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Column: Leonard Fournette-Derrick Henry battle could be an SEC all-timer

John Crist

By John Crist

Published:

Now that the first College Football Playoff Rankings have been released, with undefeated LSU at No. 2 and one-loss Alabama just two spots behind at No. 4, Saturday’s showdown between the two powerhouse programs is the SEC’s game of the year.

Taking center stage will be the primary backs for each offense, as LSU’s Leonard Fournette and Alabama’s Derrick Henry are arguably the two best ball carriers in the country.

With Fournette and Henry both on pace for historic seasons, this could be the premier battle between featured backs the conference has ever seen.

Even a generation later, Georgia’s Herschel Walker and Auburn’s Bo Jackson are considered by many to be the most storied running backs in SEC annals.

With Walker’s career spanning 1980-82 and Jackson’s transcript comprising 1982-85, the two living legends only faced each other once in college.

Walker got the better of Jackson on the scoreboard and on the stat sheet, running 31 times for 177 yards and 2 touchdowns as the No. 1 Bulldogs beat the unranked Tigers 19-14 at Jordan-Hare Stadium. Jackson, just a freshman splitting carries at the time, was held to 58 yards and no scores on 14 attempts.

Fournette vs. Henry will surpass Walker vs. Jackson in at least one regard: Both current backs are headed toward top 10 rushing seasons in conference lore. Fournette, as a matter of fact, is on pace to shatter Walker’s SEC-best mark of 1,891 yards — not including the 84 he had in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day, mind you — set in 1981.

Of the top 25 single-season rushing performances in SEC history, only three times have two faced each other in the same year:

  • 2014: Auburn’s Cameron Artis-Payne vs. Georgia’s Nick Chubb
  • 2013: Auburn’s Tre Mason vs. LSU’s Jeremy Hill
  • 1995: Kentucky’s Moe Williams vs. Tennessee’s Jay Graham

The best of those battles turned out to be Hill vs. Mason — Hill ran 25 times for 184 yards and 3 TDs, while Mason wasn’t far behind with 26, 132 and 2 — although Auburn was still unranked and fell 35-21 to then-No. 6 LSU.

Modern stars, retro styles

While the college game has come to resemble flag football in recent years — spread-option systems emphasizing the aerial attack are now ubiquitous, with playing actual defense sometimes an afterthought — expect the Tigers and Crimson Tide to continually bang bodies between the tackles in true throwback fashion.

Fournette is the clear front-runner for the Heisman Trophy and stating his case as the best Bayou Bengal tailback of all time, while Henry is following in the footsteps of the bruising rushers that Tide coach Nick Saban keeps bringing to Tuscaloosa.

Through seven games, Fournette leads the SEC in yards rushing with 1,352, yards per carry (minimum 100 attempts) with 7.7 and touchdowns with 15. He’s also the nation’s leading rusher by 90 yards over Wyoming’s Brian Hill, who has suited up two more times.

Through eight contests, Henry is second in the conference behind Fournette in all three categories with 1,044 yards rushing, 5.8 yards per attempt and 14 TDs.

According to former LSU star Jacob Hester, who racked up 1,103 yards in 2007, players like Fournette don’t come around very often.

“Everything Fournette does is unique,” Hester told SaturdayDownSouth.com. “He can do anything you need. There’s no back in the country that can run with the power and speed combination that Leonard does. He is a once-in-a-25-year-period type of player.”

Henry, on the other hand, while obviously talented and surely a future pro, is simply the latest Crimson Tide tailback to be all kinds of productive.

“Henry falls in a long line of successful Alabama running backs,” Hester said. “They all seem to be big, physical running backs that are straight downhill runners. He plays similar to Eddie Lacy, Trent Richardson and Mark Ingram, who all had a lot of success running the football for Alabama.”

Both LSU and Alabama run the ball right at defenses, still employing borderline-extinct positions like fullbacks and tight ends as extra blockers up front, but the Tigers have one signature call in particular.

“I think Leonard’s best play against Alabama is going to be LSU’s popular power pitch,” Hester said. “Nobody else in the country runs power quite like LSU. Les Miles and (offensive coordinator) Cam Cameron like to pitch it to the running backs on power to get the ball to them quicker so they get a good view of the play as it develops.

“The power play can start in the A gap but can also hit all the way to the C and D gap. It’s a play where you take what the defense gives you.”

Alabama offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin adds his fair share of spread elements to the running game, particularly jet-sweep action out of the shotgun, but Henry at his finest is a North-and-South pounder.

“I think Henry will do what he’s done all year, and that’s run straight at a defense,” Hester said. “Henry excels at not only the power running plays but also zone runs and zone extra runs with a fullback and a tight end.

“He likes to run downhill and right at you, and with LSU a little banged up on the defensive front, I would think you’ll see a heavy dose of the power runs.”

History, Heisman, SEC immortality at stake

Unlike the Walker-Jackson tilt, which in retrospect is more about what Walker was and what Jackson became, the Fournette-Henry matchup highlights two players in the absolute primes of their careers dominating in a way that few have dominated before.

If Fournette shreds an Alabama rushing defense ranked No. 1 in the SEC and third nationally to keep LSU unbeaten, then the Heisman might as well go ahead and start looking for real estate in Baton Rouge.

However, if Henry outduels his counterpart and puts a blemish on the Tigers’ record — their run D, by the way, is second in the conference and No. 6 in the country — then voters will be forced to consider the head-to-head result.

It may not yet have the ring of Walker vs. Jackson, but Fournette vs. Henry promises to be more memorable than Artis-Payne vs. Chubb, Mason vs. Hill or Williams vs. Graham.

John Crist

John Crist is an award-winning contributor to Saturday Down South.

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