Tennessee running back Derrick Henry hated to say goodbye to the 2019 NFL season after the Titans fell to the Kansas City Chiefs 35-24 in the AFC Championship Game on Sunday.

“I definitely shed a couple of tears because I love my teammates, love the chemistry that we had throughout this whole season,” Henry said at a postgame press conference, "and we had to stick together through the adversity. We got a lot of great guys in that locker room. It’s football. We know that locker room’s going to change. But I just felt like I could have did more for this team. I love this team. I love playing football. I love competing. I love being around my teammates.

"Life is not always laughs and giggles. It's going to be hard, but you've got your brothers to lean on, your teammates to lean on to get you through those hard times, and I felt like those guys helped me get through a lot, and definitely going to miss this team. But I look back, I know I had a lot of great teammates, a lot of great moments, a lot of good things I can reminisce on."

One of the changes in the Titans’ locker room could be Henry. The former Alabama All-American has completed his rookie contract, signed after Tennessee selected him in the second round of the 2016 NFL Draft after he’d won the Heisman Trophy for the Crimson Tide’s 2015 CFP national championship team.

“Right now, we just lost a game,” Henry said. “I’m not really thinking about no contracts or anything like that. But when that time comes, I’m sure that stuff will get worked out.”

Henry talked as though he'd be back with the Titans.

“I think it’s a lot of good things we can build off of,” Henry said about Tennessee’s 2019 season. “I think this is a big step in a great direction for this team, for this organization.”

Henry led the NFL in rushing during the 2019 regular season with 1,540 yards, and he entered Sunday's game as the only player in league history with three consecutive games with at least 180 rushing yards and back-to-back playoff games with at least 175 rushing yards.

Against Kansas City, Henry had 69 yards on 19 carries after running for 188 yards on 23 carries in the Titans' 35-32 victory over the Chiefs in a regular-season game on Nov. 10.

“They had a great game plan,” Henry said, “and they were coming off the ball. Guys were being physical. They played a great game today on defense.”

Henry had 62 yards on 16 carries in the first half. He scored on 4-yard run off a direct snap to cap Tennessee's second possession as the Titans took a 10-0 lead with 5:52 left in the first quarter.

But unlike he'd done throughout the second half of the regular season and the playoffs, Henry didn't pound down the opposing defense in the second half on Sunday. Against the Chiefs, he had four rushing attempts on Tennessee's first possession of the third quarter (and one was nullified by an offensive holding penalty), then did not carry the football for the remainder of the game.

The Chiefs' second possession of the second half was a 13-play, 73-yard drive that resulted in a touchdown on the second snap of the fourth quarter and a 28-17 lead for Kansas City.

“I don’t think we were able to run as many snaps and get things going,” Titans coach Mike Vrabel said. “We didn’t break a big one, but I felt like it was efficient. It was very efficient in the first half, and then they put some long drives together to kind of chew up some clock there in the third quarter.”

Henry had his lowest rushing output since producing 63 yards and one touchdown on 13 carries in a 30-20 loss to the Carolina Panthers on Nov. 3. He also had three receptions for 36 yards and one touchdown in that game. Henry caught two passes for Sunday, but the receptions netted minus-8 yards.

Tennessee had a 4-5 record after the loss to the Panthers. Henry ran for 1,273 yards and 11 touchdowns on 203 carries over eight games as the Titans earned the final spot in the AFC playoffs and defeated defending Super Bowl champion New England 20-13 and No. 1 seed Baltimore 28-12 in postseason contests.

“I feel like our backs was against the wall the whole season,” Henry said. "We just kept believing in each other and kept fighting, kept putting good wins together against great teams in this league, and I felt like for us as a team, we just stayed relentless, kept believing in each other, and I think that speaks volumes for the character of everybody in that room as a football player.

"We just came up short. It's a great team. Wish the outcome could have been different."

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

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