Alabama SI Cover Tournament: Derrick Henry vs. SEC Beware: Alabama Sends An Early Warning

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It's a clash of running backs in the second round of the Alabama SI Cover Tournament and although we haven't included most playoff/season editions in the a 48-field single-elimination bracket, an exception was made for Derrick Henry. 

He did win the Heisman Trophy after all. 

He's up against one of the first big wins of the Nick Saban era at Alabama, a dominating performance against Clemson followed by Glen Coffee saying, "We want other teams to fear us."

(See, the quote is right on the cover). 

Vote on Twitter (@BamaCentral) or Facebook (@AlabamaonSI). The voting goes 24 hours for each matchup and the result added to the original post on BamaCentral.

Second round

Joe Namath Regional

Game 23: Derrick Henry vs. SEC Beware (Glen Coffee) 

Power Broker: Derrick Henry Will Run You Over 

Story headline: Maximum Impact 

Subhead: No back gets more mileage out of brute force than Alabama junior Derrick Henry, who hits the hole like a freight train as he reduces some of the most hallowed rushing records to dust

Excerpt (by Andy Staples): Bobby Ramsey saw the look every day at practice for four seasons. The Yulee (Fla.) High coach also saw it on Friday nights in the fall. Now he sees it when he watches Alabama play. The look, Ramsay says, mixes a hint of fear with heaps of resignation and a trace of dread. No matter whether the player is bound for the NFL or the LSAT, would-be tacklers all appear the same when 6'3", 242-pound junior Derrick Henry takes a handoff and hits the hole: Their shoulders slump, faces sag and bodies tense in anticipation of the collision to come.

"It's more like thrusting yourself into something you know is going to be unpleasant, but you do it anyway," says Ramsay, who coached Henry from 2009 to '12. "Then you're hanging on for dear life. Then you're going back to the huddle thinking, I have to do that again?"

Ramsay knows this look well because three years before Henry broke Herschel Walker's 34-year-old SEC single-season rushing record with 1,986 yards—and counting—to become a Heisman Trophy finalist, he finished his Yulee career with 12,212, crushing Ken (the Sugar Land Express) Hall's 59-year-old national high school mark. Ramsay also knows how a Henry run feels because he stood directly behind the linebackers when the Hornets did full-contact running drills. "The only thing I can equate it to," Ramsay says, "is standing on the sidewalk and a jeep goes by doing 40."

SEC Beware: Alabama Sends an Early Warning

Story headline: The Tide is Turning

Subhead: On an opening weekend that produced a handful of surprises, none was bigger than Alabama's dominance of Clemson

Excerpt (by Austin Murphy): He is this intriguing blend of New Age and Old School. But with kickoff against ninth-ranked Clemson looming last Saturday night in the Georgia Dome, Nick Saban dispensed with the psychobabble and channeled the Bear. "If we're going to win this game," Alabama's glowering second-year coach told his charges, "our defensive line is going to have to whip their offensive line."

Having issued that challenge, the man with the perma-tan watched his D-line, anchored by SUV-sized nose guard Terrence Cody, rise to it. While it was the Tigers who came into this Chick-fil-A College Kickoff with arguably the nation's top tailback tandem in James Davis and C.J. Spiller, 'Bama outrushed Clemson, 239 yards to ... zero.

"Doesn't matter how good they are," noted Crimson Tide linebacker Brandon (Knock You on Yo') Fanney, "if they got no hole to go through."

The 34-10 score barely hints at Alabama's soup-to-nuts domination of a squad thought to be the class of the ACC. It is also an indication that Saban has this storied program on track to return to the grandeur that many of its fans still consider their birthright.

Result

Derrick Henry def. vs. SEC Beware (Glen Coffee), 67.5-32.5 percent