The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Heisman hopefuls list goes deeper
There are at least six players worth watching beyond front-runners.
The pool of candidates for the Heisman Trophy is a deep one. Derrick Henry, the winner from Alabama last year, has moved on to the NFL, but five of the next six players in the voting are back, led by runner-up Christian McCaffrey of Stanford.
Also returning are Clemson’s Deshaun Watson, Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield, LSU’s Leonard Fournette and Florida State’s Dalvin Cook. All of them, along with Ohio State’s J.T. Barnett and Georgia’s Nick Chubb (if fully recovered from his knee injury), are in the first wave of contenders for 2016. Here are six players who could insert themselves into the Heisman conversation:
■ Chad Kelly, senior quarterback, Mississippi
■ Royce Freeman, junior running back, Oregon
■ Greg Ward Jr., senior quarterback, Houston
■ Seth Russell, senior quarterback, Baylor
■ Jabrill Peppers, sophomore linebacker, Michigan
■ Josh Rosen, sophomore quarterback, UCLA
Justice rules
Call a run play? This perp should have taken a knee.
Gerald Moore — up on meth charges in Bowie County, Texas — picked the wrong courtroom to flee, as judge-elect Jeff Fletcher lowered his shoulder and quickly tackled him.
“I thought I’d be sore the next day,” Fletcher, who was sitting in the gallery as an observer, told the Texarkana Gazette. “But I was just fine.”
Fletcher, who assumes the bench on Jan. 1, was a Baylor punter and DB in the early 1980s.
Easing Bosa in
Ohio State freshman defensive end Nick Bosa is on coach Urban Meyer’s “pitch count” while recovering from the knee injury suffered in his senior year of high school. The 6-foot-4, 265-pound touted recruit, the younger brother of ex-Buckeyes star defensive end Joey Bosa, should be healthy enough to play when the season starts. Bosa will wear the same 97 uniform number as his brother did at Ohio State.
Strike 4, anyone?
Nebraska receivers coach Keith Williams, convicted of DUI in 2004 and 2009, has been suspended for the Cornhuskers’ first four games after yet another such arrest. Though hard-liners say a more fitting punishment would’ve been three-and-out.
One for the thumb
Six Notre Dame football players were arrested on various charges — marijuana possession, firearm violation, bar fight with a cop — in two incidents last week. Updated Irish mantra: Wake up the bail bondsman!
No topping this
The Penn State football team, to hear a Jimmy John’s driver tell it, failed to tip on a $1,200 delivery order. In other words, the Nittany Lions didn’t score any extra points.
New record
David Whitley of the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel, after police arrested five Notre Dame football players in a single traffic stop: “Breaking the NCAA record of four set by Oklahoma in 1975.”
Both of these statements about Seantrel Henderson are true:
■ He is paid to grapple with some of the most powerful and aggressive men in sports.
■ A tomato sandwich on wheat bread could send him to the hospital.
The former is a fact many know about Henderson, a third-year right tackle for the Buffalo Bills and former Miami Hurricane. The latter is something he didn’t know until last year, when a severe form of an intestinal disease turned his gut poisonous and caused doctors to think his football career might be over.
Henderson, speaking publicly for the first time about the pain vand fears of his ordeal, said he played last season with stabbing sensations in his stomach that grew so bad his 6-foot-7, 330pound body shook. He vomited regularly. He lost 50 pounds. Eventually, surgeons removed 80 diseased centimeters of his large and small intestines.
For three months, food he ate left his body through a tube inserted into a hole above his waist.
That’s because of Crohn’s disease, an incurable inflammatory disorder that can impair the function of the stomach, intestines, colon and nearby organs. Symptoms include abdominal cramping, diarrhea, internal bleeding and fatigue. Some cases are mild and treated through dietary changes. Henderson’s was especially severe. It caused doctors to say two fearsome words he didn’t think he would hear: emergency surgery.
“The pain hurt, but nothing scared me like that,” he said by phone recently. “That’s when I got scared.”
There is no fear in the voice of Henderson, 24, now as he speaks about his condition. After a painful 12-month stretch with two surgeries and months of subsequent complications, he feels he has nearly recovered. He is on Buffalo’s non-football illness list, hoping soon to resume full training.
