Mike Vrabel Answers The Age Old Question: How Many 5-Year-Olds Would It Take To Tackle Derrick Henry?

Earlier this spring, Blaiden Kirk posed a question on Twitter that completely derailed our day in the Uproxx Sports Slack room as we debated how many 5-year-olds it would take to tackle Derrick Henry.

It’s a question that can only be answered once a number of other questions are asked, such as: Does Derrick Henry have a conscience about possibly killing 5-year-olds by stomping them and/or stiff-arming them straight to hell? Are these just average 5-year-olds picked at random or are we hand-picking the biggest, strongest 5-year-olds who already have the motor skills to play sports? What is the amount of space Henry has to operate and thus the ground these 5-year-olds have to cover?

This week at Titans training camp, someone set out to get the answer straight from the people who know Henry best, and learned that head coach Mike Vrabel likewise has a lot of these same questions he needs answered before he can put a number on it beyond “a shit ton.”

Ultimately, Vrabel lands on 35 children being able to bring down Henry provided it’s a 10 yard box Henry has to stay in. He does note some may die in the process. Offensive lineman Aaron Brewer thinks the number should be closer to 200, while saying when he was 5 he absolutely would’ve been interested in trying and would’ve been gunning for Henry’s ankles.

I think Brewer’s answer is closer to correct if Henry has a full football field to operate, and honestly, is probably shy of the actual number because he’s going to outrun them and children are easily duped by simply changing direction and reversing the field because they are five and thus have no football IQ like understanding the concepts of tackling angles or weakside contain. Vrabel’s 10-yard box is a provocative thought exercise because it’s basically asking how many it’d take to bring Henry down in an Oklahoma drill, and 35 might be right just simply because he’ll at some point trip over one in a confined space. We will probably never know, although Vrabel does seem open to setting this up at practice provided the guy asking the question has to participate and get trucked by Henry too.