The first time Derrick Henry tried to put his hand through an NFL defender’s face in a game, he missed.

This seems incongruous with the legend of Henry’s stiff arm, a blunt-force instrument elevated to almost mythic status after more than a decade of big-game bashings, but it’s there on the tape in his first game as a pro in 2016: season opener, second quarter, third-and-1 near midfield. Henry, then a rookie for the Tennessee Titans, gets a lateral in space from quarterback Marcus Mariota. Minnesota Vikings cornerback Trae Waynes, maybe 60 pounds lighter than the Heisman Trophy-winning running back, approaches. As Henry extends his right arm toward Waynes’ helmet, the veteran ducks it, diving for Henry’s legs. He’s wrapped up and tackled for a 1-yard loss.

Henry has gone on to wield his stiff arm as if it’s Thor’s hammer, but across a career with over 10,000 rushing yards and over 100 total touchdowns, his most awesome weapon has proven alternately imposing and imperfect. Not everyone ends up on Henry’s highlight reel. He likes to say that his favorite stiff arm is his next one, perhaps because there are no guarantees that he’ll throw the next defensive back he sees into the neighborhood one ZIP code over. That doesn’t mean he won’t try.

“That’s just been my favorite thing to do as far as getting a defender off me, just stiff-arming him and getting him down and continuing to run the ball,” Henry, the NFL’s leading rusher (704 yards) in his first year with the Ravens, explained early in his pro career. “That’s what I’ve been doing since I was younger. It just came natural to me.”

To fully appreciate the historical sweep of Henry’s stiff arms, The Baltimore Banner went looking for every last one. The search was an inexact science, with definite parameters — every non-penalty running play in Henry’s 125 regular-season games with the Titans and Ravens — and you’ll-know-it-when-you-see-it criteria. The gist of the accounting: If Henry used an arm to gain a significant advantage on a carry, either by knocking back, redirecting or holding off a defender, his tally grew.

And, oh, what a tally it was. Here’s what The Banner found in its nine-season audit of Henry’s stiff arms in the NFL.

158 total stiff arms

Henry had just seven stiff arms in his debut season. That changed quickly. The next season, he had 24. Aside from his rookie year and injury-shortened 2021 campaign, Henry has finished with at least 17 stiff arms in all six of his completed NFL seasons, averaging at least one per game. He was never more stiff-arm-happy than he was in 2017, when he had one on 13.6% of his carries. And Henry was never more prolific than in 2020, when he had 26 stiff arms — and, coincidentally, won NFL Offensive Player of the Year honors.

133 players stiff-armed

Perhaps the best testament to Henry’s longevity is just how many players he’s victimized. He has stiff-armed a defensive lineman 37 times, a linebacker 40 times and a defensive back 81 times. “As an old defensive back, I just envision myself trying to knock that thing down and hanging on for dear life,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh joked earlier this month.

Henry is largely an equal-opportunity punisher. Only four opponents have been stiff-armed more than two times over their career: linebacker Myles Jack, safety Barry Church, cornerback A.J. Bouye and safety Jalen Pitre.

Henry has a personal-high five stiff arms against Jack, the former Jaguars linebacker, four of which he handed out in one 2018 game against Jacksonville.

WATCH: Derrick Henry's stiff arms vs. Myles Jack

29 teams stiff-armed

Only three teams have avoided the brunt of a Henry stiff arm: the San Francisco 49ers (whom Henry has played just once), the New England Patriots (ditto) and Tennessee, where he spent the first eight years of his career.

The Titans’ AFC South rivals make up the bulk of Henry’s hit list. He has 33 stiff arms against the Jaguars, 26 against the Houston Texans and 18 against the Indianapolis Colts.

13.9 yards per stiff-armed carry

There’s an evolutionary logic to this one: Of course the plays in which Henry manhandled a defender went for longer gains than those in which he did not.

Still, the gulf in production is vast. Henry has 1,998 rushing yards on his 144 carries with one or multiple stiff arms. On his 2,005 carries without a stiff arm, he’s rushed for 8,208 yards — or just 4.1 per attempt.

57.6% right-handed

Henry’s first 11 stiff arms were delivered with his dominant right hand, usually coming after he bounced an inside run out to his left and looked to clear a path. Over his career, too, a majority of his stiff arms have been right-handed.

But as Henry’s game has evolved, his methods of punishment have become more balanced. In 2022, for example, eight straight stiff arms came courtesy of his left hand. In each of his final two seasons with the Titans, he finished with more left-handers than right-handers.

95th-percentile arm length

Henry’s prodigious strength comes from his obsessive workout regimen, but it’s his reach that weaponizes it. At the NFL scouting combine in 2016, Henry’s arms measured 33 inches long, a mark that ranks among the best for running back prospects, according to MockDraftable, and in the 79th percentile for all skill position prospects.

“You see it,” Ravens running back Justice Hill said earlier this month. “He’s 6-3, 6-4, long arms, strong, and so it’s hard for people to even get within reach of him, because his arms are so long. ... And then he just gives it his all, because I was asking him how he gets those stiff arms off, and he was like, ‘Bro, I just give my all in it, put it all in there.’ And so, yes, man, he’s just a freak of nature.”

48 fourth-quarter and overtime stiff arms

The longer a season goes, the better Henry gets. And the longer a game goes, the harder he is to tackle. Over his career, Henry has averaged just 3.7 yards per carry and posted a 32.8% success rate (the percentage of plays with positive expected points added) in the first quarter. After halftime, he’s averaged 4.9 yards and posted a 39.5% success rate.

In the fourth quarter and overtime, the physical and mental toll of defending Henry can start to wear on defenses. He has delivered 48 stiff arms in those late-game periods, which is four more than he has in the third quarter, which is seven more than he has in the second quarter, which is eight more than he has in the first quarter.

“I definitely just want to be able to close the game so we can win, and everybody is happy, and everybody is high-fiving in the locker room,” Henry said after he rushed 24 times for 132 yards and two touchdowns in Sunday’s 30-23 win over the Washington Commanders. “You have to take pride in that, to be able to finish games and have the ball last.”

A pair of three-stiff-arm plays

In 2018, on what might be the defining play of his legendary career, Henry stiff-armed three Jaguars defenders — Bouye, linebacker Leon Jacobs and Jack — on his way to a 99-yard touchdown run in a 30-9 win.

Four years later, Henry scored another hat trick with his other hand. In a three-second span, Henry stiff-armed three Texans defenders: cornerback Steven Nelson, defensive lineman Thomas Booker and Pitre. This time, though, he did not score a touchdown. He did not even get a first down. Henry’s moment of madness produced just 6 yards in a 19-14 loss to Houston.

So deep is Henry’s catalog of hits that one YouTube compilation advertising “59 Minutes of Derrick Highlights” omitted the play entirely. Henry wouldn’t be too upset. His favorite stiff arm is always his next one.