's just a decent athlete.

Production Profile

Based on age-adjusted production thresholds using market share of team rushing yards (for players with at least one PPR RB2 season in the NFL), Darrell Henderson broke out in his sophomore season at age 19:

Tool from @theDude_Z with data courtesy of @pahowdy

Henderson enters the NFL Draft with the 6th-highest final-year Dominator Rating in the 2019 class of RBs. Part of an offense that averaged 532 yards and the nation's 7th-highest scoring output of 42.9 points per game, Henderson posted a monstrous 25 TDs and 2204 yards from scrimmage in 2018. While he finished 2nd in the country in rushing yards, his team-adjusted production metrics are not as impressive as his counting stats. His 31.6% Dominator Rating is above the 10-year average for drafted RBs, but it is "only" in the 64th-percentile; you'd like to see a non-major conference player not only be the main piece of his team's offensive production, but completely dominate it. For reference, Jay Ajayi, Chris Johnson, and Aaron Jones came into the NFL with Dominator Ratings of 41.3%, 42.5%, and 47.0%, respectively. 

Henderson was also a competent, though not featured, receiving option out of the Memphis backfield during his college career. While he posted at least 19 catches in every season in college and finished his freshman and sophomore campaigns with 80th-percentile Satellite Scores, his most productive college season saw his Satellite Score plummet to just the 17th percentile. Considering that wild fluctuation in Satellite Score, I'm more inclined to trust his relatively consistent target share numbers. They indicate receiving ability that is a functional but not elite aspect of Henderson's game in the NFL. 

*note: target numbers in 2016 are not available (as far as I know, I'd love to see them if they are) and are therefore estimated using 2016 reception total and 2017-18 catch rates. 

Rushing Efficiency

Darrell Henderson is simply on a different level as a breakaway runner compared to the other class of '19 backs. He and Ohio State tailback Mike Weber are alone at the top in Chunk Rate Over Team (measuring a player's rate of 10+ yard runs over the rest of his team's rate), ripping off 10+ yard chunks at clips more than 10% higher than the rest of their teammates. Henderson is even more impressive in Breakaway Rate Over Team, going for 20+ yards on 7.88% more of his carries than the rest of the Memphis ballcarriers -- the next closest BROT in the class is Ryquell Armstead's 3.48%, less than half of Henderson's figure. Even removing long runs, though, Henderson was an efficient runner in college, ranking 6th in the class with a 4.40 True YPC average (True YPC discounts all long runs to a maximum of 10 yards). Like most of the other smaller backs in the class, Henderson had a higher-than-average rate of carries that lost yards. 

data from cfbstats.com and expandtheboxscore.com

Henderson's efficiency speaks well to his abilities as a runner, especially in the second level of defenses. He won't be the ridiculous, Chris Johnson-level breakaway runner in the NFL that he was at Memphis, but he has enough speed and open-field vision to continue to do damage in the secondary. 

Similarity Scores & Overall Outlook

Darrell Henderson's Combine weigh-in results in some quality backs added to his lists of closest comps, especially in the 3-Down Profile matches:

That particular comparison, which seeks to match players who profile similarly based on size and receiving ability, includes all-purpose backs like Ray Rice and Melvin Gordon, good news for a guy in Henderson who looked like somewhat of a one-dimensional tweener entering the Combine; the precedent is there for runners with his body type and skillset to be lead backs in the NFL. 

While Henderson didn't blow us away in his athletic testing, it's encouraging that there are very effective players in his list of closest Athletic and Physical comps. Joe Mixon is a near-elite all-purpose player, while Chris Thompson is one of the better satellite backs in the league. Clearly guys with the athletic profile of a Darrell Henderson can be strong contributors against NFL competition. 

The Path to Success comp is one that compares a given player to all RBs in the database with at least one RB2-level half PPR season on their resumé, in order to give an idea of what success for a prospect might like (as well as how likely that success is, according to the Similarity Scores). Henderson's closest matches here make a lot of sense intuitively. While I'm not sure Henderson has the wiggle to evade tacklers that guys like Ray Rice, Melvin Gordon, and DeAngelo Williams have had (hopefully agility testing at his pro day will shed some light on that), he looks a lot like a smaller version of former 1200-yard rusher and 50-catch receiver Ryan Mathews (and he's certainly a more talented player than BenJarvus Green-Ellis). 

Overall, I think Darrell Henderson is a fine-but-not-elite prospect who will be a dynamic committee runner and kick returner at the least and a Ryan Mathews-level starter who can put together a Pro Bowl season or two in the right situation. He's a bit bigger, but I could see him finding a similar niche to Tevin Coleman, a limited but talented player who is more suited to one half of a 1-2 punch than the lead role that fantasy gamers want for him. While his volume and efficiency numbers at Memphis were gaudy, I'm not sure Henderson was quite dominant enough in a non-major football conference, or quite athletic enough at the Combine, or quite the receiver you'd like from a smaller back, for me to really love him as a prospect and rank him as a solid top-3 guy in this class. To me, he's in that next tier of guys, a borderline top-5 runner in the class and a guy I'd probably feel comfortable taking in the late-1st or early-2nd round of a rookie draft, given a good landing spot. He doesn't have the elite speed he hinted at on film and he doesn't have the special receiving skills to be a team's main satellite back, but I think he's enough of an athlete and has enough of a jack-of-all-trades skillset to be a good contributor in an offense with other quality talent around him. He's not Chris Johnson, and he's not the producer Aaron Jones was at UTEP -- and that's ok. 

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