TITANS VS BILLS
Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2020
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Q. How is this team able to come out and turn in this performance after not playing for two weeks, only getting a practice and a half in after everything you'd had gone through?
DERRICK HENRY: Yeah, you just said it. I mean, we love ball, love playing together. We just missed doing that. You know, throughout the process we were just ready to get back. Glad the NFL and the whole organization was able to work something out so we were safe to be able to play. It's a good team and a good opponent tonight and getting the win.
Q. Derrick, what did you think about Ryan today, and it's one year to the day since they made the change at quarterback. What all have you thought about Ryan in the year that he's been the quarterback here?
DERRICK HENRY: Spectacular. Couldn't say enough. I can go on and on and on. Ryan is being Ryan, balling out. He's just different.
Q. Derrick, talk about -- I know the play got called back by a penalty, but talk about what happened on the stiff arm play, because it seems to be a big hit on social media for sure.
DERRICK HENRY: I've been doing too many curls. I've gotta lay off the arms. (Smiling.)
Q. Derrick, I guess you're not, you don't really talk with yourself much, but like what's this past two weeks been like for you specifically? This is a crazy outcome given the circumstances that you guys have gone through.
DERRICK HENRY: I mean, just taking it day by day, working out, doing normal stuff, staying in shape, conditioning. Just waiting to hear what is the plan for us.
As far as us as a team and what we needed to do to be able to get back in the building, by what coach was telling us, you know, praying for my teammates, praying for everybody in the organization that was affected by the coronavirus that they come out healthy and be able to be back with us. So that's all I was doing.
Q. Derrick, you joked you were doing too many curls. In all seriousness, what did you do to stay ready knowing that you were probably going to get a heavy workload today after not being in the building for so long?
DERRICK HENRY: I just work out and run. That's all we really could do, so I just did that until we got an opportunity to go in the building.
Q. Such a weird circumstance. What did you expect in this game? Did you feel like you guys could be ready to play all things considered?
DERRICK HENRY: I mean, I know we all had two weeks off and I know we all love ball, were ready to play. We were going to line up with whoever we had to go out there with and go play -- it's a good team -- and try to win a football game. That was our whole mindset as a team, and that's what we try to go out there and do.
Q. Derrick, I know there were a lot of guys that stepped into various roles today that maybe were more than they expected. I think (Jeremy) McNichols maybe symbolizes that as much as anybody, and he probably didn't have that big a role coming in until Darrynton (Evans) got hurt. What did you think of what he did?
DERRICK HENRY: I thought he did a great job. Any time he gets in there he plays hard. He knows what to do. He plays fast. When he runs, he runs physical. But I think him stepping in there and taking out linebackers and pass blocking which don't go on the stat sheet, nobody really talks about, but that's the type of player he is. He'll get in there and do the dirty work, you know, taking on linebackers one on one and being physical in pass protection. That's how tough of a player he is. He's physical and do whatever he can to help the team.
Q. Derrick, do you feel like this team is a little extra motivated by some of the outside criticisms and playing with even more of a chip on its shoulder?
DERRICK HENRY: I mean, it's been a lot. First time an outbreak like this has happened in the league; unfortunately it was us. But I felt like we did the best job we could. Try to get it handled and under control so we could come out and play football. I think guys were just ready to play. We been off for like I said two weeks, and we were just ready to get back out to ball.
Q. Did you have any kind of conversation with Norman after the game, a quick moment or just that was it?
DERRICK HENRY: No, we didn't talk after the game.
