Evan Pryor sees himself as a home-run threat. Somebody who can take off and get to the end zone untouched at any given point in a game. His goal every time he touches the ball is simple.
“I'm going to do what I do, which is not try to get hit,” Pryor said on Tuesday.
He’ll try to do just that on Wednesday when Ohio State goes through its first padded practice of the spring. So far, the Buckeyes haven’t popped pads yet, beginning camp on Friday and easing into the contact portion of March and April.
But Pryor’s roommate, a fellow freshman also ranked as a top-100 recruit at running back, has taken a bit of a different tact leading into the midweek practice.
“All I need is just that one good hit to wake me up and I'll be good,” TreVeyon Henderson said.
Tony Alford, the team’s seventh-year running backs coach, couldn’t help but laugh when told of that comment.
“It's funny hearing him say I can't wait to get hit,” he said. “Well, don't worry, buddy. It's coming. It'll be upon you here soon.”
Henderson, like Pryor, hasn’t played a down of 11-on-11 football in over a year. Virginia, along with North Carolina, was one of the states to move its high school football season from the fall to the spring. Instead of playing tailback as a senior, the Hopewell native enrolled at Ohio State to get acclimated as quickly as possible to the program.
That hit Henderson referred to? It’s been quite a while since he has felt it. And he hasn’t ever experienced blows like the ones he’ll feel when the pads start cracking this week.
Still, he doesn’t fear what’s coming at all. Rather, he looks forward to it.
“I'm a big competitor,” Henderson said. “I'm going to compete. I'm going to give it my all. I don't back down or anything. When the pads come on, that lets you know who's real and who's not.”
Everything about Henderson’s path to Ohio State would say he is, as he put it, real – regardless of whether or not he has played 22-man football in the past year.
A lack of a senior season didn't prevent him from ending the recruiting process as a five-star prospect and the top-rated running back in his class. It didn't prevent high-level schools chasing after him until the very end while selling him on a quicker path to the field. And in Henderson’s mind, it shouldn’t prevent him from getting on the field quickly.
The 5-foot-10, 210-pound tailback spent time training both physically and mentally with his track coach to get him ready for the collegiate level. Evidently, it worked fine for him, considering he said “the transition has been great.”
“The coaches, they're very good. I like them a lot,” Henderson said. “They're what I expected, and Ohio State is what I expected.”
Alford says he and Pryor both have an “eagerness to learn.” That’ll be further put to the test over the next month as the intensity ramps up both within the team and, more specifically, within the running back room.
Ohio State went from having one healthy scholarship running back a year ago during spring camp to having six in 2019. There’s the incumbent, Master Teague, whom Alford said would start tomorrow if there was a game, and five others vying for carries: Miyan Williams, Marcus Crowley, Steele Chambers, Pryor and Henderson.
How will it shake out? Don’t go to Henderson looking for answers.
“Shoot, I don't know,” Henderson said. “We'll see. We're all great running backs. We've been competing a lot and making each other better. So we'll see how it all plays out.”
As for now, that wait-and-see approach is one he’s fine with taking.
Henderson walked into the Woody Hayes Athletic Center with more hype around how he can impact games immediately than any other freshman tailback in recent memory. He knows that. Everybody does. He doesn’t need to say anything to have the eyeballs on him.
“I'd rather not talk about it,” Henderson said. “I'd rather just show it. Let you all decide after that.”
