Ryan Day discusses TreVeyon Henderson availability ahead of Nebraska matchup
Ohio State head football coach Ryan Day spoke with reporters on Thursday to update everyone on the status of freshman phenom running back TreVeyon Henderson.
Day was asked about Henderson’s heavy workload in the Penn State game (28 carries for 152 rushing yards, one touchdown) and how that would affect his workload this week in practice.
“Yeah, we’re smart with that kind of stuff,” Day said. “But also, we saw this coming. For this time of year, he hasn’t had a [large] amount of carries. But certainly coming off of 28 and the amount of plays that he played, that’s a lot for a running back. But he’s had a good week of preparation and he’s ready to roll.”
Coming into the Penn State game, Henderson had only had one other game this season when he had over 20 carries, and that was his record-setting performance against Tulsa in which he had 24 carries. The Virginia native shredded Tulsa’s defense to the tune of 277 rushing yards–good enough for the third most in Ohio State history.
Against Penn State, Henderson was shutout in the first half, with nine carries for only six yards on the ground. Whatever the Buckeyes did to get the running game going in the second half, it worked.
Nearly 97% of his runs have gone for positive yardage — the highest rate of any tailback in college football.
Henderson was one of the nation’s top prospects coming out of high school
On3 rated Henderson as the 20th best overall prospect in America the 2021 recruiting class. He’s listed at 5-foot-10-inches, 215-pounds and attended Hopewell High School (Virginia). He was also an On3 industry consensus five-star prospect and as the top running back prospect in the nation.
He didn’t play his senior season of high school football due to his school moving their season to the spring.
The gifted tailback was finally named Hopewell’s starting running back as a junior and he responded in a big way–by rushing for 2,424 rushing yards and 45 touchdowns.
In his career at Hopewell, TreVeyon Henderson compiled over 4,000 yards rushing with 50 touchdowns and helped Hopewell win its second consecutive state championship in 2019.
In case you haven’t gotten to see his impressive high school highlight tape, here’s a mix that PFF put together blow.
Simply put, nobody could tackle him in the open field.
Ohio State and Nebraska will tee it up on Saturday. Kickoff is slated for noon from Lincoln, Nebraska.