Time To Give Drew Henson His Due - GREAT Topic
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I've been thinking about Henson because, with the first ten years of the century over, I'm mulling over a team of the best Wolverines of the decade, based on their best season. I figured Henson's final season might qualify. As I looked closer, I concluded that Henson in 2000 actually had the best season of any Michigan quarterback in history. |
I think that this is a GREAT topic. I completely agree and additionally think that you can make a strong case for Henson (if he would of had a full career) being probably the best Michigan QB ever. Discuss???
Does that mean that the Panthers take Carr #2 and the Lions take Julius Peppers over Joey Harrington?
In looking up Drew's high school records I found the 1998 USA Today Prep Team. The catcher that year was Gerald Laird of the Detroit Tigers.
You can't use stats over an 8 1/2 game stretch and extrapolate that to an entire career. Teams have ups and downs over time, and so do players, and the 8 1/2 game stretch you are using might just have been a "good" stretch for Henson.
Navarre '03
Lock the thread
at the time was that he had certain difficult throws he was very good at, but he was not yet a complete player or even passer when he left -- he was going to need that senior season he walked away from. There was a marked improvement between the Henson we saw during the Brady years and that 2000 season, so it is reasonable to assume he would have continued to develop his repertoire of killer throws and, given Carr's impressive track record in producing NFL-ready quarterbacks, the rest of his game. 2001 would have been a bumpy ride -- losing Hutchinson, Backus, Brandt, and Williams off the line -- but it might have been just what Henson needed to grow.
If you look purely at stats then his games in 2000 are impressive, but I'll echo what others have said above -- those stats are more the product of one of the greatest offensive lines in Michigan history than anything else. You have to wonder what might have been that year if the team's only experienced quarterback, Henson, had not broken his foot.
Ultimately, that's what irks me about his decision to leave. In retrospect we know that Lloyd paid a price in 1999 for giving Henson playing time when he had a perfectly functional senior quarterback in Tom Brady -- that's another what-if scenario: what if Brady had played every possession in the two losses that year, instead of sharing them with the golden-boy Henson? Carr went out of his way to get Henson experience, who just walked away from the process. To Henson I say, "Karma's a bitch."
I felt at the time that Henson more or less screwed Michigan. He was already making noises about signing with MLB during Brady's last year. I always assumed that was the reason for Carr giving him playing time. He was then slated as the QB for the next two years which affected recruiting, then he left anyway. Carr was incensed, rightfully so.
He had flaws as a QB but would have improved with another year and almost certainly would have been a top 5-10 pick, and had a much better chance of sticking long term in the NFL.
As for his time with the Yankees his failures had little to do with the mental/psychological aspects of the game as has been theorized here and elsewhere. I live in NY and saw him the fall he was called up to the bigs. While billed as Mike Schmidt type power hitting third baseman, he was in fact a poor fielder - tall for the position and poor hands - they may have been able to work around that. However his biggest problem by far - one that gets many, many future stars - was that he simply could not hit a major league curveball - not even close. It was brutally painful to watch and he was gone shortly thereafter.
Didn't have any other QB's recruited in his class (by promise as was rumored at the time..?). So it really left the team without anyone with experience, class-wise, in addition to experience-wise.
If it had been any other (MLB) team, I don't think Henson would have left Michigan. Steinbrenner's ultimatum was that if you ever want to wear the Pinstripes in the majors, you must commit to us full-time now. (CAVEAT: I have not done any investigative journalism to corroborate this theory.)
It's interesting that you note that his fielding was poor. I'd always heard it was his inability to hit a curveball that did him in (as you also note).
Maybe Steinbrenner (and his scouts) could plainly see that Henson would never be successful in baseball, and, having invested so much money (at the time), decided that the best way to get value on his investment would be to pry Drew away from the Wolverines.
Henson would have been a Heisman frontrunner had he returned.
...in a two year span. Sure, hindsight shows why Tom Brady could make wunderkind Henson a back-up. And no, none of us thought "Hall of Fame" when he went to the draft. But 1999 will always be the best passing game I can ever remember. It wasn't the best offense I've ever seen us have, but there was no deficit that was unsurmountable (and unfortunately, thanks to the defense, no lead that was safe). But you put Brady in the shotgun, with four wideouts, and that was the most dangerous set I've ever seen us play.
I find it kind of interesting that we're on page three of comments on whether Drew Henson was the best UM QB of the 21st Century (and perhaps ever) and there hasn't been a mention of Benny Friedman, who basically reinvented the forward pass, led Michigan to multiple B10 titiles, and probably saved the incipient NFL.