BALTIMORE — Before Derrick Henry signed with the Baltimore Ravens as a free agent in 2024, his former team, the Tennessee Titans, never offered to keep him.

Henry said Wednesday that he already knew the relationship was nearing its end.

“I think it was bittersweet,” Henry, 32, said. “I knew the writing was on that wall throughout that season, and they were ready to move on.

“Good things don’t last forever, so it was time for me to find a new home.”

On Sunday, Henry will face the team where he became one of the NFL’s most imposing forces. The Ravens will host the Titans at M&T Bank Stadium, marking Henry’s first game against his former team.

The Titans drafted Henry in the second round in 2016 following his Heisman Trophy-winning and national championship season at Alabama. He was the second running back selected that year, behind Ezekiel Elliott, who went fourth overall to the Dallas Cowboys.

Henry spent his rookie season behind DeMarco Murray before gradually taking over more of the workload. By his third season, the transformation was well underway.

In 2018, Henry rushed for 1,059 yards, punctuated by a 99-yard touchdown run. A year later, he led the NFL in rushing yards and touchdowns, earned first-team All-Pro honors and made his first Pro Bowl.

Then came 2020, when Henry became only the eighth player in NFL history to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season. He finished with 2,027 yards and 17 touchdowns, both league highs, and earned the NFL’s Offensive Player of the Year award.

For eight seasons in Tennessee, Henry became synonymous with the franchise’s offense — four Pro Bowls, three second-team All-Pro selections and 9,502 rushing yards and 90 touchdowns on 2,030 carries.

But after Tennessee went 6-11 in 2023, coach Mike Vrabel was fired, Brian Callahan was hired and the offense and roster moved in a different direction. Running backs, historically, also tend to decline sharply after age 30.

Henry has been the exception for the past two-plus seasons.

In his first season in Baltimore, he rushed for 1,921 yards and 16 touchdowns. Last year, he had 1,595 yards and another 16 scores. Through three games this season, he has 301 rushing yards and six touchdowns.

But the reunion, Henry insists, is less about settling an old score than winning a game in a place where the Ravens have struggled to do so in recent years. They went 3-6 at home last season and two weeks ago dropped their home opener to the New Orleans Saints.

Still, Sunday will carry some extra meaning.

Henry said a Titans security guard he remains friends with has been texting him for the past couple of weeks about the reunion. “There’s always love,” Henry said of the Titans organization.

That love, apparently, does not extend quite as far as Tennessee’s defensive line.

Titans defensive tackle Jeffrey Simmons was asked what it takes to tackle the 6-foot-3, 247-pound Henry. The response was blunt.

“He’s a big back,” he told reporters. “Hit his a–.”

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