New Tennessee offensive coordinator Arthur Smith has said the Titans intend to ride Derrick Henry during the 2019 NFL season.

Nick Saban, who coached Henry at Alabama, made that appear a sound strategy during an appearance on “Darren and Daunic” on WPRT-FM in Nashville.

“I think everybody has a unique style about how they play, and one thing that always amazed me about Derrick Henry was it seemed like the more he got the ball, the better he played,” Saban said. "We’ve had some guys like Kenyan Drake that didn’t play that much, but when they played they made fantastic plays, and they were great in that role of playing maybe 20, 25 plays in a game and having 10 or 12 touches and whether it was screen or being in empty and getting a mismatch, but Derrick Henry, when he gets the ball, the more he gets it, the better he runs it.

"I don’t know if it’s a confidence thing with him. I don’t know if it’s because he’s so big, strong and physical that it just wears the other guys down. I really can’t explain it, but he was the same way with us.

"He was always a good player, and him and Kenyan Drake were going to split time (in the 2015 season). Kenyan Drake got hurt, so he played all the time. And when he played all the time, he played so much better than when he played part of the time. It’s kind of hard to explain. But I know he's a great person, he's a great competitor, he's a hard worker and he's tough. I think that's going to take him a long way."

At Alabama, Henry ran for 382 yards and three touchdowns on 35 carries as a freshman in 2013, when T.J. Yeldon rushed for 1,235 yards and Drake ran for 694 for the Crimson Tide.

The next season, Henry got 172 carries and led Alabama with 990 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns. Yeldon ran for 979 yards in 2014.

In 2015, with Yeldon playing for the Jacksonville Jaguars and Drake sustaining a broken arm and a concussion after suffering a broken ankle the previous season, Henry set an SEC single-season record with 395 rushing attempts. They resulted in 2,219 yards and 28 touchdowns. Henry won the Heisman Trophy as he surpassed Herschel Walker's 34-year-old conference record for rushing yards in a season.

After joining the Titans in the second round of the 2016 NFL Draft, Henry served as DeMarco Murray's backup for two seasons. Henry carried the football more than 10 times in 13 games in 2016 and 2017, and Tennessee won the first 12 of them, until a 35-14 loss to the New England Patriots in the second round of the playoffs on Jan. 13, 2018.

With Murray out of football in 2018, Henry still didn't have a clear run in the Titans' backfield after Tennessee signed Dion Lewis from the New England Patriots in free agency.

Eleven games into the 2018 season, Henry had 434 yards and four touchdowns on 118 rushing attempts and Lewis had 428 yards and one touchdown on 129 carries. The Titans owned a 5-6 record.

In Tennessee's five December games, Henry ran for 625 yards and eight touchdowns on 97 carries and Lewis had 89 yards and no touchdowns on 37 rushing attempts. The Titans ran off four victories in a row and entered their regular-season finale with a chance to go to the playoffs but lost 33-17 to the Indianapolis Colts.

Henry led the NFL in rushing yards over the final month of the 2018 regular season, and his output included the second 99-yard run from scrimmage in NFL history in a 30-9 victory over the Jaguars on Dec. 6.

Tennessee's veteran players are scheduled to report on Thursday for training camp.

Before reporting, Henry took 35 youngsters from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Middle Tennessee shopping for back-to-school supplies on Wednesday at Academy Sports + Outdoors in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. Each child had a $200 gift card to spend.

FOR MORE OF AL.COM’S COMPREHENSIVE COVERAGE OF THE NFL, GO TO OUR NFL PAGE

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.