EDITOR’S NOTE: Every day until Aug. 29, Creg Stephenson is counting down significant numbers in Alabama football history, both in the lead-up to the 2025 football season and in commemoration of the Crimson Tide’s first national championship 100 years ago. The number could be attached to a year, a uniform number or even a football-specific statistic. We hope you enjoy.

Derrick Henry has made a career out of being a workhorse running back, but even he took it to an extreme against Auburn on Nov. 28, 2015.

Henry carried the ball an astounding 46 times for 271 yards and a touchdown in Alabama’s 29-13 victory in the Iron Bowl at Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn, helping the Crimson Tide secure the SEC West title on the way to a national championship. The 6-foot-3, 242-pound junior ran the ball on Alabama’s final 14 offensive plays and on 19 of its last 21 as the Crimson Tide pulled away from upset-minded Auburn.

“We’d really like for someone else to run the ball, but it got tough to take him out and he seemed to get stronger as the game goes on,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said. “It’s hard to take him out at the end of the game. He’s the go-to guy and he didn’t want to come out. He wanted to go and said that he could, and certainly finished the game like we needed to today. My hat is off to him as a competitor, and he really inspires everybody on our team in the way he competes, plays and the toughness that he runs with. What a spirit.”

The Iron Bowl performance was part of a Heisman Trophy-winning season for Henry, and one of the greatest ever by an SEC running back. In 15 games, he carried the ball 395 times for 2,219 yards and 28 touchdowns, all school and conference records.

But breaking records was nothing new for Henry, who had set a national high school mark with 12,124 yards during his career at Yulee High School in Florida (the previous record, set by Ken Hall of Sugar Land, Texas, had stood since 1953). As a senior in 2012, Henry ran for an incredible 4,261 yards and 55 touchdowns in just 12 games, averaging 327.8 yards per game and 9.2 yards per carry.

“He’s just making college football look like high school all over again,” high school teammate Dante Owens told AL.com in 2015. “It looks the exact same with him running by people and nobody wanting to tackle him and everybody being kind of scared.”

Henry was a 5-star recruit in Alabama’s top-ranked 2013 signing class, though many recruiting services listed him as an “athlete” rather than a running back. Some analysts were of the opinion he might be an even better prospect as a defensive end or linebacker.

But Saban left Henry at running back, though he played sparingly as a freshman in 2013 as part of a loaded backfield that also included T.J. Yeldon and Kenyan Drake. Henry gave a glimpse of his potential in a season-ending loss to Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl, rushing for a 43-yard touchdown and catching a 67-yard TD pass from AJ McCarron.

Yeldon and Henry split time in 2014, combining for 1,969 yards and 22 touchdowns in leading Alabama to the SEC championship and a berth in the first College Football Playoff. Yeldon left for the NFL draft after the season, and the running back position was all Henry’s.

Henry began 2015 with 143 yards and three touchdowns in a 35-17 win over Wisconsin, then scored at least one touchdown — and twice topped the 100-yard mark — in the next five games. But as he did in the 2015 Iron Bowl, Henry saved his best for the second half.

He burned Texas A&M for 243 yards and two scores, then hit Tennessee for 143 and two more TDs, before back-to-back 200-yard games vs. LSU (210, three TDs) and Mississippi State (204, two). He played less than a half in a 56-6 rout of Charleston Southern, but still scored twice.

That took him into the Iron Bowl, in which Alabama led just 12-6 at halftime and 19-13 after Auburn scored on a 77-yard touchdown pass late in the third quarter. After the teams exchanged punts, Henry took over.

He ran the ball on five of seven plays as the Crimson Tide drove for Adam Griffith’s 47-yard field goal, which put Alabama up 22-13 with 10:04 left. After Auburn punted again, he carried the ball 10 straight clock-killing times before being stopped on fourth-and-1 with 2:46 remaining.

Alabama’s defense forced four straight Auburn incompletions, and Henry provided the exclamation point moments later. He ran the ball four consecutive times, including a 25-yard touchdown to ice the game with 26 seconds remaining.

“It was huge,” center Ryan Kelly said of Henry’s performance. “You know, the guy seems to never get tired. We ran the ball a lot and him getting that touchdown at the very end, it kind of sealed the deal.”

The victory was Alabama’s only one at Auburn between 2011 and 2021. More importantly, it clinched the SEC West after Ole Miss — which had beaten Alabama in September — had suffered a second conference loss to Arkansas earlier in November.

Henry ran for 189 yards and a touchdown on 44 carries in a 29-15 victory over Florida in the SEC championship game on Dec. 5. A week later, he was awarded the Heisman Trophy in a relatively close vote over Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey.

Henry added two touchdowns — and one epic stiff-arm — in a 38-0 win over Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl, then finished his college career with 158 yards and three touchdowns in a 45-40 victory over Clemson in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game. He somehow lasted until the second round of the 2016 NFL draft, going to the Tennessee Titans with the 45th overall pick.

Henry has proven to be an all-time great at the NFL level as well, with 11,423 yards (19th all-time) and 106 touchdowns (sixth) in nine seasons with the Titans and Baltimore Ravens entering 2025. He rushed for 2,027 yards for Tennessee in 2020, becoming the first player to top 2,000 in a season in high school, college and the NFL.

Henry has shown few signs of slowing down, rushing for 1,921 yards and 16 touchdowns last season with the Ravens. At age 31 and a decade removed from his epic Iron Bowl performance, he just keeps running.

Coming Wednesday: Our countdown to kickoff continues with No. 45, Alabama’s famous ‘Tin Horn’ game.