Tae Crowder's hit on Derrick Henry illustrated Giants' run defense

Tae Crowder saw the lane, locked onto his target, lowered his shoulder, and . . . boom!

The Giants linebacker did to running back Derrick Henry what Derrick Henry has done to so many defenders in his career. Not only did Crowder stop him and knock him off his feet, but also Crowder turned the play into an internet meme, the quick and almost unbelievable de-cleating shared thousands and thousands of times.

Crowder even hovered over Henry for a moment to emphasize the ferocity of the hit, staring down at the running back like Ali over Liston, nearly drawing a taunting penalty from the officials.

“Let them call it,” Crowder said in the postgame locker room, adrenaline still pumping from the play and the win when asked if he was worried he might be flagged for an infraction. “We’ll just go line up again.”

The Giants had a right to be amped up about what they accomplished on Sunday. Holding Henry to 82 rushing yards on 21 carries was an achievement. They came into the game thinking that if they could contain the Titans’ running back they could win the game, and they turned out to be right.

“Obviously part of the plan was to go in there and to try to eliminate the big, big runs,” coach Brian Daboll said. “They did a really good job of stopping the run against a very talented player. He had a couple of [runs], but we ended up managing to not give him those 60-yarders.”

Henry's longest rush of the game went for 18 yards. No other carry by Henry was longer than 7 yards.

While the Giants managed to keep Henry from beating them, though, another Titans running back nearly did. More damaging to them was Dontrell Hilliard, a player who looks about half the size of Henry and caught two touchdown passes — one of them against Crowder in coverage. He had more yards per touch (12.8 yards) than any other running back in the game . . . including Saquon Barkley.

It was an alarming breach of the defense because while Henry is a unicorn with unique size and skill, Hilliard has many other players comparable to him in the league. One of them, Carolina's Christian McCaffrey, is the back the Giants face in Week 2.

McCaffrey was held to 57 all-purpose yards on 14 touches Sunday against the Browns and largely ignored in the game plan until the Panthers’ comeback to take the lead in the fourth quarter before they lost on a last-second field goal. Offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo is unlikely to make that mistake again and will almost certainly want to unleash his best player against the Giants, especially after seeing how they struggled to cover Hilliard.

This won’t be the same Giants defense, though. Expect Wink Martindale to switch things up, put more athletic pieces on the field rather than the muscle needed to combat Henry. Martindale suggested that there could be games when he doesn’t play with any inside linebackers, a far-fetched proposal but one that might fit this week’s opponent above all others. The Giants have enough safeties on their roster to do that if they think it will work.

“Obviously it’ll be different,” Crowder said of the game plan facing McCaffrey. “But it’s not really about what they’re going to do. It’s about what we’re going to do.”

That will be the case all year as the Giants go against a fantasy football lineup of running backs. After Henry and McCaffrey, they get, in order, Ezekiel Elliott of the Cowboys, David Montgomery of the Bears, Aaron Jones of the Packers and, if he is healthy by then, J.K. Dobbins of the Ravens. At the end of the season, they have back-to-back games against Dalvin Cook of the Vikings and Jonathan Taylor of the Colts.

The only premier running back in the NFL it seems the Giants won’t play against this season is Barkley. Maybe that will happen next year.

For now, each of those opposing players brings a unique element to the game and a unique challenge for this defense.

They’ve already shown they can stand up to one of the brawniest backs in the league. Now they have to demonstrate they can be as versatile and varied as the spectrum of styles they will be facing the rest of the year.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.