Derrick Henry’s first victims watched just as the rest of us did. From living rooms and bars, on TV screens and smartphones, all across Florida. They watched, on two consecutive Saturday nights, as the running back who once sped past them – who bulldozed them and juked them and stiff-armed them into oblivion – did all of that to the best football players in the world.

They watched Henry power the Tennessee Titans past the Patriots and Ravens, into the AFC championship game. As he did, a few of them shared a laugh. Others perused social media, and saw America asking a pertinent question.

What would happen if a normal human being tried to tackle Derrick Henry?

And they, the architectural designers and construction material salesmen and nurses who were once Henry’s high school opponents, realized they held the answers.

“It felt like you were tackling a big four-wheeler,” says Michael Dudzinski, once a 170-pound linebacker at rival West Nassau High School, now a golf resort assistant.

“It’s like tackling a brick wall or a good-sized tree,” says Dalton Bradley, Henry’s former teammate.

“It felt like a freight train or something,” says Cody Cosper, a three-time opponent, now a drill instructor in the Marines.

Around a decade before Henry was swatting away Earl Thomas and outrunning Marcus Peters, these men bore witness to his greatness. To highlights that belong on PlayStations. To the most prolific high school career of any running back, anywhere, ever.

But the 12,124 yards and 153 touchdowns over four years tell only half the story. To get the other half, Yahoo Sports spoke with more than a dozen of those normal human beings who played or coached with or against Henry back in Northeast Florida. They told of justified intimidation and outright absurdity.

“You know, as a coach, I don’t get infatuated with players, I’m never really starstruck,” says James Thomson, then the head coach at Gainesville High School. But with Henry?

“I remember, distinctly, telling him after the game: ‘You’re going to win a Heisman.’ ”

A monster since middle school

View photos Derrick Henry has been abusing would-be tacklers with his vicious stiff arm since his days at Yulee High School, where he rushed for more than 12,000 yards and 153 touchdowns. (Courtesy of Cole Willis) More

The legend of Derrick Henry begins even before he ducked into his first class at Yulee High School. Before he ran for 2,465 yards and 26 touchdowns in 11 games as a freshman. Before everybody in little Yulee knew his name.

“Believe it or not, he was probably 6-2, at least 215 pounds in middle school,” fellow Nassau County native Cole Willis remembers. “I think I got dunked on a couple times,” he says of his junior-high basketball duels with Henry.

On football fields, the future NFLer doubled as a nose tackle. He’d line up across from Dudzinski, who at the time was an undersized center – “barely, not even 100 pounds.” Henry, at roughly twice Dudzinki’s size, would romp past him.

He’d bear down on quarterbacks like Ben Venerdi, who remembers one particular sack vividly. “It was so insane,” he begins. “It felt like I got 3 yards, but I think I lost 5. And he actually hit me, and then he picked me up, and set me back on my feet.

“I’m not that small of a guy,” Venerdi continues. “I was a normal-sized middle-school kid – 5-7, or 5-6-and-a-half. … I’m not small enough for that to be normal.”

While Willis’ 215-pound estimate might be slightly exaggerated, Henry’s stature was extraordinary – and immediately noticeable to Bobby Ramsay when the first-year Yulee High head coach drove by the middle school field one day on his way home.

“When I got the head job in 2008, Derrick was in 7th grade,” Ramsay recalls. And his first Yulee team the following fall? “I mean, we were terrible. We ended up going 5-5, by the grace of God, but … I’m just trying to figure out a way for us to get 3 yards on a play.

“And then Derrick comes along.”

Trying (and failing) to tackle Derrick Henry

Story continues