He’s also glad to know a little girl in Miami is doing well.
Shared condition creates bond
Jadyn Elise Richt, 2, can’t discuss her condition, but her father can. Hurricanes quarterbacks coach Jon Richt, the oldest son of head coach Mark Richt, also knows about Henderson’s fight. The two created a bond last year in Buffalo, when Jon was a coaching assistant for the Bills trying to balance his first professional coaching job with the fear something terrible was happening to his daughter.
“For about six months, we didn’t know what it was,” Jon said. “( Jadyn) was only nine months old. She wasn’t gaining weight. She wasn’t eating. She was kind of looking frailer and frailer.”
It was a “really scary time” for Jon and his wife, Anna, whom he married while he was a sophomore quarterback at Division II Mars Hill in North Carolina.
Tests revealed Crohn’s, which affects as many as 700,000 in the U.S., according to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America. The young family spent much of 2015 in and out of the hospital. Since Jadyn’s pain has abated, she is more willing to eat. “She’s getting there,” Jon said. “It’s a daily battle. It’s hard to argue with a 2-year-old.”
Jon Richt — whose father is overjoyed to see his only grandchild healthy and living nearby — said he still keeps up with Henderson. They text back and forth, the young coach checking on the big lineman, the big lineman checking on the little girl. “Me and him have kind of created a cool bond,” Richt said.
Hoping for big comeback
Losing his grip on an NFL starting job was not Henderson’s first hardship.
He was billed as the best player in the 2010 recruiting class, a surefire first-round NFL draft pick. He was a standout in 43 career games, but he fought injuries and weight problems (he was 375 pounds his freshman year) and was suspended at least three times by Miami for “violation of team rules.” He revealed a history of marijuana use during an interview at the Senior Bowl, giving some teams a reason not to draft him.
He was a seventh-round pick in the 2014 draft, but he earned the starting right tackle spot for the Bills. He started all 16 games as a rookie and 10 in his second year, boosting his four-year, $2.8 million contract into bargain status.
Henderson said he dealt with stomach unrest throughout his life, but never had pain at Miami. During training camp last season, he started to feel “a charley horse” on either side of his lower abdominal area.
“It started happeningduring practices and throughout the day, but it would go away,” he said. “During the season, it started getting worse.”
A part of his intestine had turned toxic. He couldn’t digest food. He began to lose weight. Playing was painful, but in an NFL locker room — where players are always told to know the difference between being hurt and being injured — the young pro wasn’t sure if his pain was bad enough to keep him out.
Until December. “I couldn’t deal with the pain,” he said. An overnight hospital stay in Philadelphia led to a Crohn’s diagnosis, the end of his season, and worse.
Surgery, long recovery
He was in the hospital from Jan. 9 to Jan. 20, as doctors removed more than 2½ feet of his gastrointestinal tract.
He returned to the hospital three times because his surgery wounds bled. Until his intestines were reattached in April, he wore an ileostomybag attached to his stomach, which he said he had to empty every hour.
After his January surgery, he weighed 281 pounds. “I was weak,” he said. “At first I couldn’t stand up on my own. I felt so weak. It was terrible. I didn’t like it at all. I kept walking and walking around the hospital.”
Eight months later he weighs 320 pounds, and passed his training camp conditioning test with the Bills. He often refers to a long list of foods he can’t eat: Tomatoes, corn, gluten, dairy, broccoli (“my favorite vegetable,” he lamented) and fast food are among the offenders.
He hopes to reach 330 pounds in the coming weeks. His wounds have healed. His strength is “close” to 2014 levels, he said. Buffalo hasn’t revealed a time frame for his return, but his representatives said he will resume his career. Henderson expects to do so this fall.
“You can’t take anything for granted,” he said. “Last year could have been the last year I’d ever play football. At one point, the doctors were saying I’d have to have that ileostomy bag on the rest of my life. My intestines were so poisonous on the inside. But I healed up really fast. I’m lucky to be working out and looking toward playing again.”
He’s almost ready to take on those defensive ends.
As long as they’re not made of broccoli.